Could Questions Be a Catalyst for Employee Leadership Behavior?
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As we studied NVIDIA and the way Jensen Huang approaches work and decision-making, one question became especially important to us.
It was not only about Huang’s own leadership.
What interested us even more was this:
How do NVIDIA employees actually behave in their day-to-day work?
From publicly available information, we can see behaviors such as questioning assumptions, asking when something is unclear, expressing different views, collaborating across areas of expertise, making judgments, taking risks, learning from failure, and continuing to look for ways to improve even after success.
We therefore decided to compare these employee behaviors with the leadership research behind Zenger Folkman’s Extraordinary Leader program, which SmartWorks has worked with for many years.
What emerged was an intriguing connection.
19 Leadership Behaviors Demonstrated by Top 10% Performers
In the Extraordinary Leader research, the behaviors that distinguish top-performing leaders are organized into five areas and 19 competencies.
What matters here is that these are not simply personality traits or pieces of knowledge.
They are leadership behaviors that people actually demonstrate.
We compared the employee behaviors visible in NVIDIA’s public information with these 19 competencies.
NVIDIA Employee Behavior and the 19 Competencies of Extraordinary Leaders
| Five Areas | 19 Competencies | Question-Related Behaviors Seen Among NVIDIA Employees | How We See the Connection |
| Character | 1. Displays High Integrity and Honesty | Recognizing what is known and unknown, and questioning assumptions and gaps | Good questioning begins with honestly acknowledging what is not yet understood |
| Personal Capability | 2. Technical / Professional Expertise | Using professional knowledge to ask what is happening and what may be possible | Expertise enables deeper and more precise questions |
| 3. Solves Problems and Analyzes Issues | Not accepting a problem at face value; questioning facts, assumptions, causes, and unknowns | Questions expose the structure of a problem and stimulate analysis | |
| 4. Innovates | Not simply copying existing methods or structures, but asking why things are done that way | Questioning conventions opens the door to new approaches | |
| 5. Learning Agility | Asking what could have been done better, even after success | Questions turn experience into learning and future action | |
| Focus on Results | 6. Drives for Results | Asking whether the work is truly important and whether it creates value | Questions shift attention from activity to meaningful results |
| 7. Establishes Stretch Goals | Asking whether performance could be improved further | Questioning the status quo encourages higher standards | |
| 8. Takes Initiative | Acting when a problem is identified rather than simply waiting for instructions | Questions clarify what one can do and encourage proactive behavior | |
| 9. Makes Decisions | Checking data, assumptions, knowns, and unknowns before deciding | Better questions improve the quality of decision-making | |
| 10. Takes Risks | Considering both the risk of acting and the risk of not acting | Questions help people look at risk from multiple perspectives | |
| Interpersonal Skills | 11. Communicates Powerfully and Prolifically | Communicating ideas, issues, and important information clearly and directly | Answering good questions helps clarify thinking and communication |
| 12. Inspires and Motivates Others | Asking why the work matters and what is truly important | Questions make purpose clearer and help people connect to meaningful goals | |
| 13. Builds Relationships | Asking people who have the knowledge, and engaging across functions and levels | Asking questions creates contact, dialogue, and relationships | |
| 14. Develops Others | Encouraging others to think rather than simply providing the answer | Questions stimulate independent thinking and development | |
| 15. Collaboration and Teamwork | Bringing together people with different expertise to examine and solve the same problem | Difficult questions encourage people to combine expertise | |
| 16. Values Diversity | Encouraging different views and questions regardless of position | Diverse questions bring different perspectives into decisions | |
| Leading Change | 17. Develops Strategic Perspective | Asking what the company is, what its inputs are, and what outputs it should create | Questions expand thinking from immediate issues to the organization and its future |
| 18. Champions Change | Asking why things are still done the traditional way and changing how work is done | Questioning the status quo can become the starting point for change | |
| 19. Connects the Group to the Outside World | Asking what is changing in customers, markets, technology, and society | External questions help prevent inward-looking decisions and improve adaptability |
Then We Noticed Something
As we worked through this comparison, one idea became increasingly clear.
Questioning does not appear to be a new, 20th leadership competency.
Instead, questions may activate a sequence such as:
Thinking
Dialogue
Decision
Action
Learning
Change
And through that sequence, the 19 leadership behaviors associated with top 10% performers may begin to emerge.
Questions Do Not Make People Leaders. Questions Bring Out Leadership Behavior in Each Individual.
This led us to think of questioning as something different.
A Catalyst for Leadership Behavior
In chemistry, a catalyst is not itself the final product.
But its presence makes a reaction more likely to occur.
Could something similar happen inside organizations?
When people are asked good questions, they cannot simply remain passive.
“Is this really true?”
“What do we not yet understand?”
“What evidence do we have?”
“Is there a better way?”
“What should I do?”
Those questions lead employees to think.
And not only to think.
They investigate facts.
They ask others.
They express different views.
They make judgments.
They collaborate.
They act.
They reflect on results.
They change how they work when necessary.
These behaviors overlap strongly with the 19 leadership behaviors identified in the Extraordinary Leader research.
Our HLS Insight from NVIDIA
Could “Before Answering, Ask the Right Question” Be a Catalyst That Enables Employees to Demonstrate the 19 Leadership Behaviors Practiced by Top 10% Performers?
The word that matters most here is employees.
Leadership should not necessarily be viewed only as something demonstrated by managers or a small group of selected high-potential people.
What if ordinary employees, regardless of title, routinely:
think,
question,
decide,
involve others,
act,
learn,
and create change?
If that becomes part of everyday work, the leadership capacity of the whole organization may change significantly.
From “Developing Better Leaders” to “Creating a System Where Leadership Behavior Emerges”
Traditional leadership development has focused heavily on one objective:
Develop better leaders.
That remains important.
But from a Human Leadership System perspective, there may be another possibility.
Create an Environment and System in Which Every Employee Can Demonstrate, in Everyday Work, the Leadership Behaviors Associated with Top 10% Performers.
This moves us beyond simply selecting and developing exceptional individuals.
It raises another possibility:
Create a way of working in which exceptional behavior is more likely to emerge from ordinary employees.
And one of the keys we see in NVIDIA may be:
Before Answering, Ask the Right Question.
Is This Unique to NVIDIA?
We are not yet treating this as a universal principle of Human Leadership System.
At this stage, it is an HLS Insight and a hypothesis that emerged from our research into NVIDIA.
As we move on to Microsoft, Netflix, Amazon, and other companies, we want to test two questions:
Does high-quality questioning really act as a catalyst for employee leadership behavior?
And do the behaviors associated with top 10% performers appear in the everyday work of employees in other high-performing organizations as well?
Study one company.
Identify an Insight.
Test it against the next company.
Look for differences.
Modify the hypothesis where necessary.
That is how we will continue HLS Global Case Research.
Our HLS Insight from NVIDIA
Questions Do Not Make People Leaders. Questions Bring Out Leadership Behavior in Each Individual.
Before Answering, Ask the Right Question.
High-quality questions may be a catalyst that brings leadership behavior associated with top 10% performers into the everyday work of employees.
We will continue testing this hypothesis in our next company research.
Akira Chida / Dash
SmartWorks
HLS Global Case Research
Note
This article does not suggest that NVIDIA has formally adopted Zenger Folkman’s Extraordinary Leader program. Nor does it claim that all NVIDIA employees demonstrate all 19 competencies.
This is an independent SmartWorks analysis comparing employee behaviors observable in publicly available information about NVIDIA with the 19 leadership competencies used in our leadership development work.