Many times your employees will try to get away with bullshiting about tasks they have had to do. Like, “did you call our potential clients who were interested last year?” – “yes, I called like half of them already”. This is clear bullshit and you can’t simply leave it like that. Best thing here is to ask simple questions: who did you call? what did they say? when exactly do you call others? etc.

Or different example, our operations manager is preparing shopping list. You take a look at it and ask: i) why we need this item? ii) why 3kg of this? iii) how much we needed last time? If he will give you answer that makes sense, all you have to say is Thank you! and be happy you have great people working for you.
Unfortunately, most of the time this is not the case.

All the simple questions (how many? when? who? how much? why?) will help you challenge your people without being offensive. You simply show, you care more and want to go deeper to understand.

More importantly, when they will become used to fact the you’re asking them these questions all the time, they will start to ask them themselves (to prepare for your questioning) – thus they will start challenging themselves.

This will help you tremendously as your people will get much more effective and start thinking about what and why they are doing.
Guaranteed.