Learning to Ask Better Questions

One of my students asked me last week, how do we learn to ask better questions.  Like most questions from my students this one stuck in my head for a while.  Most of us too often focus our energies on finding the ‘one correct answer’ as the pathway to being (and looking) smart, but it is the questions we ask that make us look smart and, over time, result in deep, life-long, sustainable learning.  What are the characteristics of good questions?

The listeners are impressed, broken out of their daily stupor of routine nonsense, when a question is creative, demonstrating an engage mind and imagination, a brain schooled in seeing both the taken-f0r-granted as choices (rather than given) and in making connections across topics that invite new, fresh, clear, creative perspectives and analysis.

As several of you pointed out, we can all google to find facts.  We are inundated with facts, but it is the creative question that focuses our attentions (grabs the audience, mobilizes the crowd) in ways that are disruptive and transformative, they turn facts into useful and meaningful information, breaking us out of intellectual ruts and revealing pathways to actionable knowledge we can apply to more productively thinking about some problem we want to address.

Good questions make us think. Asking good questions can make us persuasive without being argumentative.  We demonstrate a desire to hear and learn from others when we ask questions, and when these are good questions, we also impress them with our capacity to make us think, to see things in fresh ways, to (hopefully) reframe a challenge to point to creative win-win solutions.

Good questions are like treasure maps when we are lost.  When we running in circles, when the world is changing too fast for us to keep up, when we are pulling our hair out of our heads, lost in a sea of facts and bullshit and tort tales constructed by others with the intention of misleading us…we cannot stop the world from changing but we can redirect the conversation, re-channel our energies, reframe from paralysis to productivity (clear thinking, purposeful thinking and acting) by finding a good question and letting go of the soul-destroying search for ‘the right answer.’  Actively using a shift to focusing on questions-as-adventures rather than answers-as-endpoints, to turn from a self-defeating focus on quantitative output when it is a search for qualitative insight we need to carpe diem.

We should ask ourselves often, as a daily intellectual and emotional inventory, what questions have I been asking lately.  If we come up empty handed, it might be time to blow up our TVs.

There is no one way to learn anything, including how to ask better questions.  The key is that we are asking ourselves…how can I ask better questions?  What does this even mean to me anyway?

This attitude makes us seekers, curious, open to learning, listeners.  This attitude or posture or approach to living/thinking centers on creativity and imagination, not independent of facts or analysis, not left brain without right brain (not dualistic thinking), but a rediscovery of our own capacity to discern and understand the world we live in, however provisionally and, as we learn over time, to understand more and more deeply in collaboration with others. 

In this way, nurturing our ability to ask questions is like putting a marker down in our own internal conflict about what kind of person we want to become.  Do we want to become leaders in our own lives or settle into a comfortably numb existence as a normal worker-bee?   Asking good questions is a starting point, where learning starts and how it grows, both in volume and excitement.  Imagine.  Think outside the box.  Live the one life we get as an adventure, a journey designed to seize each day and deepen our understanding of the world we live in, to lead us to wisdom in our old age.

On a more basic level, we learn to ask good questions by cultivating our own natural curiosity.  Others are often impressed by good questions, because it demonstrates curiosity and an actively engaged imagination seeking to find a pathway to meaningful discovery and innovation.  This is why the first step of the scientific method is the formulation of your research question.  Stumbling here (or skipping this step entirely) is a failure of imagination and a rejection of a life of the mind.

It is my hope and intention that my students this term have already experienced my class as an ongoing demonstration of how to pull, push, prod more creative, interesting, challenging and illuminating questions out of the materials we have read and discussed.  I do this because this is how I think and live and engage in our world and I see it as my responsibility to help students learn to ask their own questions, to encourage us all to become leaders in our own life, to push back when our questions are ‘just the usual suspects,’ to help each other see hidden connections, understand how power works, and actively take ownership of our own life adventure by discovering the value of critical thinking.

We can (and do) strengthen our capacity to create better questions in a variety of ways.  When we play games well, we strategize and maneuver and engage with opponents doing the same, and this active and energetic searching for new ways of thinking about the same old problems (how to play this or that hand of Euchre or attack a zone, how to best prepare garden soil or select the best player in a draft).

