Bob Tiede has been on staff at Cru for 55 years. He wrote Leading with Questions, which reached number one in business communication on Amazon, and he has given away seven of his books as free ebooks to readers in more than 200 countries. His mission is helping leaders multiply their effectiveness by moving from let me tell you to let me ask you.

Bob opens with a confession. For most of his career he led as what he calls a benevolent dictator, deciding what needed doing and then telling people to do it, with a please and a thank you attached. A book he found in 2006 changed that, and he has been teaching leaders to ask ever since.

We also get into:

• Why people own what they answer, and try hard at what they are told
• The team in the canoe, and how many oars are in the water when only the boss is thinking
• The first answer people give you is a safe one, so keep asking until you reach the real one
• The eight-second rule, and what a leader loses by filling the silence after three
• Walt Disney's laundry, where turnover fell from 85 percent to 15 after leadership started asking
• The Navy captain who met all 300 of his sailors and took morale from worst to first
• Giving away every book, and the relationships that came back
• Why Jesus taught in stories and questions, and what that means for leading a team

Get Bob's free ebooks and his blog at leadingwithquestions.com.

Go build something Worth Working For!

Summer Craze Fowler has been a Chief Information Security Officer three times. She teaches cybersecurity at Carnegie Mellon, sits on a bank board, and wrote a children's book. Summer is one of the clearest thinkers on leadership I know.

She built her leadership on three things: inspire the team, stay positive, and stay consistent. Her own authenticity brings humor, so her teams know what they will get from her on a good day and on a bad one. That consistency is what earns the trust.

We also get into:

• Helping someone see that the management track may not be their best path, and finding the one that is
• Coaching by asking questions instead of handing down answers
• Setting a purpose architecture for a team, so the work has a reason behind the task list
• What happens to trust when the values on the wall and the way the place runs do not match
• Building trust with your peers in the C-suite, which takes more work than building it with your own team
• The employee who got six weeks to find a better fit, and why that conversation went well
• Summer's decision to leave a job she could have retired in

Find Summer on LinkedIn at Summer Craze Fowler.

Go build something Worth Working For!