My greatest motivation has always been to understand other people's reasoning. We think in different ways and that's why finding a solution to a problem can take many different paths, even if the conclusion is the same. Knowing how to blend everyone's knowledge is an art that requires empathy, active listening and the flexibility to change your mind many times during the process. For me, this art begins with questions and answers. When I go into meetings, I'm more interested in listening to the questions asked and asking myself why they are relevant and what makes a question change the course of a project.
It's easy to see each person's bias during this process: the CEO with years of experience in finance who always focuses on questions about the return on actions and the end result, the sales leader who brings his retail vision and difficulties in selling out to questions about the process, about how we will achieve these results. These are ways of thinking built up over years of experience, so how do we get out of this trap of the past?
Those who ask can have access to different information or other discussion forums and contribute a strategic vision, in which case seeing the bigger picture can shorten or revise paths. It's also quite common for people new to the team to be the source of interesting questions about the current way of working; active listening can take advantage of this moment to implement improvements in established processes. But the ideal is to build diverse teams, where individual experiences generate relevant questions based on their different backgrounds, profiles and interests.
It's clear that stimulating questions in the workplace is a great source of value for companies: it creates connections and stimulates learning, reduces risk by including other points of view and promotes more assertive decision-making, so why isn't it so simple? The answer is because we're not trained for it.
In some professions, asking questions is taught and encouraged right from college. Doctors are trained to question their patients about symptoms and thus discover the root cause behind an apparent headache. Journalists spend years perfecting their way of asking questions, of making their interlocutor comfortable in order to find that scoop. Lawyers learn to question their witnesses in order to extract the most useful truth. But few executives see asking questions as a skill to be perfected.
The good thing is that there are techniques for making questions more effective. Just as in a market research questionnaire, in real life, there is also the right tone, the ideal sequence and the right time to ask an open-ended question. These are just 3 of the many techniques cited by Prof. Leslie John in her article for HBR magazine. She also states that paying attention to all of this is only possible if we put aside our ego, our desire to impress others with our solution, with our thoughts; if we are really interested in making a contribution.
A widespread method in companies for getting to the root cause of a problem is the 'fishbone' method, usually used in workshops. You shouldn't stop at the first answer, but question the problem 5 times (always starting with a why) to really understand it. These additional questions are also useful in everyday life and a way of showing interest that opens up the conversation to a greater connection, to an informal tone that facilitates discussion. When we talk about brainstorming in companies, people already feel more relaxed, they are allowed to say what comes to mind, they are allowed to make mistakes, this same behavior should be adopted when asking these additional questions, no one will have answers, but together, they can arrive at a true insigth. On the other hand, if you are preparing for a meeting with a more challenging tone, the ideal is to anticipate the questions and avoid an impromptu speech.
Finding the ideal sequence for questions was the subject of a study by psychologist Arthur Aron, whose article went viral after being analyzed on the Modern Love podcast. In it, pairs of people were asked to answer 36 questions ranging from superficial to more intimate. In the end, the pairs who followed the proposed questionnaire liked each other more than those who simply interacted without any guidance (called the control group). If your intention is to build relationships, the study suggests starting with simpler questions until you 'tackle' the more complex issues, which is a good way to establish the trust needed to arrive at a solution together. This doesn't apply to more tense and competitive meetings, where you can't ignore the 'elephant in the room' and have to get on with the main course.
Finally, open questions work best when you want to explore a subject, open up a dialog, when you have time to look for new ways forward. This is where much of the innovation lies.
Creativity depends on new information, and well-crafted questions promote more effective interactions and lead the group down a new path. The source of questions is always the natural curiosity of the human being and to maintain it, you need to have the joy and courage to ask questions.
HBR: https://hbr.org/2018/05/the-surprising-power-of-questions
NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/11/style/modern-love-to-fall-in-love-with-anyone-do-this.html
