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Introduction for this Week's Assignment #3

Advice Trap & Powerful Questions

Workshop Slides

PQ Deck

Hello BVisionRYs! 

Thank you for attending and participating in our workshop (Advice Trap & Powerful Questions); I enjoyed our learning time together! 

During this workshop we covered the following: 

  1. The advice trap
  2. The meaning of powerful questions
  3. How to flip any question to a powerful one
  4. Set the 7-coach chain challenge 

Now it is time for you to put what you learned into practice. Because remember, if you do not put what you learned in practice, your tools will rust!

The purpose of this Assignment: 

This assignment is designed to help you bridge the gap between theory and practice by embracing a growth mindset. This mindset is the core belief that you can achieve things and overcome challenges not by innate talent, but by continuously learning and developing new skills.

This assignment is designed to take the theoretical tools you learned today; the Advice Trap & flipping your questions to powerful ones, and apply them to a complex, real-world managerial conflict.

The purpose is to: 

1. Cultivate True Ownership and Self-Sufficiency

The Goal: Stop solving every problem for your team.

  • Empowerment: When you ask a PQ (e.g., "What does success look like for you here?"), you signal trust in the team member’s ability to find the solution.
  • Increase Ownership: Since they develop the path forward, they are inherently more committed to the execution and outcome, ensuring follow-through.
  • Save Your Brain: By putting the problem back on the owner, you free yourself, allowing you to focus on strategic work and preventing cognitive burnout.

2. Drive Creativity and Continuous Growth

The Goal: Move beyond obvious, routine solutions.

  • Promote Creativity: Leading questions limit the answer. Powerful Questions (e.g., "If resources weren't a constraint, how would you solve this?") force lateral thinking and innovation.
  • Accelerate Growth: The process of diagnosing the root cause and designing the solution (rather than receiving advice) is the fastest way to develop critical thinking skills in your team.
  • Focus on Their Domain: PQs help the employee look inward, addressing underlying issues and processes within their control, leading to sustainable improvements.

3. Build Trust and Maximize Time Efficiency

The Goal: Create a safe, high-velocity operating culture.

  • Saves Time (Long-Term): While it takes patience initially, coaching with PQs eliminates repeat questions and the need for constant oversight. The team learns to self-correct, dramatically reducing future supervision time.
  • Creates Trust: Moving away from "Why did this happen?" (the blame question) and toward "How will you prevent this from happening again?" builds psychological safety. Team members feel safe bringing problems to you early, knowing you will help them think, not just judge.

The process for completing this task:

This assignment is a direct application of what we covered in our workshop. The goal is to get your learning momentum going by focusing on practicing trust instead of giving advice and curiosity with intention and attention through asking powerful questions.  

For the next 5 days, focus on the following during all you one-on-ones, team check-ins, or conversations with all your stakeholders: 

  • When someone presents a problem or asks for help:

    • Do NOT offer a solution, a suggestion, or a specific step (e.g., "You should talk to product team").
    • Instead, pause, and ask a Powerful Question (starting with What, How, or Where).
  • The Pause is Sacred: After asking a Powerful Question, embrace the silence. The person needs time to access their own deep insights.

For your assignment, you only need to present one reflection by completing this table here. 

The work you will submit: 

Your submission for this third assignment will be in the same Google Sheet, where you will add a new tab call it PQ.

Instructions:

Add your interaction reflection to the table here; write down the advice you resisted giving, the powerful question you asked instead, the response of the person, what was different, what worked and what did not.

Final Review: Take a moment to review all fields to ensure they are complete. The sheet saves automatically.

Submit Your Work:

  • Click the "Share" button in the top right corner of your master Google Sheet.
  • Change the sharing setting from "Restricted" to "Anyone with the link."
  • Set the access to "Editor."
  • Click "Copy link" and paste it into the Lighthouse submission portal.

Looking forward to supporting you on your learning journey!