The Magic of Questions for Breakthrough Leadership
As a leader, perhaps your most important work is to help others develop empowering, confident, possibility-expanding beliefs. But, let me ask you a question. What is a belief? Before we define a belief, let’s ask another important question. Do you have any beliefs today that are different than beliefs that you held, say five years ago? Whenever I ask this question in my seminars virtually every hand goes up. It’s a simple, yet revealing way to demonstrate that one thing we know about beliefs is that they can change!
So now, let’s come back to the question, what is a belief? A very useful definition of a belief is that it is simply a feeling of certainty about what something is or means. The strength of a belief is determined by the quantity and quality of the reference experiences that support that belief.
In other words, if we envision a belief as a chair, the seat portion is the belief itself, while the four legs upon which the seat rests represent the references. If we add even more legs (references) the stool (belief) becomes even more solid. But, if we start sawing off the legs one by one, the belief can crumble.
So, a goal for every leader is to help the team and every individual strengthen their enabling beliefs while replacing the disabling ones. The key question is, how do you assist others (and yourself!) to change disabling beliefs? We’ll dig into that question in my next Breakthrough Blog!