The Stoic Edge for Managers - Episode 11 - The value of questioning as a manager

As managers, we often feel we have to have all the answers, especially when our team ask us for advice or guidance.

But what if we practiced the ideologies of one of history's famous philosophers? How would that work today?

In this episode, we examine how Socratic Questioning can provide us with chances to help our team grow and develop, without us having to know everything. 

Listen as we cover how Socrates has some very pertinent messages for us in today's business world

Thank you for listening. The Stoic Edge is available for all managers and others who feel it would be beneficial to them. Find out more about the company that produces them at www.mymanagementcoach.org

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

There is a man standing barefoot in the marketplace of ancient Athens. He has no scrolls, no academy, no title. He charges no fees and writes nothing down. And yet, 24 centuries later, we are still talking about him. Because this man changed the way human beings think forever. His name is Socrates. And he did it not by giving people answers, but by asking them questions. Welcome to this next episode of the Stoic Edge for Managers. Now, you might be wondering, this is a podcast about Stoicism. Why are we talking about Socrates? And it's a fair question. So let me answer it the way Socrates himself might have, with another question. Where do you think the Stoics learn to think? The answer is, quite directly, from him. Socrates was the philosophical grandfather of Stoicism. Marcus Aurelius quoted him. Epictetus revered him, calling him the model of how a wise person should live. The entire Stoic project, the relentless examination of one's own judgments, the pursuit of clear thinking under pressure, begins with the barefoot man in the marketplace. And the tool he gave us, the single most powerful thinking instrument ever devised, is something we now call Socratic questioning. Today, I want to put that tool directly into your hands.

SPEAKER_01 1:38

Let's begin with the idea that defined his entire life. Socrates said, the unexamined life is not worth living. Sit with that for a moment as a manager. Because most of us run our professional lives almost entirely unexamined. We make decisions on instinct, we react to pressure out of habit, we hold beliefs about our teams, our markets, our own capabilities, and we almost never stop to ask whether those beliefs are actually true. Socrates believed that the greatest danger in life was not ignorance, it was the illusion of knowledge, being certain about things you have never genuinely questioned. And if you think about the worst decisions you've ever witnessed in business, I'd wager most of them came not from people who didn't know enough, but from people who were absolutely certain they knew and never thought to ask. That is what Socratic questioning protects you from. It is a discipline of humility in action.

SPEAKER_00 2:35

So what actually is it? Let me bring you into the method. Socrates had a way of engaging people that became known as the Elenchus, a process of questioning that gently, persistently strips away assumption until what remains is the truth, or at least an honest acknowledgement of how much we don't yet know. He would never simply tell someone they were wrong. Instead, he would ask, and ask, and ask again. What do you mean by that? How do you know it's true? What are you assuming here? What would happen if the opposite were the case? What's the evidence? He famously claimed, I know that I know nothing. Now that sounds like false modesty from one of history's greatest minds, but it wasn't. It was a starting position, a deliberate posture of openness. Because the moment you believe you already have the answer, you stop thinking. And Socrates understood that the manager, or the citizen, or the leader, who keeps asking, will always outperform the one who has stopped.

SPEAKER_01 3:43

Let's make this real for you, because we promised you something you could use on Monday morning, not just admire from a distance. Picture a team meeting. A member of your team says, We can't hit that deadline. It's impossible. The reactive manager has two options, and both are poor. Option one, they accept it and lower expectations. Option two, they override it. Well, you'll have to find a way. One surrenders. The other bulldozes. Neither thinks. The Socratic manager does something different. They ask, what specifically makes it impossible? Which part of the work is the real bottleneck? What would have to be true for it to become possible? If we had to deliver it, what's the first thing we'd change? And here is what happens. Nine times out of ten, somewhere in that conversation, the team discovers that impossible actually meant difficult with the current plan. A constraint surfaces that nobody had named. A solution emerges, not from you, but from them, that no one had seen before. That is the magic of the method. Socratic questioning doesn't impose answers, it excavates them. And answers people discover for themselves are answers they actually own.

SPEAKER_00 5:13

There is a beautiful idea at the heart of this. Socrates described himself not as a teacher, but as a midwife. His mother was a midwife by trade, and he said his own role was much the same. He did not give birth to ideas himself, he simply helped other people give birth to the ideas already within them. Think about what that means for your leadership. So many managers believe their value lies in having all the answers, in being the smartest person in the room. But Socrates offers us a far more powerful and frankly far more sustainable model. Your value as a leader is not in having the answers, it is in drawing them out of the talented people around you. This is where Socrates and the Stoics shake hands. Epictetus, who admired Socrates above all others, taught that it is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows. The Socratic manager builds a culture where people never stop learning, because they are never allowed to settle into the comfortable certainty that kills good thinking.

SPEAKER_01 6:23

And there's one more application we don't want you to miss, perhaps the most important of all. The first person you should be questioning is yourself. Socrates turned the Olenchus inward as much as outward. And this is precisely what Marcus Aurelius was doing every morning and every night in the pages of his meditations. He was interrogating himself. Did I show my personal values today? Was I fair? Where did my judgment fail? What am I assuming that I haven't tested? So, before your next significant decision, I want you to become your own Socrates. Ask yourself, what am I assuming here? How do I actually know this is true? What's the evidence? And what would change my mind? Am I seeing this clearly, or am I seeing the story I've told myself about it? That internal dialogue, that willingness to question your own certainty, is the single most reliable safeguard against the costly, ego-driven mistakes that derail even experienced leaders.

SPEAKER_00 7:34

So, let's leave you, as Socrates would have wanted, not with a conclusion, but with a challenge. This week, I want you to catch yourself in a moment of certainty. A moment when you're convinced you already know the answer about a person, a problem, a plan. And in that moment, I want you to stop and ask one genuine open question instead. Of your team or of yourself. Just one question where you would normally have offered a statement. Watch what happens. Watch the room change. Watch the thinking deepen. Watch the ideas you didn't know were there begin to surface. Because the barefoot man in the marketplace understood something that the most advanced organizations in the world are still trying to relearn. The quality of your leadership is determined by the quality of your questions. Answers close the conversation. Questions open the future. Thank you for listening. This has been the Stoic Edge for Managers, brought to you by MyManagementCoach.org. Until next time, stay curious, stay humble, and never stop examining the life and the leadership you are building.