Smart leaders ask interesting questions. Questions often ignored by many; asked by a few.

Here are a handful of questions to help you bridge the gap from cubicle to community.

Your mileage may vary but I wonder which ones might work for you?

What would happen if we:

1. Connected disconnected pieces to show the “big picture?”
2. Created a visual map making it easy for everyone to know where we’re headed?
3. Shared more success stories?
4. Showed stories of how problems were solved?
5. Showed stories of how ideas failed?
6. Learned to be more trusting?
7. Invited employees to share their personal leadership tips?
8. Listened by asking what matters most to them?
9. Simplified complex business ideas with personal experiences?
10. Encouraged and told stories that point to something bigger than ourselves?
11. Presented more personality and humanized our company?
12. Started thinking “community” instead of “corporate?”
13. Saw or heard stories of leaders capturing our imaginations?
14. Told employees why we are in business in the first place?
15. Demonstrated our values in action when recruiting potential candidates?
16. Stopped using or creating strategies that don’t work?
17. Simplified things?
18. Considered today as the first day we had a communications department?
19. Integrated employees regularly in our communications?

What about you? What questions have you used to drive employee conversations?

Veteran producer and communications specialist Thomas Clifford helps Fortune 100's to non-profits breathe life into their brand story. He believes remarkable organizations deserve remarkable films.

In this clip, after introducing the idea that the system has suffered a heart attack, he goes on to round off the point with a 3-part list - and it's worth remembering that his PhD was in economics, not medicine (or rhetoric):

CABLE: This was an enormous shock to the system - a big economic heart attack - so it's not surprising that a lot of damage has been done ...

[1] ... we've got a patient that's in intensive care,

[2] it's been rescued from a disastrous heart attack

[3] but it still needs the monetary steroids.

Here's a British blogger who's found in an impromptu speech a brilliant metaphor that makes a complex topic vivid and immediate: the speaker forgets the complex, specialized language of economics and uses the language that most of us speak. Found via @OliviaMitchell at Twitter.

Next time you prepare your presentation,make it more personal, include a story involving you.

"It used to be that women thought they had to check their personalities at the door. But the more you need to hide, the less fulfilled you'll be. We need to bring more of ourselves into that door, into our workspace, so we feel more at home. " Charlene Li (Co-author of Groundswell, thought leader on emerging technologies)

Why Personality matters?

When people start talking about what happens to them, they become real. You can identify and you feel connected, closer. I am not speaking about disclosing your private life and secret garden, but moving from strictly professional to "more of YOU" into your professional life.

A great post from Marion Chapsal's blog. She's directed it to women speakers, but I think there's something here for all of us. Go to the whole post for some great presentations that take the argument further and show that you really can make a difference.

The professors digitized 14 Christie novels (and included two more available in the Gutenberg online text archive), and then, with the aid of textual-analysis software, analyzed them for "vocabulary size and richness," an increase in repeated phrases (like "all sorts of") and an uptick in indefinite words ("anything," "something") — linguistic indicators of the cognitive deficits typical of Alzheimer's disease.

From The Ninth Annual Year in Ideas - Magazine - NYTimes.com, an indication of why verbal precision can be important. I've always been a fan of "indefinite words." My computer is full of files with "stuff" and "junk" in their names and my conversation is full of this kind of imprecision, too. Guess I better watch out.

Tom Peters' Leadership Thoughts: Listening

I don't know what I like more--Peters and his idea or this Twitter post from @OliviaMitchell that led me to the video:

Take your audience with you on a wave of passion - watch the master Tom Peters