Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Mastermind Mastery. I am your host, Tina Corner Stoltz. And today, a couple of things. First of all, I'm coming to you with a big black eye. So I am counting that many of you don't even look at the podcast. You just listen to the podcast because I look like I am ready for Halloween. Accidentally ran into a doorway over the weekend, so it's pretty black, but here we go. With that said, today's episode is the
power of questioning. This is really for those of you first and foremost that are running groups because asking really profound, thought provoking, game changing questions is a moderator skill. And I'm going to do two series of this. One is about the $100,000 question. It's a speech I did at our conference last year, live Exchange 2023. And as a moderator, it is a skill to
continuously develop. And I'm going to do a separate episode about the power of being curious and how important having curiosity is in running your group. So second, this is for you if you're not running groups yet, because it will serve you well in your life regardless. And asking powerful, thought provoking questions can be game changing. And this has happened throughout my entire life. And there are definite moments where they were profound and changed the course of my life
for, obviously, the better. And just even one was when I was younger in my career in telecom, and this was in 1998, and my executive coach, Jean Stafford and I were on the phone early one morning at 07:00 a.m. because I was in the middle of negotiating my basically promotion package, and it was significantly lower than what I believed was fair and what I knew the person was making prior to leaving of the role I was being promoted into. It was significantly more responsibility, but very
parallel to what I was doing. And they were offering me less than a third of what he made. So I was at a crossroads about what to do. And Jean asked me that $100,000 question at the time, which was, Tina, are you prepared to lose your job? Now? I did not expect that from her. I thought she was going to coach me in a different way. But the point was profound in what I needed to consider, and it would create the next steps I needed to take
if I so choose to. As a result of many days of silence that I never answered her, I did come back and said, yes, I am, because I decided to go for what I believed I deserved in salary. And I will tell you that that question that she asked me prompted me to stand up for what I believed in, in a very professional way and get what I believed I deserved, which was way more than a deficit of $100,000. So it made a significant difference in how I was perceived in the company, aside from the
bottom line financially. Now, Jean was trained in these types of questions, and hence why she was such a great executive coach. And anyone can ask what I would call dollar questions. And dollar questions are really mediocre questions. They don't really promote momentum. They're kind of, huh. And dollar questions are even simple things like, well, how are you? Good morning. How are you? Well, that's, you know, a very kind, in a
way, greeting. But what could it be even be a better question that could present even a more meaningful answer? And that's what hundred thousand dollar questions do. They create aha moments. All of us who run peer groups are always looking to drive more aha moments with our members. And aha moments create change. They create a different perspective, they create better decisions, they create better
outcomes. And that's what this whole hundred thousand dollar idea is all about, is how is it that as a moderator, not only do you lead by example and ask these great questions, but you teach your members how to do the same? We all have had members, or we were lucky enough to have had members and still have them, ideally, that exhibit this naturally and so, so well in the group because those members that do that, a few
things happen, right? Number one, it makes your job as a moderator so, so, so much easier because that member understands those great questions to pose out there, and all the other members learn from that. So they lead by example, but also they create more aha moments in the group. And if you don't have a member or members that do that, you have to cultivate that. You have to fill that gap as a moderator first while you teach your members to do that, or hopefully bring on a new member who has
skills at doing that. Now, understanding the importance of questioning has been around for some time. There's Elon Musk, who says, a lot of the time, the question is harder than the answer you have. Peter Drucker, who has said, the important and difficult job is never to find the right answers. It's to find the right question. And then, of course, there's Tom Watson, whose ability to ask the right question is more than half the battle. Finding the right
answer. We also are all aware of Oprah Winfrey, probably the most famous and best interviewer of all time, who says the best interviews are basically because she has come up with the right questions to provoke those answers we all are wanting to hear from who she is interviewing, and even so much so that she believed in the power of the question, that she devoted an entire year's worth of the O magazine in 2018 to a thought provoking question every single month for twelve months.
So I'm here to also illustrate to you that these really thought provoking, meaningful questions that I call $100,000 questions are worth way more than $100,000. And it started not only with the story that I told you at the beginning of the episode, but it has showed up in my life all throughout. And even to the extent that in 2017, I was sitting at a desk and a girlfriend of mine who twice have profoundly asked me questions that have
changed the trajectory of my life. The first one was, Tina, why don't you write a book? And I'm like, oh, why? I don't know. You know, it's a lot of effort, et cetera, et cetera. And through her prompting, not only did I write one book, I wrote two. But it was when I was sitting at a desk trying to decide what I was going to do with the fact that I had sold my house to someone who had knocked on my door and I couldn't find a place to live
and move to. So I put my stuff in storage, and I was temporarily at my other home at the Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri, and I was unable to continually find a place to move into Indianapolis, Maryland. And she finally said to me, Tina, why don't you move to Florida? And I thought she was absolutely crazy. But it's that simple question at the right moment. That is what I'm talking about as
$100,000 question. And it was through that prompting and basically her insistence that I get down to Florida and take a look if that's not really where I was supposed to live next. As a result, it was the place. And 30 days later, I moved and live now in St. Petersburg, Florida. Now, why was that so transformative from the fact that, number one, I didn't know anyone in St. Petersburg, Tampa Bay, but when I arrived six months later, I met my husband, the love of my wife. We were married in 2020.
