Leading with Questions; Creating the Change You Want with the Questions You Ask

Great leaders know the power of a well crafted question. 

"Questioning is a uniquely powerful tool for unlocking value in organizations: It spurs learning and the exchange of ideas, it fuels innovation and performance improvement, it builds rapport and trust among team members. And it can mitigate business risk by uncovering unforeseen pitfalls and hazards."  - Harvard Business Review

Questions are more than a tool for gathering information—they are a catalyst for shaping organizational realities and driving meaningful change.  In this course, Leading with Questions: Creating the Change You Want with the Questions You Ask, you’ll discover how to harness the transformative power of questioning to unlock potential in your workplace. Research shows that asking more questions:

• builds emotional intelligence (integral to leadership and relationship building)
• improves group morale
• makes people feel respected and heard, and
• helps teams create better solutions, together.

Through engaging discussions and practical exercises, you’ll learn to recognize the impact of your questions, craft more impactful inquiries, and reframe challenges into opportunities for growth. By the end of the course, you’ll have the tools to design questions that inspire innovation, foster collaboration, and create positive change in every facet of your work.

Learning Outcomes

• Understand the impact our questions have in shaping our organizational realities
• Identify the elements that make questions more impactful
• Experiment with reframing questions to create more generative outcomes
• Design questions to create positive change in different areas of our work

Format

10:30 AM - 2:30 PM ET, Online via Zoom

This workshop will be presented in Zoom and will both provide content and allow for breakout practice opportunities. One 30-minute break is built in. Participants will be provided with a short workbook of Inquiry Activities they can use to further practice their question-asking skills beyond the workshop. 

Instructor

Lindsey Godwin

Dr. Lindsey Godwin is the Robert P. Stiller Endowed Chair of Management at the Robert P. Stiller School of Business and the Academic Director of the Cooperrider Center for Appreciative Inquiry at Champlain College. She has facilitated Appreciative Inquiry processes with organizations around the world, including Hershey, Ben & Jerry’s, the city of Tampa, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, the Vermont Federal Executive Association, World Vision, the Houston Independent School District, the California Teachers Association, Imagine Nepal, the United Nations, the American Society of Association Executives, and the Leahy Center for Lake Champlain.

Questions?

Please contact the Cooperrider Center at appreciativeinquiry@champlain.edu