We were trained to lead from fear at age five

What if everything you were rewarded for, your whole life, trained you to lead from fear?

Let that sink in for a second before you resist it.

Think back to school. From the time you were five years old, you earned gold stars for one thing above almost everything else: having the right answer. Hand up first. Knowing the capital of the country. Finishing the math problem before the kid beside you. For two decades, the world taught you that your worth rests with your answers. Little time was spent teaching you how to sit with another person, ask an open question, and prioritize with curiosity.

So it is no wonder we grow into leaders who feel naked without the answer. Who measure themselves by how smart they sound in the meeting.

Why are “what” questions better than “why” questions?

“Why did you do that?” pushes a person to justify and defend, pulling the conversation into the past. “What were you hoping would happen?” opens up possibility and a future to work with. In coaching, “why” can make the person feel like the problem, while “what” invites them to think.

Key takeaways

• Most of us were trained from childhood to lead with answers instead of questions, and that training still shapes how we lead today.
• Unlearning shows up as discomfort at first. That discomfort usually means an old reflex is loosening its grip.
• Leading with curiosity is less about learning a new skill and more about unlearning an old reflex.
• Being clear and being kind were never in tension. Softening the truth is often the less kind choice.
• The smallest shift, swapping one “why” for one “what” in a single conversation this week, is where the change starts.

The word professionals and adult learners use most is “unlearning”

As Founder of Coach Academy, Nathalie has spent the better part of 15 years designing curriculum, coaching, and mentoring rooms full of people learning to coach. More than 4,000 of them now, through Canada Coach Academy.

Students of the Academy speak of unlearning the reflex to tell, fix and advise. They realize, often with deep discomfort, that skills of connection were in them the whole time. Life just taught them to reach for the answer instead of the question. To ask “why” instead of “what.” To hold up a mirror when what was needed as a window.

If leading from fear feels automatic to you, that is a well-trained reflex, not a character flaw. And the good news about a reflex is that you can build a new one. At Coach Academy, we have watched thousands of coaches do exactly that.

Why “why” is the problem

Let me show you the smallest version of this, because it is smaller than it looks and it does more damage than we think.

Watch what happens to someone’s face when you ask them “why did you do that?” They justify. They reach into the past. They defend. “Why” pulls a person backward and puts them on trial.

Turn that “why” into a “what” and the whole conversation changes direction. “What were you hoping would happen?” “What would you do differently?” Now there is possibility in the room. A future to talk about. Room to think.

A fear-led leader leans on “why” because it sounds rigorous. It sounds like getting to the root of the problem. Here is what can take years to understand: when you ask “why” of a person, you make the person the problem. And people are human beings to be witnessed, not problems to be solved.

A story from the classroom

Let me bring you into one of our classrooms, because this is where it stops being theory.

We run an exercise where coaches practise asking only “what” questions. No “why.” For ten full minutes, they are only allowed to wonder out loud. What is important about this? What would you like instead? What is underneath that?

What happens? People marvel at how many answers come from purely questions. They are shocked by the insights from simply asking, not telling, or wondering, not knowing.

Clear and warm at the same time

I do not want you to take my word for any of this, so here is some research.

Brené Brown spent seven years studying courage and leadership. One line of hers has become a compass for me: “Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind.” It comes from Dare to Lead, and the original essay is on her site.

Most of us were taught that softening the truth, or avoiding it, is the kind thing to do. Brown’s research points the other way. Withholding the honest thing to keep a moment comfortable is the unkind move. The work of coaching asks you to be clear and warm in the same breath. Those two things were never actually in tension. School just never taught us to hold them together.

This matters more than a leadership tip

It would be easy to file this under workplace advice. But its so much more.

An Angus Reid Institute study found that roughly one in ten Canadians lives with a deep, persistent form of loneliness, and many more feel it some of the time. Statistics Canada has been tracking the same trend. We are a connected country full of people who feel unseen.

Some of us learned to text before we learned to really talk. We got very good at having answers and out of practice at asking questions. The reflex that makes a leader talk over a quiet room is the same reflex, scaled up, that leaves people lonely in a crowd.

That is why we treat connection as a skill worth teaching on purpose, starting young, and worth relearning at any age.

Your connection experiment for this week

Try one thing this week.

This week, one time, in one conversation that matters to you, notice when a “why” is about to leave your mouth. Catch it, and turn it into a “what.” When you feel the pull to fix, ask a question instead. Then stay silent one beat longer than feels comfortable.

The silence will feel awful at first. Three seconds will feel like thirty. Everything in you will want to rush in and rescue the moment. That urge is the old reflex, the gold star, the mirror. Let it pass. The person across from you is doing their best thinking in that quiet, even when it looks like nothing is happening. That is usually the moment they say the thing they came to say.

As Nathalie says often, use your conversations as a laboratory. Try it, and watch what happens.

We were all taught to lead with the answer. Any of us can learn to lead with the question. And the first relationship to change when you do is the one you have with yourself.

We don’t change in resistance. We change in awareness.

Nathalie Blais is an ICF Master Certified Coach, Harvard MA in Psychology, TEDx speaker, and founder of Canada Coach Academy, where more than 4,000 coaches have trained. She hosts the podcast The Connection Experiment.