In the heat of a crisis, this question - What is needed here? - is a simple and powerful tool to guide our leadership. 

Greg Mullins, former NSW Fire Commissioner, reflected over the weekend on the leadership he had seen in working with multiple Prime Ministers (Howard, Abbott, Rudd, Gillard), across many disasters (NZ earthquake, Japanese earthquake and tsunami, Indian Ocean tsunami, Lindt Café Siege).

“I watched Prime Ministers step up into leadership roles and they were asking constantly: What’s needed? … there was no political partisanship… I’m not seeing (this from Prime Minister Scott Morrison). And I don’t understand it.”

Asking “What is needed here?” is a powerful leadership tool for three reasons: