Megan Hyatt Miller:
As my husband, Joel, calls it, like the doom loop or the death spiral.

Michael Hyatt:
And this is just hypothetical, right?

Megan Hyatt Miller:
This is totally hypothetical. No, it’s unfortunately not hypothetical. It happens.

Michael Hyatt:
Hi, I’m Michael Hyatt.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
And I’m Megan Hyatt Miller.

Michael Hyatt:
And this is Lead to Win, our weekly podcast to help you win at work and succeed at life. And this week we’re going to be talking about questions that’ll transform your leadership. Now, here’s the interesting thing, Megan, about this topic. I used to think for most of my career that it wasn’t the questions that were important but the answers. And I thought if I was going to be effective as the leader, I had to have more and better answers until I discovered that that wasn’t really the point.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Well this is kind of good news, right?

Michael Hyatt:
It is.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
I mean, one of the most horrifying parts about leadership is when you think that you’re supposed to have all the answers and you realize you don’t have them, and you’re about ready to walk off the field because you think, “Oh my gosh, they think I know everything. And I don’t.” The best thing is to realize that’s actually not what’s necessary. It’s really about, can you lead great conversations? Can you have great questions so that ultimately you can connect with the right answers? But you don’t have to be the source of all the right answers. Whew, right?

Michael Hyatt:
Such a relief.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Such a relief.

Michael Hyatt:
The truth is, the most powerful person as a leader is the person with the best questions.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
I listened this morning while I was working out to Ray Dalio’s book called Principles, which is excellent. It’s so good. But he’s talking about this very thing in that book and just how, when you can adopt a position of humility and be really obsessed with the idea of discovering the truth about yourself, about other people, about how the world works, that that is ultimately the greatest position of power, rather than coming in and feeling threatened and feeling like you’ve got to know everything or whatever. And I was inspired by that. I thought what a great perspective.

Michael Hyatt:
I’ve had the privilege of being around some people that were amazing leaders, people that were authors that I worked with back when I was in the publishing world, but to a person what made them so amazing was they just ask great thought provoking questions that challenged me, made me go deep, and made us think about those issues that were really important. And so I aspire to be that kind of leader. And I think that the whole premise of the episode we’re doing now is that we wanted to give you kind of a starter kit, a little bit of a tool kit of questions that we found particularly helpful that we keep coming back to again and again. This is not an exhaustive list, but see, these are some of the best questions that we’ve had to ask of us. And we in turn keep using these over and over again because they always yield a positive result. Let’s start with this first question, which is, what does this make possible? So you want to talk about this?

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Yeah. I’m laughing because this is a question that my mom asked when we were growing up and used to make me so mad.

Michael Hyatt:
I know.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Oh my gosh. So just, for a little context, I’m an Enneagram four. I like to talk about my feelings. I’m very comfortable talking about the sad feelings or the angry feelings, whatever, the less pleasant feelings, and she’s an Enneagram nine. And so she doesn’t talk about that as readily. And I always felt like she was trying to kind of reframe my feelings. And I’m like, “Let me have my sad feelings.” In reality, I was probably a melodramatic 13-year-old and nearly insufferable back then. But what I have come to love later in my life as an adult is that there’s what happens to you and then there’s the meaning that you give it.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
And I really see this distinction between people who see life like things happen to them and they’re sort of in a powerless victim position. And then there are people who certainly can be honest about things that are bad, or difficult, or challenging, but have a way of looking at things in such a way that they can see the value of that situation and learn from it, and basically take anything and use it for their good. And I think this question gets at that, what does this make possible? There are few things that you encounter that don’t have some redemptive value in them, or can’t ultimately be for your benefit, if you have the eyes to see.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Now, caveat, this is not a question you want to ask when someone’s just gone through a tragedy on the worst day of their life, when they’re really feeling down, like you have to use some wisdom. This is kind of like an advanced tool, needs to be used by professionals. You have to exercise some wisdom may make sure you use it at the right time, but when people are on the other side of something difficult happening, I think most of us would say the hardest moments of our lives have usually been the ones that ultimately shaped us the most positively. They’re the place where we learned most of our lessons. They’re the place where our character grew, where we were able to develop a thing that we need and we discovered later we were going to need to succeed. And so that’s what this question really gets to.