We do the same at work, even in routine tasks, when we suddenly realize we were asking the wrong question and discover the perfect way to present this data in a spreadsheet or power point presentation.

If we step back and think about these everyday moments, we see that we (1) have done the work over time to become very knowledgeable about the game (rules, strategies, resources, etc) and (2) we brainstorm in our heads: Will this work?  With that? What if I tried this? Maybe I am thinking about this in entirely the wrong way, what if…?  And this process of prototyping in our heads often results in finding a better question, sparking a new way of thinking about the challenge. 

If you play cards or chess or athletics…champions do not go into these contests with one fixed right answer in their mind (or with an attitude/perspective focused on finding the ‘one right answer’), but rather with a good understanding of the game and a flexible, agile mind, ready to exploit any opportunity, even those we could not anticipate before it is game on.  Champions combine the study and concentration that results in understanding the rules of the game with an equally important capacity to create, to imagine what the worker-bee participants cannot see, and this is—in a different arena—the process of learning to ask better questions.

The reason I refer to this as learning to live and appreciate a life of the mind, is because we want to internalize this capacity to ask better question, inquire, probe, investigate, examine.  If we can do this we have added an important new tool to our intellectual tool box, preparing us to learn and succeed in any context, no matter how challenging or unfamiliar.  We are less likely to live lives of fear, afraid of the unfamiliar.  We are more likely to become effective problem solvers and community leaders.  We will laugh as deeply and as often as we weep, and both will become signs of a life well lived.

From the Harvard Business Review…

Every leader I know has at least one need in common: a need to connect honestly with others. One way to help foster improved connections is by asking good questions. Leaders who excel at asking good questions have honed an ability to cut to the heart of the manner in a way that disarms the person being interviewed and opens the door for genuine conversation.

Whether they are talking to customers, interviewing job candidates, talking to their bosses, or even questioning staff, executives need to draw people out. And so often, it is not a matter of what you ask, it is how you ask it. Here are some suggestions.

Be curious. Executives who do all the talking are those who are deaf to the needs of others. Sadly, some managers feel that being the first and last person to speak is a sign of strength. In reality, though, it's the opposite. Such behavior is closer to that of a blowhard who may be insecure in his own abilities, but is certain of one thing — his own brilliance. Such an attitude cuts off information at its source, from the very people — employees, customers, vendors — whom you should trust the most. Being curious is essential to asking good questions.

Be open-ended. Leaders should ask questions that get people to reveal not simply what happened, but also what they were thinking. Open-ended questions prevent you from making judgments based on assumptions, and can elicit some surprising answers. In his autobiography, talk show host Larry King recalls asking Martin Luther King, who had just been arrested for seeking to integrate a hotel in Florida, what he wanted. To which King replied, "My dignity." Using what, how and why questions encourages dialogue.

Be engaged. When you ask questions, act like you care. Yes, act — show that you are interested with affirmative facial expressions and engaged body language. This sets up further conversation and gets the individual to reveal information that could be important. For example, if you are interviewing a job candidate you want to encourage him or her to talk about not only accomplishments but also setbacks. An interested interviewer will get the person to talk in depth about how he or she rebounded from failure. That trait is worthy of consideration in recruiting. But interviewees will only open open up — especially on sensitive subjects — if you actively show interest.

Dig deeper. So often executives make the mistake of assuming all is well if they are not hearing bad news. Big mistake. It may mean employees are afraid to offer up anything but good news, even if it means stonewalling. So when information surfaces in your dialogue, dig for details without straying into recrimination. Get the whole story. Remember, problems on your team are, first and foremost, your problems.

Not every conversation need be on point and under the gun. There will be times when you'll need a more solicitous tone and a more leisurely pace, especially when coaching an employee or listening carefully to a customer concern. There, taking your time might be most appropriate.

Asking good questions, and doing so in spirit of honest information gathering and eventual collaboration, is good practice for leaders. It cultivates an environment where employees feel comfortable discussing issues that affect both their performance and that of the team. And that, in turn, creates a foundation for deepening levels of trust.

