Every one of us got rewarded — in school and at work — for having the answer. Raise your hand fast enough, know the right number, nail the right term, and you got the gold star. Then you got promoted. And promoted again. Until, at some point, the world got too complex for any one person to have the answer at all.
That’s exactly where CO2 Managing Partner Gary Cohen and Executive Team Coach John Sandahl picked up during our latest LinkedIn Live, a conversation dedicated to Gary’s PEAK Inquiry Framework — a model for asking better questions that unlocks better leadership. If you missed it live, here’s your recap, plus the key takeaways you can start applying today.
Why We Default to Telling
Gary and John opened with a simple, human truth: telling feels good. There’s a dopamine hit that comes with having the answer, and an unspoken expectation — real or imagined — that leaders are supposed to know. So we tell. And telling works, for a while. It’s faster. It looks cleaner. More gets done in the short term.
But telling has a cost. As Gary put it, when a leader hands someone the answer, they let that person off the hook. The accountability, the ownership, the buy-in — all of it stays with the leader instead of transferring to the team. And when the problems get complex enough (which, eventually, they always do), telling stops working altogether.
There’s simply too much unknowable territory for any single person to have the answer.
Gary shared a story that captures this perfectly: a software team was outsourcing a project against the objections of two executives who could see the risk. Instead of asking “What is it you see that we don’t?” — a classic Professor-style question — leadership told the team to move forward.
The result: a costly do-over and a hard lesson about the price of skipping the inquiry.
Before the Model: Two Readiness Factors
Before you can even use the PEAK framework well, Gary and John named two things a leader needs to be ready for:
- Letting go of knowing. Not easy — and not always possible all at once. Gary suggests a bridge: “I know, but I’m going to pretend I don’t.” Over time, as you practice asking instead of telling, you start to genuinely see that other people have different (and sometimes better) answers than your own.
- Trusting the other person. There’s no point in asking a question if you don’t trust what comes back. And — importantly — a trust gap often has more to do with you than with the person in front of you. Gary encouraged leaders to look inward first, rather than assuming the fix lives with the team.
The PEAK Model: Four Quadrants, One Z-Shaped Path
The PEAK Inquiry Framework sorts every question along two axes: gathering information versus moving to action, and opening things up versus narrowing them down. That gives us four distinct question styles:
- Professor — pulls out what’s already in the room. What do we know? What are our assumptions? What haven’t we considered?
- Innovator — expands possibility and moves toward action. What would we do with unlimited time and budget? What else could we try?
- Judge — evaluates and converges. What matters most here? How will we decide? What does the evidence say?
- Director — drives to commitment. What’s the next step? Who owns it? By when?
Most leaders and coaches have a natural home quadrant, and that’s exactly the problem. As Gary discovered years after unveiling the model, a leader dominant in one style is, by default, missing out on roughly 75% of the possible questions available to them.
The good news: there’s a natural sequence.
Gary and John’s colleague Tom Schlick first spotted the pattern, now known internally as the Z Method — starting with Professor questions (perspective and knowledge), moving to Innovator (action and perspective), then Judge (evaluation and knowledge), and finally Director (evaluation and action). Professor and Innovator diverge — opening up ideas and options. Judge and Director converge — narrowing toward a decision and a commitment.
The “Permission Tax”: Why the Question Alone Isn’t Enough
One of the most powerful moments in the conversation was Gary’s concept of the permission tax. When a team member brings you an idea and you respond with “great idea, go do it” before they’ve acted, you’ve unintentionally taken the accountability back. The moment feels validating, but it quietly shifts ownership back to the leader.
The alternative? Ask the questions, resist the urge to validate too early, and let the discomfort sit with the person doing the work. As John shared from his own experience working with Gary on a pricing decision, that discomfort — while real — is often exactly what builds a stronger, more accountable team member.
Being genuinely “on the hook” is uncomfortable in the moment and valuable in the long run.
Key Takeaways
- Telling gives quick wins but costs long-term accountability. The faster path today may be robbing your team of ownership tomorrow.
- Readiness comes first. Before using PEAK effectively, get honest about whether you can let go of knowing (even just pretending to) and whether you genuinely trust the people around you.
- A trust gap is often about you, not them. Investigate your own patterns and blind spots before assuming the issue lives with your team.
- Every question has a “home” in one of four quadrants: Professor (perspective), Innovator (action + perspective), Judge (evaluation), Director (evaluation + action).
- Most leaders overuse one quadrant and unknowingly ignore 75% of the questions available to them.
- The Z Method offers a natural sequence: start broad and diverging (Professor → Innovator), then narrow and converge (Judge → Director).
- Avoid the permission tax. Resist validating an idea before it’s been acted on — let ownership stay with the person who owns the decision.
- A missing quadrant on a team can stall decision-making. If a team is stuck, it may be because no one in the room is naturally asking the questions from an underrepresented style.
Try This Tomorrow Morning
- Notice your default quadrant. In your next meeting, pay attention to which kind of questions you naturally ask. Are you a Professor? An Innovator? A Judge? A Director?
- Ask yourself what the room actually needs. Before you speak, pause and ask: Do we need more perspective? More options? More evaluation? Or is it time to decide and move?
- Deliberately borrow a style that isn’t yours. If you tend to live in Judge and Director, force yourself to open with a Professor or Innovator question before converging.
- Watch for the permission tax in your own conversations. Notice the moments you’re tempted to say “great idea, go for it” — and try holding the question a little longer instead.
- Identify who in your organization naturally fills your blind quadrant — and lean on them (or channel their style) when you’re stuck.
Want to Go Deeper?
If you missed the conversation live, you can watch the full recording on YouTube — Gary and John go even deeper into the readiness work, real client stories, and how the permission tax shows up in everyday leadership moments.
And if you’re ready to put the framework to work with your own team, download the PEAK Inquiry Framework to learn more about the model, discover your own questioning style, and start asking your way to better outcomes.
Success is never a solo act — ask the questions, and bring other people in.
