10 questions I wish I’d asked more to turbocharge my career

Photo by Rodrigo Tiepolo

“The art and science of asking questions is the source of all knowledge,” Thomas Berger said.

If I could go back in time and tell my new college grad self what the secret to a rocket ship career is, it would simply be this: Ask More Questions. Ask them of your managers, the peers who work closest to you, and anyone whom you admire and feel they have something to teach you. The best mentorship relationships start from a good, earnest question. Which ones specifically? My new book, The Making of a Manager, goes into great details about the questions that new leaders should ask themselves and their reports. Here is a summary of the top 10.

1. Where have I had the most impact over the past few months, from your perspective?

Virginia Woolf once said, “Without self awareness we are as babies in the cradle.” Self-awareness is understanding the extent to which your own perceptions of yourself — what you’re good at, what your growth areas are, how you’re progressing and learning — matches reality and what everyone else thinks. Most of the time, a gap exists due to well-documented human biases that tell us we’re better at certain things than we actually are, or due to our scathing…