Why would you ask this question? Why do you ask any question? Questions are asked in order to learn. This question goes to the heart of the philosophy that believes that people aren’t born to be great leaders; they’re great leaders because they’ve learned to lead.

(A note of caution for this and the next question. Don’t ask these questions if you and your organization don’t have the intention or the systems in place to provide learning and support activities for newly promoted leaders. It just isn’t fair.)

If I had to guess, I’d predict you’re going to hear answers that range from “I don’t know” to “Here’s my list.” Think about your responses to answers that fill that spectrum as I share a few of my ideas.

The person who responds with a list of leadership behaviors they want or need to learn about needs help with prioritizing. If you don’t help them focus their leadership learning objectives, they will quickly become overwhelmed by the scope of all they believe they don’t know. They need your guidance so they can pick one behavior or skill to work on first. Based on your understanding of the group this person is about to lead and their current leadership skill set, make a few suggestions about places to start as well as what resources are available. Be prepared to follow up with them in fairly short order to make sure they’ve kept focused and not fallen into the “I’m so overwhelmed I can’t do anything” trap.

A response of “I’m not sure yet” requires more questions. You need to help this new leader explore the scope of good leadership skills and find a way to discover where they should start their leadership learning plan. If you’ve asked, What did the best leader you ever had do?, you have some insight into this person’s view of good leadership, and you can use that answer as a starting place.

A straight-on “I don’t know” response to this question means you’ve got some work on your hands. My first concern would be to see if this new leader is taking their new role seriously enough. I’d hope that anyone who was stepping into their first leadership position would have spent some time thinking about what they needed to learn in order to become an effective leader. Trying not to let my obvious negative judgment show (that’s probably something you wouldn’t have to deal with, would you?), I’d indicate that we need to continue this conversation for a while until the right follow-up steps become obvious.

An aside. If you have influence over your organization’s training programs, this question should make you curious about how you prepare leaders in your organization. This would be a perfect time to find out.