In a recent Business Week article entitled Leadership: How to Ask the Right Questions, coaching expert Gary Cohen makes the statement:

Before getting into answer mode, ask “Whose decision is it?” If it is your decision to make (based upon your job description), ask questions that will help you arrive at the best answer. If it’s your co-worker’s decision to make, ask questions to help him or her–referencing his or her particular skills and tendencies.

What a great filter–Whose decision is it?–for a manager just about to open his/her mouth and EITHER tell an employee what to do to solve a problem OR get the staffer to come up with a solution.

Pretty well all managers who attend my leadership workshops, when faced with this decision in a case role-play about an employee’s poor performance, default to telling, not asking. It’s comical to watch it happen. Their advice streams out of the (person playing the) manager’s mouth before they realize what they have done. Then they look at me, smile, smack their forehead with the palm of their hand and say, “Man, I just did it again, didn’t I?”

This  is a huge lesson for managers to learn because they are working against synaptic pathways worn deep over years of giving their employees the answers.

So, the next time you sense you’re about to inform an employee of what he or she should do, swallow that golden piece of advice and ask yourself Gary’s question, “Whose decision is this, anyway?”