Questions without answers

Peter Drucker once said “One does not begin with answers. One begins by asking “What are our questions ?” “

Asking profound questions opens up possibilities. Obviously, we are not talking about the yes-or-no questions or the “what-do-you-think ?” question that comes at the end of a long-winded here-is-what-I-think-and-given-my-expertise-that-is-probably-as-close-as-you-can-get-to-the-correct-answer.

What happens when you ask a question where there is no obvious or immediate answer ? Have you ever been in a situation where a difficult question was asked and you could “see people think” ? That is what happens when people are faced with tough questions. They think. And when people think, their brain gets to work, because the human brain is programmed to look for answers. If we are struggling with a really tough subject, the brain will even continue to work unconsciously (like when we’re showering or jogging, or even sleeping). Neurons will fire wildly and connections will get strengthened or new ones will get formed. New connections lead to new thoughts and we are bringing innovative insights to the problem (see Warren Berger who blogs on questions and innovation), either through conscious reflection or unconscious brain activity. This means our brain is learning !

Asking profound questions leads to thinking and learning.  There is an art is to asking the type of question that makes people think. Less artful but probably more challenging is to allow silence to reign while the thinking-learning takes place. The brain will not be able to focus on the question at hand if it is bombarded with other stimuli. In the fast-paced business environment, we are uncomfortable with silence because it seems it is a non-productive phase. The opposite is true. When a handful of brains are thinking and learning about a difficult problem, much more progress is being made than when people are rambling away and “sharing”  their “expert knowledge”.

So next time you ask a question, and you see the person in front of you think … Shut up !

Forget about team building !

Team building is very popular in Asia. Companies will send their teams a few days up-country doing bungee jumps, going down on rafts or building structures from plastic straws. These exercises are about teams and trust and sharing responsibilities. And there are a lot of pictures to be shared with friends and family (and Facebook).

Are these team building exercises fun ? For sure. In fact, they are so much more fun than spending a day at work ! Are these exercises helpful ? If you are in the business of building structures from plastic straws, your team might indeed pick up interesting insights. But will the team members refer to the bungee experience next time they are facing a stressful deadline to finish a project ? Will they think about the raft when there are conflicts in the organization ? Will they look back at the consultants’ teaching material that was supposed to be the backbone of the team building exercise ? I think you know the answer.

You don’t build teams by taking them out of their context and doing things that are opposite to their role in the organization. You build teams by helping people to learn together.

 

I lead workshops, using a question-based approach, where team members discover new knowledge about each other and themselves.

Learning about each other. Asking questions is a great way to get to know newcomers to the team, but also to discover unknown dimensions of someone you have worked with side-by-side for several years. Some conversations go deep, others bring bursts of laughter !

Learning from each other. Rather than learning from a guru or a consultant, team members have  conversations about their practical experiences and bring interesting insights. They learn from one another and they teach to one another. “I never thought about this issue in the way the other person described her experience and she gave me a very easy way to deal better with it in the future” was one testimony from a workshop participant.

Learning with each other. Using the input decided by the company (customer feedback, company objectives or areas for improvement), the team creates and develops anything from a one-month action plan to a 2-year roadmap. The level of team ownership, and therefore commitment, is very different from sitting into the boss’ yearly “here’s our plan” meeting sessions !  

If you want to reward your team or take some relaxing time off, by all means have fun in the outdoors doing crazy things. Enjoy the pictures. But don’t fool yourself thinking this will help your team work differently together. That is something that needs to be learned …