Better Leadership Starts With Better Questions
- Jul 30
- 8 min read
Leadership is often associated with certainty.
People expect managers to have answers, solve problems quickly and give the team clear direction.
Those responsibilities matter, but strong leadership is not only demonstrated by the answers someone provides.
It is also revealed by the questions they are willing to ask.
The most valuable leadership questions are rarely comfortable. They challenge assumptions, expose blind spots and require managers to consider how their behaviour affects the people around them.
In an optical practice, this level of reflection matters.
A Practice Manager may be responsible for patient experience, commercial performance, staffing, diary efficiency and professional standards at the same time. An experienced Optometrist may provide informal clinical leadership. A Dispensing Optician may guide colleagues without holding a formal management title.
Whatever the role, leadership improves when people stop asking only how to get more from the team and begin asking what the team needs from them.
What Is It Really Like to Work for You?
This may be one of the most revealing questions any leader can ask.
Not:
“What do I believe my management style is?”
But:
“What does my management style feel like to the people experiencing it?”
There can be a significant difference between intention and impact.
A manager may believe they are maintaining high standards while the team experiences constant criticism.
They may believe they are being involved while colleagues experience micromanagement.
They may believe they are approachable while team members carefully avoid raising difficult issues.
Consider how people are likely to feel when working with you.
Do they feel trusted?
Do they understand what is expected?
Can they admit uncertainty?
Are they comfortable challenging an idea?
Do they receive recognition as well as correction?
Leadership is not defined only by what you intend to create. It is also defined by the environment your behaviour creates in practice.
Are You Managing People or Controlling Them?
Many managers say they want employees to take greater initiative.
However, initiative cannot develop in an environment where every decision requires approval.
If team members are frequently corrected for making reasonable choices, they will eventually stop making them.
If every problem returns to the manager, the manager may conclude that the team lacks capability.
The real issue may be that nobody has been given enough authority to develop that capability.
Empowerment requires clarity.
People need to understand:
Which decisions they can make independently.
When they should escalate an issue.
What outcome they are responsible for.
Which standards must always be maintained.
What support is available when they are unsure.
This does not mean removing oversight.
It means creating enough structure for people to act confidently without feeling watched at every stage.
Do People Feel Safe Enough to Tell You the Truth?
Leaders often say they welcome feedback.
The more important question is how they respond when feedback arrives.
A team member may raise concerns about clinic pressure, communication, staffing or inconsistent expectations.
If the manager becomes defensive, dismisses the issue or explains why the employee is mistaken, the conversation teaches the team something.
It teaches them that honesty carries risk.
The same happens when feedback leads to subtle consequences, such as being excluded from decisions or treated differently afterwards.
Psychological safety is not created by telling people that the door is always open.
It is created by responding constructively when someone walks through it.
A useful response might be:
“Thank you for raising this. I want to understand it properly. Can you give me an example?”
You do not need to agree with every piece of feedback.
You do need to show that it can be discussed without punishment.
Is Your Feedback Helping People Improve?
Some managers believe that pointing out errors is the same as developing performance.
It is not.
Feedback becomes useful when the person understands:
What needs to change.
Why it matters.
What good performance looks like.
What action they should take.
What support is available.
When progress will be reviewed.
Telling an Optical Assistant that they need to be “more confident” is too vague.
A more useful conversation might focus on greeting patients clearly, asking better discovery questions or explaining frame options with greater structure.
Telling a clinician to “manage time better” is unlikely to create improvement without exploring appointment complexity, record keeping, interruptions and clinic flow.
Good feedback is specific enough to act upon.
It should create direction rather than simply discomfort.
Which Difficult Conversation Are You Avoiding?
Most managers know when a conversation is overdue.
It may involve:
Repeated lateness.
Poor patient communication.
Unhelpful behaviour.
Inconsistent standards.
Tension between colleagues.
Resistance to change.
Missed responsibilities.
Declining performance.
Avoiding the discussion may feel easier in the moment.
Over time, however, the issue usually becomes harder to resolve.
Other team members notice what is being tolerated. They may become frustrated when expectations appear uneven or when one person's behaviour affects everyone else.
What a leader consistently overlooks can become part of the practice culture.
Difficult conversations should be fair, factual and timely.
The aim is not confrontation.
It is clarity.
Are You Modelling the Culture You Expect?
Leaders communicate standards through behaviour long before they put them into words.
A manager who talks about work-life balance but sends non-urgent messages late every evening creates one message.
A manager who promotes calm patient care while visibly panicking during busy clinics creates another.
A leader who asks for accountability but refuses to acknowledge their own mistakes weakens trust.
Teams observe:
How leaders respond under pressure.
How they speak about colleagues.
Whether they take breaks.
Whether they admit errors.
How they treat people with less authority.
Whether they keep commitments.
Whether their standards apply consistently.
Culture develops through repeated examples.
A leader's behaviour gives other people permission to behave in similar ways.
What Do You Need to Improve as a Leader?
Leadership development should not end when someone receives a management title.
In many cases, that is where the most important learning begins.
A manager may need to improve delegation.
Another may need to become more direct.
Someone else may need to listen more carefully, manage conflict earlier or stop solving every problem personally.
Useful questions include:
Where does my team need more clarity from me?
Which conversations do I make unnecessarily difficult?
When am I most likely to become reactive?
Do I recognise contribution consistently?
Am I developing people or simply allocating work?
What leadership behaviour would have the greatest impact if I improved it?