Michael Hyatt:
Yeah. So an example of this is many moons ago back, maybe about 2003 or so, I fell down the steps in my house on the way to work, broke my ankle. Ended up having to have surgery, was in the hospital for several days and then got out and I had to remain off this foot for several days while it began to heal. And so that’s when I started to write a blog. Well, if I hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t be where I’m at today because it truly… our company began with a blog. It was out of that blog that all the content began to form and to take shape and has become what we’ve built an entire business around. And now we have, I don’t know, 60 some odd people. And I feel like doing some amazing work, but if I hadn’t fallen down the stairs and if you had come to me, if Gail had come to me on the day that that happened or moments after it happened, said, “Look, I know you’re in abject pain. You’re probably going to have to have surgery, but think what’s this going to make possible?” That would not be an appropriate timing situation, but still it did make a lot possible.

Michael Hyatt:
And I think that if we can take that view of the hard things, that probably something here is working for us, and I love Tony Robbins says it this way. If you consider things and you alluded to it, Megan, what if things were not happening to us, but they were happening for us? Or to put it in a faith context, “God works all things together for good that even the most difficult things can be valuable, can be redeemed.” And I love that. And it’s a great question to ask, and especially as we lead our teams.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Well, I think one of the things that I see over and over with younger leaders is that when they encounter constraints, they get frustrated. They don’t like it. They don’t like this deadline. They don’t like that they don’t get to hire as many people as they want to hire. They don’t like that they have to work with this person that they don’t like, that kind of stuff, just like the ordinary life stuff and the stuff that comes up when you’re really developing your leadership and trying to find your way. And in reality, every single one of those situations, like what you know when you’re a little further down the road is that you need all those situations. Those are the things that are going to hone your leadership so that you’re able to show up with wisdom and self-awareness and resiliency, and all those things. And so, I love this question as a leadership development tool, because what you want is for your leaders or for the people that report to you to start seeing obstacles, constraints, things like that as opportunities.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
All right, so the next question is, what about my leadership led to these results? I have a love/hate relationship with this question too. Maybe this is going to be a theme for this podcast, but this is a little bit of a zinger and also one you got to be careful not to ask too soon or at the wrong moment. In a way, I think this is kind of a brave conversation or a brave question, because you’re allowing yourself to be exposed in the asking of this question, either for other people to answer it or for you to answer it about yourself. You’re going to admit your weakness and you’re going to admit your fault. But I think what’s great about it is that that choice is a very powerful choice all by itself.

Michael Hyatt:
It is. And I think the thing that I like about this question is that it presumes that there’s a correlation between my leadership and the outcomes that I’m seeing, which by the way, if that’s not true, why do we need you as a leader? Why do we need me as a leader?

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Right.

Michael Hyatt:
Right? If I’m not affecting the outcomes, but I want to start by saying that there’s a positive part of this too. And we don’t often use this question, or people that are first introduced to this question, usually see it in a negative light and only use it in a negative context. But when you experience a big win as a leader, then that’s the time to ask the question, what was it about your leadership that led to this result? Now on the day that we’re recording this, Megan, you and I, with our families, watched the Kansas City Chiefs play the Buffalo Bills.

Michael Hyatt:
And first of all, it may be the most amazing football game I’ve ever seen in my life. But I think they scored like 25 points between the two teams in the final couple of minutes of the game. And it was just phenomenal, but there was some leadership on Andy Reid’s part, on the quarterbacks of both teams’ part, and those results didn’t get has happened because it was luck or by accident. No, they caused that to happen. And so I think that when we ask this question, we need to ask it also when people win so that they don’t forget what it was about their leadership that led to that win.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
I think this is an important point. When I was introduced to this question, and then when I used this earlier in my leadership journey, I kind of used it in a way that almost weaponized it against myself. That’s sort of how I’m wired anyway. I pretty easily fall on the sword, and sometimes that’s good. And certainly there’s a part of that, that’s necessary in leadership, but I think sometimes I used it in a way that wasn’t helpful. I have since learned to use it also for the times when there are wins, and to get more comfortable with owning my positive contribution from a leadership perspective to results, because I want to repeat those things. And I want the people who report to me, my executive team, I want them to have as much self-awareness about what they do right as what they do wrong. And because I care about the results. I want them to do more of that stuff.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
And if they bring it to their conscious awareness and determine, “Hey, there’s this recipe in the mix, I always do this.” Or, “Every time I do this, something good happens.” Well, let’s call that out so that you become aware of it and we can do more of it. So I think this is a really important question to use in both directions. I will tell you from my experience with my direct reports, they find it, and I would say, I find it harder to answer about myself when it’s in the positive.