But I also met someone that helped me figure out and change my model into a licensing model, which profoundly has changed Alec's counsel. And third, I got to live in a place that I'd always dreamed of. So just that question from someone who was thoughtfully listening at the moment and being present, my girlfriend Sharon, by saying, Tina, why don't you move to Florida? Now, where I see this happen in actual peer group meetings is a great example of a member in a group that I was leading back in
Baltimore. And Chris was running a company that was an ESOP employee stock ownership plan. He had bought the company. He was not the founder, and he had a dilemma in that his margins were not where they wanted he wanted them to be or where he believed they should be. Now, he had two primary clients, the private and the public sector. So government employees that required high level clearances. And then, of course, his sales team, who was working with the privately
held business owners. And the ESOP concept applied to one, really, and not the other. And as many of you know, esops, if you are no longer an employee at the company, you're still part of the ESOP. And that can be problematic if you have too much turnover. And that's where his organization was.
It was nothing, a question he was going to pose to be processed that day, but it was because a member was listening and being present said, hey, Chris, if you started the company from scratch, what would you do differently to prevent the issue? And it was at that moment, I can recall to this day. And seeing it, I know exactly what room we were in. I can see exactly where Chris was sitting, that he had the AHA moment that
changed the trajectory of his firm. Bye. Splitting it in two divisions underneath a different umbrella company so the ESOP could apply to one part of the organization that it mattered and not to the other, changing his bottom line forever in such a positive way. Again, a profound question that is just very simple. It's not this question that you've never heard of, but it was a question that was the right one to ask at the right
time. It was more than $100,000 question for him, no different than it was more than $100,000 questions for me. Because without $100,000 questions, you get insignificant, shallow answers, poor decisions are made. There's fuzziness and ambiguity. It's basically the existing mindset prevails, status quo. But when the right question is asked is, when you get the aha, you get better decisions, you get clarity and focus. There's progress, it's transformational,
there's new thinking, and it's also motivational. And what you will find is it increases vulnerability in your groups. If there is a lack of vulnerability at the level you desire and want for your groups, what will get you? There is hundred thousand dollar questions, not minor questions. And if you observe your next meeting at the level of questions that exist, you will probably find
out what I'm talking about. So as a moderator, it is your job, it is your duty to be excellent at this so that you can illustrate this with your members. Because typically if you're leading a CEO peer group, those CEO's get a little bit lazy as they progressed in running their company because they get lazy in that asking great questions takes effort. It takes time and they are busy and they don't have time and they just want to move forward and get on with it and they have the answer.
So they typically give it instead of doing leadership development and coaching with their teams and asking $100,000 questions. So how much better could their companies be? How much better could the leadership team be? How much better could that CEO be developing their successor, et cetera, if they also did $100,000 questions within their company? So what are different types of hundred thousand dollar questions and
how do you cultivate them? Well, first of all, let me just tell you, a skill set in cultivating this type of question is very, very simple and straightforward. It's first of all, you got to listen. Now, listening takes effort. It's also a skill, but you have to listen and then while you're listening, not formulate the solution in your head while you're listening, because that's part of the other issue is that a
lot of times people are listening. They're already formulating a solution which then requires that they don't listen and therefore they miss important points and they don't have enough information to formulate a solution. And you have to be curious, which is why I'm going to talk about that in a whole other episode. Next, as about being curious, you have to sincerely want to know more and want to understand more.
Types of hundred thousand dollar questions is as you can tell, first of all, they don't have to be just extremely well written. They can be very simple and straightforward just at the right time, and they can be positive, but they can also get you into trouble. So an example of a hundred thousand dollar question that gets into trouble is one from Sam Bankman free. So if you've read anything about him in his book, one of the questions that he was always searching for is how does he
impact more people? He always wanted to make more of an impact on more people and how could he do that? How could he scale that? And that is what got him into trouble. And that's what got him into the business that he was in. He just went the wrong direction with that. Now, there is also something that I love about the opposite of $100,000 question that can be used in an everyday scenario in business. And that is about when you're hiring people or making
a decision about something. And a great question to ask is what has to be true about this in order for it to be successful? So let's say you're going to hire somebody and you would ask them the question, what has to be true about this new hire that in 90 days they'll be successful. So what has to be true about them that 90 days from now they're going to be successful? And what has to be true about our process for them to be
successful? And what you will find when you are asking yourself or your team these questions that it prompts, where your blind spots are, what assumption you're making that probably aren't accurate or that you need to be sure or what else you need to know. Which brings me to one of my most favorite questions that I learned from mentor of mine is if someone asks, you know, I don't know how to blah, blah, blah,
how do you incorporate $100,000 question? When somebody is asking you the question, you flip the question back to them and you say, what if you did know? Yes. What if you didn't know? Anyone who knows me knows. I talk about this all the time about if someone comes to you and says, you know what, I don't know how to solve this customer situation, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I would say back, but what if you did? And then they're going to say,
but if I did, I wouldn't be asking you. And you're going to say, but what if you did know? Just take a moment and think about it. What if you did know? It flips something in the brain to open up a whole new path of thinking that comes with more insight. So what if you did know? It works wonderful on kids, by the way. It really does. So that can be one of your other takeaways. So what I've talked about is anybody, any moderator, anybody running
groups can ask just basic questions. I'm asking you guys today as a challenge to step up your game to asking hundred thousand dollar questions that drive better results and a more wow experience for your members and to practice it through curiosity, listening, being president and not formulating your ideas, but putting it out there to be curious and be truly thinking about, what can I ask right now that this person really needs to answer
in order for them to make progress on where they need to make progress. So thank you again for listening to another episode at Mastermind Mastery. And if any of you have a topic you would love to be sure is discussed on one of these episodes, please send me an email@tinasel.com. dot I would love to hear about what you want to hear about maybe what guests I need to go get that could be an expert in it,
et cetera. But what is it that you haven't heard about me talk about that would be most helpful to you? So until then, go make it happen and thanks for listening.