Self-awareness is not a one-time exercise.
It is a regular part of responsible leadership.
Ask the Team What They Think
One of the simplest ways to develop people is to ask for their view before giving your own.
Try:
“What do you think we should do?”
This encourages team members to analyse situations rather than waiting for instructions.
It also gives leaders useful information about how people think.
An Optical Assistant may have a practical solution to a patient-flow problem.
A Dispensing Optician may identify why a particular recommendation process is creating confusion.
A receptionist may understand a diary issue more clearly than someone reviewing it from a distance.
The people closest to a process often see problems and opportunities that leaders miss.
Asking for their perspective does not remove management responsibility.
It improves the quality of the decision.
Ask What Support Looks Like to Them
Support is not the same for everyone.
One employee may need clearer instructions.
Another may need more independence.
A newly qualified Optometrist may value regular case discussions.
An experienced team member may need greater responsibility rather than additional supervision.
A colleague returning from absence may need temporary adjustments.
Ask:
“What would help you perform at your best?”
The answer may involve:
Training.
Better information.
More time.
Clearer priorities.
Additional resources.
More frequent feedback.
Fewer interruptions.
Greater autonomy.
Performance problems are not always caused by lack of effort.
Sometimes people are trying to succeed without the conditions required to do so.
Ask About Recent Success
Leadership conversations often focus heavily on problems.
Targets, complaints, delays and underperformance receive attention because they require action.
Positive contribution can become almost invisible.
Ask team members:
“What has gone particularly well recently?”
This question helps leaders recognise effort, reinforce effective behaviour and identify strengths that could be used elsewhere.
A colleague may have handled a nervous patient exceptionally well.
Someone may have improved the handover between clinical and dispensing teams.
A team member may have helped reduce delays or supported a new starter.
Recognition should be specific.
Rather than saying, “Good work,” explain what the person did and why it mattered.
That makes the recognition more credible and helps repeat the behaviour.
Ask What Is Getting in the Way
When performance falls below expectations, managers often move immediately towards pressure.
A better starting point may be:
“What is making this difficult?”
The answer could reveal:
Conflicting priorities.
Inadequate training.
Unclear ownership.
Poor systems.
Staffing shortages.
Equipment issues.
Lack of confidence.
Misunderstood expectations.
This does not mean accepting excuses.
It means diagnosing the situation properly before deciding how to respond.
A leader who treats every problem as an attitude issue will miss many practical causes of underperformance.
Ask What the Team Could Improve Together
Some challenges do not belong to one person.
They are team issues.
Communication may be inconsistent.
Handover processes may be unclear.
People may work well within their own roles but poorly across the wider patient journey.
Ask:
“What could we improve as a team?”
This creates shared ownership.
The discussion might identify ways to:
Improve morning briefings.
Reduce diary disruption.
Strengthen clinical handovers.
Share workload more fairly.
Clarify responsibilities.
Improve patient communication.
Respond to complaints more consistently.
Collective reflection can be more effective than repeatedly issuing top-down instructions.
Ask What They Would Change
One of the most useful questions a leader can ask is:
“If you could improve one thing about the practice, what would it be?”
The answers may be uncomfortable.
They may also be highly valuable.
Employees experience the daily reality of systems, policies and patient interactions.
They know which processes create unnecessary work.
They know where communication repeatedly fails.
They know which frustrations patients mention.
They may also have ideas that have never been invited.
Not every suggestion will be practical.
The purpose is not to promise that every idea will be implemented.
It is to make sure useful insight is not lost simply because it comes from outside management.
Ask for Feedback on Your Own Leadership
The question that often requires the most courage is:
“What could I do differently to support you better?”
This changes the nature of the conversation.
It shows that development is not expected only from employees.
For this question to work, the leader must be prepared to listen without immediately explaining or defending their behaviour.
You may need to ask follow-up questions.
You may need time to reflect.
You may decide that some feedback is based on incomplete information.
Even then, the employee's experience remains worth understanding.
Trust deepens when people see that leadership accountability works in both directions.
Do Not Ask Questions You Have No Intention of Hearing
Leadership questions should not become a performance.
If managers ask for ideas but always dismiss them, people will stop contributing.
If they request feedback but react badly, honesty will disappear.
If they ask what support is needed but never act, the question becomes frustrating rather than encouraging.
Leaders do not need to agree to every request.
They should explain what will happen next.
For example:
“I understand why that would help. We cannot make that change immediately, but I will review the rota structure before next month.”
Closing the loop shows that the contribution was taken seriously.
Better Questions Create Better Practice Cultures
Optical practices perform well when people understand what is expected, feel able to contribute and trust that concerns will be handled fairly.
Better leadership questions support all three.
They reveal information that performance reports may miss.
They help managers identify problems earlier.
They encourage initiative.
They create opportunities for recognition, development and shared improvement.
Most importantly, they move leadership away from control and towards responsibility.
At Inspired Recruitment Group, we work with optical professionals and employers across the UK, and leadership quality is often one of the strongest influences on recruitment, retention and long-term performance. People are more likely to remain in practices where they feel trusted, supported and able to speak honestly. Employers also benefit when managers are willing to reflect on their own impact rather than assuming every team challenge begins with someone else.
Leadership is not about being the person with every answer.
It is about creating an environment where the right questions can be asked, the truth can be heard and people can improve together.
The question is not simply:
“How can I get more from my team?”
It is:
“What kind of leader does this team need me to become?”
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