Building Culture: Principle 5

A nine-part introduction to the Principles of Culture Principle 5: A Questioning Attitude is Cultivated 

Author: Lisa Lande, Ph.D.

We are well on our road to more fully understanding the principles that lay at the heart of healthy culture creation, moving now to Culture Principle 5, A Questioning Attitude is Cultivated. As you well know if you are an avid reader of my posts, we have already visited Principles 8 (A healthy respect is maintained for what can go wrong and what must go right), Principle 7 (Hazards are identified for every task, every time), and Principle 6 (Learning never stops). Yes, we're working backwards.

Because culture is formed as an aggregate of each one of us, lets reflect for a moment on how well we personally encourage a questioning attitude within our organizations. For those of us who regularly question and encourage others to do the same, let me speak for the rest of us and applaud you here. For those of us who tend to dismiss, discourage, or disparage the question and maybe even the questioner, please take this as an opportunity to reflect on what may be motivating such a reaction. Consider asking yourself (indirect pun intended) - and then reflecting on the answer - why others questions rub you the wrong way? If the act of having to actually think about the answer is what perturbs you, well then this Principle may be a bit more challenging for you to honor indeed. But I urge you to make the effort. Because the benefits of working through those barriers, so that you too can cultivate a questioning attitude, are pretty big. They include rewards like greater credibility, employee satisfaction and retention, improved teaming, and oh, there's also significantly stronger organizational performance to top it off. Did I mention safety yet? Because encouraging others to observe and question the full functionality of their work environment, as well as their own and their colleagues mental and emotional space, is clearly at the heart of it too. If these outcomes seem a good incentive to make an effort to cultivate a questioning attitude, well then success is yours for the taking. So let's get to it.

Principle 5. A questioning attitude is cultivated 

In the last release, I mentioned an article that had been written as part of the Innovation Series of Los Alamos National Lab’s National Security Science publication. In it, Deputy Director for Weapons Bob Webster, offered a powerful update on LANL's place in the world of innovation. In that piece, Bob recited these words from the great Robert Oppenheimer (theoretical physicist, father of the nuclear bomb, and first Director of Los Alamos National Laboratory): “There is no place for dogma in science. The scientist is free, and must be free, to ask any question, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors.” I noted then and repeat now, that the elements needed to flame the fires of innovation are the exact same as those necessary for healthy culture to flourish. We must encourage the question, no matter how inconvenient, annoying, or even unnecessary it might seem. The cultural enhancement currently pursued at LANL and across the broader Complex requires a climate where no question is or is made to appear stupid, where no person is powerful enough to go unquestioned, and where we hire only those individuals urgently committed to the art and science of the question. We must do this if we wish to engage and retain our talent. We must do this if we wish to remain the stars of innovation. We must do this to be the leaders of Nations. Put simply, it is within the question asked that the answer is found. Somehow then, we must find the strength of character to first recognize, then overcome, and most certainly forgive our own human insecurities that may at times urge us to shut down the question because it is perceived as a real or imagined threat to our own wisdom, purpose, power, or sense of control.

Here are a few recommendations that may help each of us behave in a way that more consistently honors this Principle:

1. Make asking open-ended questions a habit. If you first role-model the act of thoughtfully questioning procedures, plans, and protocols to ensure their validity and robustness, others in turn will recognize it is an acceptable and even desired behavior that they too should emulate. Consider questions like “Are we missing anything here?” “Have we identified all unintended consequences if we follow this course of action?” By asking investigative questions of this nature, you not only advance your own credibility as a conscientious leader and demonstrate appropriate humility, you send the meta-message that asking questions is a desired behavior.

2. Actively encourage others to demonstrate a questioning attitude. Just as you will be asking more questions about the work to be done or done already, take a few minutes to solicit and even encourage questions from others. You can do so by posing simple questions like, “What do you want to ask that you haven’t yet?” and making comments like, “There are no stupid questions here, so please ask away. I promise someone else in this room hasn’t thought about it or doesn’t know the answer either.” By comfortably encouraging others to question, encourages people to think, to engage, to act accountably. More, demonstrating an open and welcoming attitude to questions, even those asked of your own leadership or organizational decisions, builds trust. And trust stands as the backbone of all things good when it comes to healthy culture and productivity, serving too as a major contributor to psychological safety – a sense that one is included and welcome, and behaves confidently with no fear of recrimination. A great deal of research has been done to isolate the contributors of strong team performance, and this concept of psychological safety ranked as top dog. (Please see Duhigg's work to learn more about the power of psychological safety on team effectiveness and organizational performance.) Psychological safety matters. And know that trust factors in just as strongly in the attainment of operational safety, where one wants to be confident that the risk of physical injury is well controlled, or better yet non-existent, in the work environment. 