Michael Hyatt:
Yes.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
It makes us uncomfortable unless you’re a narcissist probably, but for most of us, this is an uncomfortable experience especially publicly or with your peers, which I have them doing on a pretty regular basis with each other, not with their teams, because I kind of want that to be more about what the teams did right, but with each other, to call out what they have done well, and it’s a challenge. That’s its own leadership challenge.

Michael Hyatt:
I usually have to ask this question twice when it’s a positive and with when it’s with somebody who’s not familiar with it, because the first time they will deflect to the team, which is great. That’s a sign of humility and frankly, self-awareness that they couldn’t do it on their own. And so then I had to circle back and say, “Okay, I get that. I get that your team did an amazing job, but what was it about your leadership in your leadership of the team that led to this result?” So you kind of have to reframe it a little bit, but there is a negative part of it. We borrowed this question from my former executive coach, Ilene Muething, and she’s coached you as well, Megan, and she’s a genius now retired. But she said to me one time, this was back during the great recession when we had missed our budget and missed it by a pretty wide margin.

Michael Hyatt:
And she had just been in 30 days before to meet with me. And I assured her that we were going to make the budget, that I was uber confident that it was going to happen. And so then she comes in a month later and she says, “Well, how did last month go?” Expected a positive report. And I said, “Man, we missed our budget.” And she said, “Why?” And so I began to blame the economy, my industry, even some of the people on my team. And she was having none of it. She listened and she said, “Okay, well let me ask you a hard question. I get all that, but what was it about your leadership that led to these results?” Which frankly made me angry because I thought, “You’re not hearing me. I just gave you a litany of why this happened.” I didn’t say this out loud, but I just gave you a litany of why this happened.

Michael Hyatt:
So what are you asking? What do you mean my leadership?” And so I made another pass at trying to give her my reasons. And she said, “No, I don’t think you understand. I’m asking what was it about your leadership?” But I still didn’t get it. So she said, “Okay, if you could go back 30 days, knowing what you know now, is there anything you would’ve done differently?” And I was like, “Of course.” She said, “Like what?” And I said, “Well, I would’ve met with the sales team early on to make sure that they were on track at the beginning of the month so that I didn’t suddenly discover to my surprise at the end of the month that they were off track.”

Michael Hyatt:
“Okay, great. What else would you have done differently?”

Michael Hyatt:
“I think I would’ve gotten on that call to Walmart so that I could be present and lend my weight to the sales presentation and I think we would’ve sold them more stuff.”

Michael Hyatt:
“Okay, great. What else?” So I ticked off several things. She said, “Okay, here’s what I hear you saying. It is about your leadership, because if you had led in a different way, there would’ve been a different outcome.” And man, I just thought, “I walked right into that.” She was exactly right, and it’s always about our leadership. And I think as leaders, we have to take responsibility, we have to own the outcome. And this can be probably unhealthy or taken to an unhealthy level, but this is a great place to start. Is there anything that I would’ve done or could have done differently to lead to a different outcome? That’s an enormously healthy question to ask.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Well, it’s also empowering, because when you’ve experienced results that you don’t like, and inevitably I think most of us feel like, oh, that just kind of happened. And you feel a little dizzy by the outcome. It helps you know how you won’t repeat it again. And it’s really nice to again, have that recipe of this is what I would do differently if I could go back and do a replay. I actually did have more agency than I realized. I just maybe didn’t make all the right decisions or missed some things. And I see those now, which gives me confidence on the backside of a failure.

Michael Hyatt:
Well, this is a good question to ask as a follow up. And this is one I also learned from Ilene. She didn’t say to me, “What did you do wrong?”

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Yeah.

Michael Hyatt:
Because that’s tough for anybody to swallow.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Right.