John Baldoni is a leadership consultant, coach, and speaker. He is the author of eight books, including Lead Your Boss, The Subtle Art of Managing Up.

Punishing Harm-Creators
Everyone grieves for the three killed and many injured in the 2013 Marathon Bombing. Most watched the manhunt closely and cheered with the residents of Watertown when the second suspect was captured after extra-ordinary efforts by multiple law enforcement agencies.

On Wednesday of the same week a massive explosion at a Texas fertilizer plant killed at least 14 and injured many more. But this story was pushed off the front page by a story about a lesser harm in Boston. There was no televised manhunt for the corporate CEO or Texas state government official who opposed efforts to regulate who might be responsible.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (a very conservative figure) 4,609 Americans died as a result of workplace injuries in 2011. But no manhunt and no celebration of heroic law enforcement efforts to hold those responsible accountable for the harm they caused.

After explaining that regulatory efforts and market (internalizing externalities) approaches are needed but insufficient, the author (1989, Economic& Political Weekly) argues that we need to reframe the conversation and redefine the corporate negligence that causes serious harm to people, families and communities as a criminal act.

“The primary cause of most industrial mass disasters can be shown to be in the negligent acts of specific individuals within the corporation. It is argued that such negligence is not to be understood merely as a lapse on the part of those particular individuals, but is in fact a manifestation of the normal attitude required of corporate functionaries; that this peculiarly modern form of ‘institutional irresponsibility’ is precisely the problem we are up against, and that criminal sanctions offer the most appropriate and the only effective means of ensuring a high sense of responsibility on the part of corporate functionaries whose decisions have the power to jeopardize people’s lives (711).”

Data from an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association by Dr. Barbara Starfield of the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health uses the best available data (oddly, the CDC list of leading causes of deaths does not include this) to estimate there are 225,000 iatrogenic (meaning patient deaths caused by a doctor) deaths per year in the US.

Disclaimer: I love our family doctor as much as the next person and I am thankful for the care she provides in our times of need. I am also thankful for the prosperity made possible through private sector innovation, including much innovation that takes place within large corporations. Further, I believe that most, or even nearly all, of our doctors and corporate leaders love their children and strive to be good parents, partners, and community members. None of this, however, erases the harms and our responibility to do our best to prevent them...including doing as much to prevent these, or punish those responsible when we fail to prevent these, as we do against other harm-creators like the marathon bombers, street thugs, and minor drug users.

An article in Medical News Today cites a study by HealthGrades, a healthcare firm, concluding that an average of 195,000 preventable patient deaths in the US (2000-2002) were caused by in-hospital medical errors, with an associated cost of $6 billion.

But, instead of manhunts for corporate leaders and doctors responsible for causing much larger, and routine, harms we hear politicians in Texas proudly call for less regulation of corporate health and safety practices and politicians all over the country calling for ‘tort reform’ to reduce the capacity of the average citizen to hold these elites accountable for the harms they routinely cause.

Nurturing Fact-Resistant Organisms

Cass R. Sunstein’s summary of a recent study of political belief formation is worth a read.  The study was conducted by Brendan Nyhan of Dartmouth College.  Here is Sunstein’s summary and his interesting commentary, with my comments at the end.

Cass R. Sunstein: Well-informed and close-mindedApril 17,2013 10:50 PM GMTCass R. SunsteinBloomberg View Copyright � 2013 Bloomberg View. All rights reserved. One group of participants was provided with a 2009 news article in which Sarah Palin claimed that the Barack Obama administration’s Affordable Care Act created death panels and that these panels included bureaucrats authorized to decide whether seniors were “worthy of health care.” A separate group was given the same news story, but with an appended correction saying that “nonpartisan health care experts have concluded that Palin is wrong.”

The study’s big question: Would the correction have any effect? Would people who saw the correction be less likely to believe that the Affordable Care Act calls for death panels?

Not surprisingly, the correction was more likely to convince people who viewed Palin unfavorably than those who had a high opinion of her. Notably, the correction also tended to sway the participants who liked Palin but who didn’t have a lot of political knowledge (as measured by their answers to general questions, such as how many terms a president may serve).