3. Be comfortable with empty air space, allow time for people to ask their questions. We’ve all been in a presentation or meeting when the speaker ends by asking, “Are there any questions?” but before one even has time to blink let alone organize a question, the speaker has already moved on to a new topic. We diminish our effort to encourage a questioning attitude if we fail to actually leave time for the question to be asked in the first place. Remember to leave room for people to respond, and build your own comfort with 10 seconds of dead air-space. If you don’t treat the pause as awkward, neither will your audience. And actually, well managed pauses convey speaker confidence and respect for the audience, so it advances your credibility to boot. People typically need a moment to formulate their question or time to build up the courage to ask it, so just let that pregnant pause become a common approach you use to get another to fill the space. More often than not, they will. And if they don’t, just move on. One word of caution however: If no questions ever get asked despite your best efforts to solicit and pause, then this could be an indication that the culture – and maybe even you as part of it – has discouraged a questioning attitude with employees past experience being retribution in the past for asking questions. And retribution could be something as seemingly minor as having the question belittled, talked over, or dismissed. But it’s never too late to make the change, though it will just require your consistent and conscious effort to do so.

4. Reframe the poorly positioned question into a sound one.  In an Institution of great minds and competitive spirits, it is sometimes quite challenging to find the question in what otherwise would seem much more like a call to battle. When those shooting arrows thinly veiled as questions are thrown at you, it is critical that you avoid the provocation. And this is often much easier said than done. It requires a great deal of inner confidence and poise, which in the face of attack can be incredibly difficult to cultivate and maintain. But the benefits of doing so are huge, first for your own credibility as a leader and second for the benefit of the healthy culture you are helping to shape. An effective way to manage these veiled attacks and simultaneously manage the emotions that they can naturally provoke, is to engage your analytical mind (your cerebral cortex, also known as the “thinking brain”) as quickly as possible by giving it a task. This may help to short-circuit the emotional response that stems from our amygdala (our emotional brain center, also known as the “emotional brain”). It is natural for humans to have an emotional response in a situation where we perceive threat, but it can undermine our best efforts if we can’t override them in order to proceed rationally. Some of us have an easier time of this than others.

Here’s the strategy in a nutshell:

First, to get your cerebral cortex engaged and begin the short circuit of your amygdala, it is important to acknowledge and then label the emotion the questioner may have provoked (“Wow…that was a totally rude way to ask a question. I’m annoyed.”)

Second, consciously conduct your task, focusing on the identification of the objective question and also now completely relying on your thinking brain (“Okay, so what is this guy really asking here?”).

Third, reframe the heart of the question into a rational, objective one and play it back to your questioner. Framing your question with an opening phrase like, “Help me out here: I think what you are asking is…Is that correct?” or “Are you asking…? Is that correct?” Playing the question back to the questioner in an appropriate and objectively positioned way allows you to bypass the potential power struggle that ensues when emotions rule. The reward for doing so is again your credibility, as well as more promising likelihood you will achieve a collaborative, psychologically safe, and balanced workspace that fosters healthy culture and optimizes productivity. One important point to make: controlling emotion doesn’t remove emotion. Passion, conflict, and intensity exist and are even desired and necessary within a healthy culture. In a healthy culture, these emotions are channeled and applied constructively within a trusting environment where all pursue commonly held objectives.

 The Next Article: Cutting edge science requires cutting edge safety

8. A healthy respect is maintained for what can go wrong and must go right

7. Hazards are identified and evaluated for every task, every time 

6. Learning never stops  

5. A questioning attitude is cultivated 

4. Cutting edge science requires cutting edge safety 

3. Staff raise safety concerns because trust permeates the organization 

2. All staff value the safety legacy they create in their discipline 

1. Everyone is personally responsible for ensuring safe operations