58 - Questions are the Answer with Hal Gregersen Artwork

Nordic Leaders

In Fail Smart - Lessons in Leadership and Life, our guests on the Nordic Leaders Podcast open up about themselves with the courage to talk about setbacks: the stuff that didn't quite work out how they intended, but how they came back stronger and wiser. We've got all the best elements of the Nordic leaders podcast still there, but there's a few extra questions about the ups and downs of life. Join us, David, Nick, and Stefano as we explore failing smart with our hyper successful guests - and hey, five star ratings are okay if you like what you hear!

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Nordic Leaders

58 - Questions are the Answer with Hal Gregersen

December 12, 2022 • GMV Media

You’ve probably heard of Hal Gregersen… A global name in leadership and academia.

An author and senior lecturer in leadership and innovation at MIT's Sloan School of Management, a former executive director of the MIT Leadership Center, and ranked in the Thinkers50 global ranking of management thinkers in 2021.

His latest book, Questions Are the Answer: A Breakthrough Approach to Your Most Vexing Problems at Work and in Life is based on 200+ interviews with catalytic questioners such as Elon Musk and Orit Gadiesh.

Hal begins by talking about his lifelong passion of photography and a significant moment of failure with the camera.

Hal knows about questions! And in this episode we find out what are the most important questions in our lives and how to create a culture of fearless inquiry, including:

The power of Inquisitive Creativity
Fearless Questions and Hal’s work with the no 1 ranked Thinkers 50 Amy Edmondson, pioneer and champion of psychological safety
The Question Burst Process – a game-changing tool to help us tackle our own most challenging projects and dilemmas.
What questions give you energy what questions take it away, key stone and shadow questions
Many leaders are only asking, ‘What do we do?’ ‘How do we do it?’ They might be missing something
‘Call-to-Action' questions and the power of 'What if' questions.

Hal gets us thinking about our relationship with questions, for example the role of authority figures in our childhood (at home, school, first job) and how they responded to our tough, challenging questions, and how that shapes us; right through to how we use questions in the workplace.

We hope you enjoy this warm and engaging conversation as much as we did: please consider smiling, following us, and perhaps a 5 star rating! 🙂