Why?

My almost-three-year old niece, like most kids her age, asks "why" a lot. And while this can get a bit tiresome, one recurring thing in leadership trainings I've attended is understanding the why.

At Willowcreek's Global Leadership Summit, one speaker told an anecdote about two kids fighting over an orange. Their mother stepped in, cut the orange in half, and gave them each half. The first child peeled it, threw away the peel, and ate the orange. The second child peeled it, threw away the orange, and used the peel for something she was baking. 

It's situations like that where we often tend to make assumptions. But in such a case, asking why rather than making an assumption would've given both kids the full part of the orange they wanted, and nothing would've gone to waste.

A few weeks ago I woke up in the night to the sound of Peanut whining on the dresser. She has a little stool she uses to jump up there so she can look out the window. Assuming she was whining at something outside, I told her to come back to bed. She stayed where she was and kept whining, and again I told her to come back to bed. This exchange continued for a while until finally I realized she wasn't whining at something outside - she was whining because it was too dark for her to find her stool to jump back down. The very thing I was telling her to do was the thing she was whining about being unable to do.

It was a great reminder to me that as I seek to be a strong leader, I need to avoid assumptions and ask "why" almost as liberally as my niece. If someone complains that they are unhappy with an assignment, I need to ask why not just once, but keep digging until I understand what lies below the surface.