Hey, it's Rachel Cook, your modern mentor. I'm the founder of Lead Above Noise, a firm

specializing in activating workplaces. We find your blind spots and opportunities,

and we build you a custom blueprint to get your teams delivering their best work, efficiently,

collaboratively, and with full engagement. So, let me ask you a question. How often and how

intentionally are you asking questions at work? And yeah, I did that on purpose. Everyone I know

right now is swimming and overwhelm. From senior executives to frontline individual contributors,

everyone's calendars and to-do lists are the stuff of nightmares.

And I'm seeing people respond largely in one of two ways.

Some are just plowing through.

They're burning candles at both ends, convinced that they won't catch fire.

But, spoiler alert, they will at some point. This approach

isn't sustainable. So what are the others doing? Well, it's 2024, so we seem to be called it

quiet vacationing, though if I'm honest, I have not figured out how this differs from

23's quiet quitting trend.

But it's that thing we do when we show up in body but we kind of check out in spirit.

We look like we're working, but mostly we're not.

Also, this is not a great choice.

So what is something that we can be doing to better manage this collective state we're in?

There are lots of levers we can pull, but I think one of the most underutilized ones right now is just asking questions.

More questions, better questions, intentional questions.

Broadly speaking, I think there are four categories of questions that we

can and should be asking. Each, in its own way, positioned to pave a path towards just a little

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