3.1 Questions for groups, questions for organisations
It is possible to distinguish between two types of leadership questions.
The first type is aimed at smaller groups of people. Group questions are asked to enhance collective leadership practice. As well as generating insight into issues, such questions are meant to nurture the development, agency and self-confidence of others. By asking nurturing questions of others, you are helping them grow. You are also demonstrating that you value them as an important source of knowledge. Stretch questions in a group context are meant, therefore, to nurture individual and group growth.
Such questions should not make people feel isolated and foolish. Rather, you need to create an environment where questioning feels like an interesting, playful and collective intellectual challenge. Because it is a collective activity, the person being asked the question should feel comfortable stating that they do not understand, asking for clarification – or even firing a question straight back if they do not feel that they are well positioned to answer it, or think that it is the questioner who should step up.
The second type of leadership questions is aimed at making whole organisations stretch. Organisation-focused questions can be specific, aimed at radically challenging the way in which an organisation works and what it values – e.g. highlighting the disparity between its espoused values and actions regarding racial equity. Such questions can be aimed at senior executives, but also at anyone who has the power to influence a whole organisation. Similarly, you could think even more expansively in terms of influencing whole sectors or even geographical regions.
Organisation-focused questions can be further subdivided into those asked internally within organisations and those asked from outside. With internal questions, you are trying to change things from within a system, as an insider who cares about the future sustainability, viability and values of an organisation. Therefore, you could use your insider status to pose challenging questions within formal meetings or in more private conversations – depending on your reading of the politics.
Organisation-focused questions can also be posed from outside. Such questioning can come in many guises, some more direct and confrontational than others. Pressure groups and trade unions can use public forms of dissent to pose questions to organisations they believe are failing to fulfil their social and ethical obligations, using direct forms of protest to make themselves heard (Barthold et al., 2022). Social media campaigns can develop wider interest and momentum when a challenging question is being asked of an organisation. At other times, stretch questions outside organisations can be posed by allies or even collaborators – and of course, trade unions and pressure groups can be allies and collaborators of employing organisations.
Both forms of organisation-focused questioning have their merits for furthering racial equity and justice. Organisations need to be vociferously and vigorously confronted when they fail to deliver – and sometimes people who aren’t employed by an organisation can play an important role in embarrassing it into action. Yet we also need people to work patiently within organisations, doing the work of helping them see how they can stretch further in the direction of racial equity and justice.