Home

Course Finder

 
View all courses
 

 | Print

Questions That Make a Difference Every Day

Marshall Goldsmith

My colleague, Andrew Thorn, taught me this fascinating daily-questions process and tried it out on me. Since then, I have been using it with my good friend, Jim Moore, (former CLO of Sun Microsystems). Both Jim and I have been amazed at how well this works.

Every day Jim asks me the same 24 questions. Every day I ask Jim the same 17 questions. A key to the success of the process is that each person writes his or her own questions. Each one of our questions can be answered by 'yes,' 'no' or a number. This keeps the process moving quickly. We send each other weekly results from an Excel spreadsheet.

One rule: no negative feedback. No matter what the other person has done, we say nothing that might produce guilt. On the other hand, we make positive comments that reinforce success. Recently, I asked Jim how much he weighed. Since we began, he had lost 12 pounds. I said, 'Great job!

That's a new record!'

To continue reading, please download the PDF article.

Articles

Download

  • "  Thank you for a great learning experience. I found that some of what was learned is good to get my private life organized as well. Thanks.  "

  • "  The Instructor provided real life examples during the course to relate to a particular point. The rendition of the examples were humorous and kept us all alert.   "

  • "  I was very happy with the setting of the course. Having never attended CMC previously, I was unsure of what to expect. I especially like the way we worked in different workgroups and got to know the other attendees and find that our working concerns were quite similar. The CMC office staff was very pleasant and very accommodating.  "

  • "  The training was excellent; far more than I expected in terms of amount of information covered and the depth in which we were able to get into some of the topics. I was particularly impressed with the first three days with Al, for the business planning, management and leadership sections. I found these topics not only informative but the style in which Al conducted the sessions was also very motivating, which is a pleasant side benefit.  "

    Sean De Vries
    Panasonic Canada