Michael Hyatt:
She said instead, and I often heard her say this to me, “What was missing?” That’s a much less in your face kind of way to ask and was missing, was all those things I listed like meeting with the sales team and going on the call with Walmart and all those different kinds of things. But the thing that this question has done for me is it transformed me from being a victim to being a victor, because as long as the problem was the economy, or the industry, or people on my team, I couldn’t do anything about that. It was outside of me. But once I realized that it was about my leadership, oh, I could fix that. I have pretty much a hundred percent control of me. And I’ve got pretty much no percent control of anything else, maybe a little influence, but I don’t have control of those other things. So now all of a sudden, even though it felt threatening and it felt vulnerable, it was enormously liberating once I realized that, oh, it was the way I led. Well, I can fix that.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Okay. Another question that we really like is, what fear am I reacting to?

Michael Hyatt:
Okay. Say more about this one, because this is one that I think you came up with that you use, but I haven’t used this a lot, but I can immediately see the relevance of it.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Yeah. Well, I like this question for times when you find yourself having a disproportionate reaction to something. So for example, I am a person who can pretty easily get triggered by shame.

Michael Hyatt:
Me too.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
It’s just kind of always right there just in the background. And if I manage to snag my toe on the trip wire, my reaction is not like a little trip. It’s like a bigger reaction. And for example, if I were in a meeting and I were giving a financial presentation and I used a financial term that should be something I should know, incorrectly, and I just misspoke or whatever, but I kind of got flustered and fell over myself. And then I’m like in this conversation in my head about how people don’t think I know anything, and I probably should have gotten my MBA and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
You know what I mean? It just becomes this, as my husband Joel calls it, the doom lip or the death spiral.

Michael Hyatt:
And this is just hypothetical, right?

Megan Hyatt Miller:
This is totally hypothetical. No, it’s unfortunately not hypothetical. It happens. And I become very familiar with this, and what I know now is that usually what I’m afraid of is being humiliated. That for me is very often in the background. Sometimes I will go to the place of, I’m afraid that I’ve made this bad decision and then this is going to happen, and this is going to happen, and this is going to happen pretty soon. I’m afraid that I’m going to be homeless under an overpass. That’s where I’ve gotten to. But again it’s like I’m catastrophizing either emotionally or in some kind of futuristic state that is just kind of ridiculous compared to the catalyst that caused the whole thing. And so it helps because if I find myself angrier at someone and seems reasonable, or more irritated than I should be about something or something like that, usually there’s something else going on. And this is a self-awareness question as a leader.

Michael Hyatt:
This is really good. And I also know where you got it from, right? So, I have this same challenge and I’ve never quite framed it like you’ve put it, but this is exactly right. When I get embarrassed, then the next things that come out of my mouth if I’m not careful are going to be things that I have to apologize for and I’m going to regret. And I think by and large, I’ve learned to at least slow that down some, but it’s still always right there under the surface where I kind of go there. It’s that shame thing that you said, but this is a great question. And I think probably the value of it is it can keep you from overreacting and doing some damage. I think one of the things that happens with leaders that we have to be aware of, is that we have an outsized impact that’s disproportional to what we think.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Yeah.

Michael Hyatt:
Right, so we might think or our people may say, “Well man, he was yelling at everybody in the room,” and we think, “Well, my intensity was a little stronger, but I wasn’t yelling,” but they’ve amplified it. Or you may offer some constructive criticism. That’s what you think, and then the person goes home and tells their spouse that, “Man, she was really ripping on me. I couldn’t do anything about it.”

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Right or, “I’m probably going to fired tomorrow.”

Michael Hyatt:
Yeah, exactly.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Yeah.

Michael Hyatt:
So I think that as leaders, this is a great question for self-awareness so that we don’t do collateral damage and have an impact that we didn’t intend. We always leave awake.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Yeah, and I think it’s okay if you have fear come up, you will. By definition, as a leader, you’re out of your comfort zone, which means you’re going to get triggered all the time about all kinds of things. I don’t know if anybody’s told you that, that’s what we’ve signed up for, friends, and that’s okay. I think that’s why self-awareness matters so much. The question is, do you react from that place, make decisions, have interactions with people, or do you notice that, and then have a little conversation with yourself or have some other strategy that you use, that you don’t go immediately to taking action from those feelings that are disproportionate to the events that precipitated them?

