The Answer Is a Question: The Missing Superpower That Changes Everything and Will Transform Your Impact as a Manager and Leader

“The Answer is a Question redefines the purpose of management for the 21st century.”
 ― Matthew Syed, Author, Broadcaster and Columnist

As seen on BBC • Distinguished Favourite, NYC Big Book Award 2023

What if your team came to you with solutions instead of problems?

With ever-increasing workloads, demanding schedules and growing instability, managers are under more pressure than ever. Yet many of us are still managing in the same way - taking on more responsibility, solving more problems and providing more answers.

What if there was another way?

What if, instead of always giving your team the answer, you could help them find their own?

What if your everyday management conversations could become opportunities to coach and develop your people ― helping them think more clearly, solve problems, take ownership and build their capability?

The Answer Is a Question is a practical management and coaching book for busy managers and leaders who want to develop their teams through the conversations they are already having at work.

Multi-award-winning performance consultants Dominic and Laura Ashley-Timms introduce the STAR® model and the new and proven approach to coaching in the flow of work - Operational Coaching®. Through practical examples, case studies and mini-missions, they show you how to use questions differently - not simply to find out more, but to help people think, learn and take responsibility for finding their own solutions.

“The book is fabulous... I have now bought 30 of these books and use them as a basis for discussion on how to deliver everyday coaching, every day!”
 ― Dean Lenton, Learning and Development Director

This book will help you to:

• Coach rather than tell - resist the instinct to step in to fix other people’s problems or immediately provide the answer, and instead, help people develop their own thinking
• Turn everyday conversations into coaching conversations - use problems, decisions, challenges and opportunities as moments to develop your team and those around you - including friends and family!
• Build greater ownership and accountability - help your team take responsibility for finding solutions rather than automatically relying on you
• Develop a high-performing, independent team - build confidence, strengthen problem-solving ability and grow each team member’s capability 
• Reduce your management burden - stop being the bottleneck who has to solve every problem and win back valuable time and capacity for yourself
• Make coaching part of everyday management - without needing to become a professional coach or scheduling formal coaching sessions every time someone needs help

“I found the STAR® model really useful. I was never comfortable in managing people, but changing my mindset to see it as a coaching opportunity really opened my eyes and helped me and the business develop.”
 ― Jack Cooledge, Bespoke Drywall Ltd

The STAR® model is used by leaders and managers in FTSE and Fortune 500 companies and has been proven to work by the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in a major academic study across 62 organisations.

And the approach is already making a difference for managers and leaders:

“STAR® has had a major impact on how I operate as a professional... giving me the knowledge and skills to develop on a personal level and to develop my team.”
 ― Carl Drinkel, Senior Quality Engineer, Hitachi Rail

“For any leader or manager in business, you need this! It has truly changed the way I think about leadership, for the better!”
 ― Nick Pointe

The Answer is a Question gives you a practical approach to bringing coaching into the conversations you are already having - helping your team think for themselves, solve problems, take ownership and grow in capability, and you’ll become a manager who develops people rather than simply solves problems for them, 

If you want to improve your skills as a manager, massively amplify your value and impact through a better-enabled, more capable, high-performing team that steps up, this book will show you how.

The Answer Is a Question doesn’t just tell you the what, i.e. telling you ‘about management’; it shows you the practical ‘how’ that makes the greatest difference in the shortest time and will transform your impact as a manager and leader forever.

Laura Ashley-Timms is the COO at Notion and is recognized as one of the UK’s top Executive Coaches. She is an expert and thought leader on how to leverage Operational Coaching™ behaviors across organizations to drive commercial results and improve productivity and engagement levels. Laura learned about the power of coaching from her early childhood career in international sports and began coaching others by the time she entered Oriel College, Oxford (as one of the first females to that college). She gained not only an MA (Oxon), but also an ‘extraordinary full blue.’ With over 30 years of international business experience, living and working in the USA, Europe, and Asia (and a decade of that spent in the retail sector), Laura has a strong focus on pragmatism and results. She is the architect of many of Notion’s Client programs and is responsible for the outstanding quality of engagements.

Dominic Ashley-Timms is the CEO of Notion, and a graduate Ergonomist with an EMBA from IMD (Lausanne). After a top-tier consulting career running multi-million dollar change programmes and training leaders in 37 countries, Dominic now applies his passion for human-centered design to learning and behavior change. He has helped clients improve commercial performance with programs that regularly generate many hundreds x ROI while delivering sustainable changes in culture. Dominic’s global career has given him some deep insights into the levers of change that make the most difference. Unlike other suppliers in the development industry, he has been willing to subject Notion’s core approaches to the dispassionate and unblinking gaze of academic scrutiny.