More words adding up to longer answers do not necessarily provide more insight. Sometimes questions that force brevity can provide interesting answers that are easy to compare. This question falls into that category. Imagine asking this question of all new hires for six months. Depending on the size of your organization and your rates of turnover and expansion, you could develop and keep track of the one-word answers pretty easily. What would be the value of that? I can think of three.

1. As your list of descriptive words grows, you can compare them and look for consistency of expectations from those who join your organization or department. What do you think it means if half the people respond with words like “fun,” “energetic,” and “creative,” and the other half of the people you’ve asked respond with words like “stable,” “traditional,” and “respectable”? My analysis of those responses would be that half of the people who responded were going to be disappointed. It’s up to you to decide which half. A split response like this tells you that you haven’t established a consistent image in your marketplace. A consistent response that you like tells you your image is intact. A consistent response you don’t like means you have some actions to take.

2. As your list of words grows, you’ll gain insight into the way people feel about your organization or department. Leaders have responsibilities for feelings as well as facts, and you might as well find out how people are feeling as they join your team. Waiting until later isn’t exactly stellar leadership behavior.

3. Keep track of whom you’ve asked, how they answered, and when you asked them. Use a milestone—four-to six-month anniversaries would work—and ask the question again: Now that you’ve been with us for a while, what one word would you use to describe our organization? Asking and comparing these answers will give you insight into the consistency of experience your people have as they become part of your team.

Don’t let the fact that my imagination was limited to three possibilities stunt your thought processes. What are other ways you could use this information? Think about it.

Some people live their lives as though joy were a very limited resource. As if they were allocated an amount at birth, squandered much of their share during childhood and must now, as responsible adults, hoard their remaining supply for some unspecified time in the future. Given these parameters, why would anyone in their right mind waste joy on work?

Let me think. Artists often do. Teachers do, I hope. The waiter at my favorite Wausau restaurant, The Back When Café, does. The vendors I do repeat business with do. The most successful leaders I’ve known do. The organizations that thrive, year in and year out, do. If you agree with the conventional wisdom that joy is an endangered species, then these people are fools. The day will come when they’ll simply run out of their allotment of joy—and won’t you have the last laugh then. However, what if they’re wrong? What if you run out of life with your allotment of joy untouched?

Work is a great place to express joy. If you look, you’ll see that there are so many little opportunities for happiness when you work with people you respect, do tasks that make a difference, and use the talents you’ve been given. If you read that and don’t agree that your job affords those possibilities, then you’re either in the wrong job or not paying attention. No matter which is true, you can and should make some changes.

Remember these thoughts as you listen to the answers to this question. Do people find joy in their work at your organization? What are the implications for you if they don’t? You can help people find joy in their work by showing them how what they do matters. Many people in today’s workplace have no idea how the things they do on a daily basis affect the success or failure of their organization. A receptionist needs to understand that the way he answers a phone could make or break the biggest deal your organization may ever have. A filing clerk needs to know that her daily efforts make it possible for the customer service team to respond quickly to a customer request. A pipe fitter deserves to look at the architect’s drawing and know that, because of her efforts, the building she’s working on will shelter the children at a daycare center. It is your job to help all team members understand the importance of their work. Do that and watch the joy spread.

Back to the money stuff. Well, one could argue that most of business is about the money stuff, but asking about the money often gets you to something more valuable. This question does that. Leaders ask this question to investigate, challenge, and assign responsibility. They use it to investigate the forgotten areas within their control but not in their view, to challenge people to think for themselves, and to let people know that they are expected to engage their brains on the job. Look at it this way. Pretend you don’t do the grocery shopping in your household. In fact, you very seldom even go into a grocery store. The balance in your checking account is running lower than usual, and you notice that the checks made out to the grocery store represent a significant percentage of your monthly expenditures. So you sit down and develop a strategy to lower your grocery cost and present your plan to the family shopper for implementation. If you had to guess, how’s that going to work for you?

Okay, try this approach. You catch the shopper as you walk through the kitchen and say, “You’re spending way too much at the grocery store. I expect to see smaller checks in the future.” And as you walk out of the room you add, “By the way don’t let the quality of our meals suffer.” Is that better?

Please tell me you didn’t think that either of these approaches would work well. Please tell me that, as you read the last two paragraphs, you were shaking your head and grinning. Unfortunately, we act that way at home way too often. This behavior (as expressed about grocery shopping, punishment for children, and other areas too numerous to mention) has far-reaching implications—ask any-one you know who’s gone through a divorce. Don’t kid yourself. If you do it at home, you do it at work.

The problem with this behavior (in case you’re not certain) is presuming that you know better than the person closest to the issue does. When you ask about saving the company money, you send a message that you expect and value your employees’ expertise because they’re the ones who do the work, day in and day out. Of course, the reasoning goes, they have ideas and I want—no, need—to hear them. The more you ask this question, the better the answers you get will be.

Believe it or not, there isn’t a right or wrong answer to this question. Leadership takes on different meanings depending on the person who leads and the people being led. On any given day, leadership can mean teaching, coaching, assigning, cheerleading, counseling, guiding, correcting, protecting, explaining, and observing. Leadership asks you to fill out forms, chair meetings, hold hands, explain decisions, think about the future, and resolve conflict. None of these actions or tasks will happen discretely; usually they’ll happen all at once. If you thought becoming the boss would give you more control of your time and tasks, think again. Like the new entrepreneur, you’ll discover that you have less control over your daily activities as you work to help and support the people you lead.

The trap I see new leaders fall into most often is the inability to see that their work has fundamentally changed. Since leaders are typically promoted because of their technical skills in an area—they were really good at dealing with customers so they were promoted to lead others who interact with customers—it is predictable that the new leader will continue to practice the skills that got them the promotion rather than understand that they have a whole new skill set to develop. No one has explained that their primary responsibility has shifted from doing to helping others do.

Since so few organizations provide the forum for discussing and learning leadership skills, you’re going to have to have the discussion with and for yourself. Start by asking yourself what leadership means. Review your opinions of those who led you in the past. What did you admire about their behaviors? What behaviors did they exhibit that actually got in the way of your doing your job?

Identify the best leader you know inside your organization and invite them to lunch. Ask them to describe their view of leadership and how they developed it. Then, seek the company of a leader you admire outside your organization and ask them the same questions. Compare the responses. You might be surprised by how much the culture of an organization influences perceptions about leadership. If you have the time and opportunity, have this same discussion with a few additional leaders. But, make sure you do at least two.

After your research is done, go back to the original question. What does leadership mean? and answer it for yourself. This is a pencil and paper answer. Write your own definition of leadership and post it where you can see in it your office, put it on the back of one of your business cards and carry it in your wallet, and make it the screensaver on your computer. Just don’t chisel it into stone. As you grow into your role as a leader, you’ll probably want to revise your definition. Not because your first answer was wrong, but because your later answers will be better for the experience you’ve gained.