Michael Hyatt:
Okay. So this next question, our last question is what’s working, what’s not? Which I guess is two questions. So this is a two for one, buy one get one free. But this is a question that we kind of have baked in to our after action review and to the Full Focus Planner. And it’s great whenever you complete an event, or a campaign, or a product launch, or anything else that’s significant, what’s working, what’s not? Here’s the problem, in the business world, probably every world, even nonprofit world, we often go from one thing to the next, without being appropriately reflective and evaluating what worked and what didn’t. And this is the way that you can incrementally improve over time. If you don’t do this, then you’re kind of destined to repeat the same mistakes and nothing really ever gets better. It’s just kind of the same mistakes, the same problems, different venue.

Michael Hyatt:
But if you ask this question, you can improve significantly and this could even work in your personal life. So here’s a funny story of how I’ve used this in my personal life. So recently, Megan, as you know, I took your sister, her husband, and their four kids, mom and I took them to Disney World. And we had an amazing, amazing week. And this was kind of an opportunity for Disney World to get redeemed in my mind, because I had a pretty bad experience there about 30 some odd years ago. But we went and we had an amazing time and I just have been going on and on about it. So one of the things I did on the way home is, this was on the plane, I started an after action review on Disney World and I know some of you’re laughing and some of you’re going, “Oh my gosh, the guy has no boundaries on work and personal life.”

Michael Hyatt:
But I thought this was an amazing experience, but it could have been better. There are some things we could do to make it better. And the things that we did that worked well, I don’t want to not do those next time. I want to make sure that those are captured so that we do those again. So I did the after action review and it’s actually four questions. It’s what do we want to keep doing? What do we want to improve? What do we want to stop doing? What do we want to start doing? So, I did that, and then I invited Mindy, your sister, Nathan, her husband, and mom into the conversation so that they could fill it out too. And now we have a wonderful after action review. And I know that as amazing as Disney World was this time, it’s going to be even bigger and better next time.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
That’s awesome. I love that you kind of put all those thoughts together in one place. And the application for this, in a leadership context, is this is a great thing to do with your team. This is certainly something you can do individually. I mean you can ask what’s working, what’s not, or do a full after action review on your own. But I find it’s really powerful to do with a group of people and it can be as few as three or four people and it can be in a meeting with 10 people. I have a meeting next week, I think, that is a 2021 budget process after action review, because we used a new process for budgeting that we want to evaluate this year and fine tune. Some things worked really, really well, other things need to be tweaked. On the whole, it was a great improvement, but there are some things that we want to capture for next year.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
And so that’s going to be something we’re going to do with the executive team and a couple of our financial leaders so that we can capture our thinking now, because one of the realities is that we forget stuff. So you come back from Disney World or you finish your budget for the new year and you just kind of get on with it. And by the time a year later comes around and you got to do it again, you’ve forgotten the learnings and you’re really set up to just repeat the same mistakes if you’re not careful, because the same thinking that got you to make all those decisions in the first place is probably going to be there again next year. So I like it because it is really the antidote to forgetting to continuously improve.

Michael Hyatt:
These are two good questions also to ask and in this order, when you have something really difficult, when there’s been a breakdown or a failure.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Yeah.

Michael Hyatt:
But so that you can contextualize it. So people don’t think that, “Oh my gosh, the world’s coming to an end.”

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Right.

Michael Hyatt:
But to say, “Okay, before we talk about this hard thing, we need to talk about, what’s working in the business. Let’s just catalog the wins, catalog all the things that are going well, because we’re going to talk about one thing. It’s kind of authority problem. It’s not going so well, but we got to keep it in perspective.”

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Yep.

Michael Hyatt:
And when you lose perspective is when you make stupid decisions. So it’s a great perspective kind of setting pair of questions.

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Yeah, I love this question. It’s excellent.

Michael Hyatt:
Well, I think that’s about it. Megan, do you have any final thoughts?

Megan Hyatt Miller:
Well, again, just good news. You don’t have to have all the answers. If you know smart people and hopefully some of those smart people work with you or for you, then all you have to do is become a really skilled question asker, and you will end up with all the answers you need. And the best part is you don’t have to come up with them all by yourself.

Michael Hyatt:
It might be a good idea for those of you listening to this, that you create some kind of file. Maybe it’s an Evernote note or the Notion page, or it’s just your Full Focus Planner where you keep a list of questions that when you hear it, you go, “Ooh, that’s a good question.” And maybe some of these will make that into that list, but this is a good toolbox to have for you as you go forward. So guys, thanks for joining us. Megan, I’ve really enjoyed this conversation. We’ll look forward to being with you next time. Until then, Lead to Win.