Here’s the most interesting finding in the study. Those who viewed Palin favorably, and who also had a lot of political knowledge, were not persuaded by the correction. On the contrary, it made them more likely to believe Palin was right.

This finding presents an intriguing puzzle. While the correction tended to convince Palin supporters who lacked political knowledge that she was wrong about death panels, it generally failed to persuade Palin supporters who had such knowledge. For those supporters, the correction actually backfired. How come?

There are two explanations, and they tell us a lot about current political controversies — and about why the U.S. and other nations remain so badly polarized. The first is that if you know a lot about politics, you are more likely to be emotionally invested in what you believe. Efforts to undermine or dislodge those beliefs might well upset you and therefore backfire. The second explanation is that if you have a lot of political knowledge, you are more likely to think you know what is really true, and it will be pretty hard for people to convince you otherwise.

The general lesson is both straightforward and disturbing. People who know a lot, and who trust a particular messenger, might well be impervious to factual corrections, even if what they believe turns out to be false.

It is important to distinguish between two kinds of political “validators”: the expected and the surprising. For informed listeners, certain messengers will be hopelessly ineffective and maybe even counterproductive, not because of what they say, but because of who they are. When Democrat Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader, argues that climate change is a serious problem, or when Republican John Boehner, the House speaker, contends that increases in the minimum wage will reduce employment, their messages are expected and to that extent uninformative. Skeptics are more likely to yawn than to shift their own views.

But some political validators are surprising. If Boehner suddenly announced that climate change is an urgent problem that needed to be addressed, or if former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton proclaimed that increases in the minimum wage are a terrible idea because they would reduce employment, skeptics might well stop and notice, even if they are well-informed.

Consider Republican Sen. Rob Portman’s recent expression of support for same-sex marriage. That statement was newsworthy, and may have moved people, precisely because he was a Republican. (It is interesting to wonder whether the message was strengthened or weakened by the knowledge that Portman’s son is gay.)

There is a clear implication here for those who provide information. Balanced presentations may divide people even more sharply than before, and factual corrections may backfire. When people begin with clear convictions, efforts to correct their errors may have the perverse effect of entrenching them — at least if the messengers aren’t seen as credible.

The most important lesson may be for those who receive political information. Sure, it is important to consider the source, but the content matters, as well. Our favorite messengers are sometimes wrong and our least favorite messengers are sometimes right. It’s sometimes worthwhile to pay a lot more attention to what is being said, and a lot less to the identity of the person who is saying it.

Interesting, right?  It occurred to me that there is also a third possible explanation, which then suggests additional lessons as well.

Few of us reject the idea that corporations are powerful political actors; recognizing, for instance, in the recent gun control debate that their influence overcame a position that 90% of Americans support.  Similarly, few of us reject the notion that the mass media is a powerful tool for driving public opinion.  With that in mind, I suggest one step further to consider a third explanation for the data Sunstein provides:  Fox News. 

Of course, Fox News is just the vanguard, but it serves as an accurate condensation symbol for my third explanation.  In short, with Fox News at the forefront, we have been witnesses a concerted assault on public opinion for decades through the formation of an alternative information production system designed to ‘inform’ people with information packaged in ways that lead them to business-friendly, often erroneous, conclusions. 

Thus, we have a population who are attentive to the news, as a good citizen should be, but the more news they consume the less informed they are, even though they do know more ‘facts’ (so they register as more ‘informed’) and these facts are organized into coherent, if misleading, stories that make death panels or the litigation explosion ‘obviously true’ and thus resistant to new facts or argumentation.

Interdependence Day
Another terrorist attack turned the celebration at the Boston Marathon into a nightmare of death and destruction.  We live in an interdependent world.  We cannot expect to 'hard power' our way to safety, because living in a free society depends on being able to trust that most of those on the street with us are not preparing a military assault against us. 

And we need our leaders to get serious, toss out the crazies in their own parties, and work together.  We all want our government, our president, our congress, to succeed.  We used to be a beacon on the planet for the idea that conflicts can be worked out peacefully, democratically, together.  We need to recover that spirit and change the game...finding out way back to our national pastime, instead of allowing the lowest common denomintors among us to set the agenda, determine our targets, and turn our national pastime into just another cheap shot fest.