Question the Questions You Ask

My favorite quote is from the poet Ranier Maria Rilke from Letters to a Young Poet; it has been my favorite quote for as long as I can remember and has stuck with me through the years.

I beg you...to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given you now, because you would not be able to live them, and the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now, perhaps then someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer...

My relationship and my love for the message of my favorite quote has evolved and morphed several times over the years and it has led me to one inevitable conclusion: the quality of questions we ask determines the trajectory of our lives and our careers.

Questions have many purposes and many levels, what I would like to invite you to do is question the questions you ask. Do your questions reflect your expertise and your mastery? Do you ask questions of self-reflection or lessons learned? Do you ask how you can reframe a situation to be positive or beneficial? Do you question motivations, assumptions and beliefs...both yours and your organizations? Do you ask questions to challenge conventional wisdom and expand possibility? Do you ask questions that help others to find answers for themselves that lead them to a new path?

When I worked at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services I had the privilege of working with Claude Allen, who was Deputy Secretary at the time. In that position, I had the privilege of learning so many valuable leadership lessons from great leaders from style and substance to persuasiveness and subject matter expertise, but working with Claude changed my professional life. He asked GREAT questions. He led through challenging what was with insightful questions, long-range vision, and a gentle curiosity I had not encountered before or since. When I was unsure of the next steps he asked me questions to guide and expand the reach of where I was and let me find my own way and style to arrive at the right solutions.

A few years before working at HHS, I had stumbled across a book QBQ! The Question Behind the Question by John G. Miller. It was not life changing, but it was the first time I was introduced to the power of questions and how some questions are inherently disempowering while others can be empowering. Toward the end Miller posits that the best leaders are not problem solvers, they are problem givers. That letting people tackle problems, design solutions and take actions on what they learn is really the most valuable service a leader can offer.

There is more power in the questions we ask than the answers we give. The quality of the questions we ask determines the depth of our abilities, knowledge and insight. Curiosity is the most underrated skill in the marketplace...and in our lives today. Curiosity creates space for creativity, possibility, unfolding what we already know and ways to play with what we know in new ways.

In these uncertain times, more than ever, we need leaders willing to ask the hard questions. We need people willing to question assumptions. We need people who have the capacity and the skill to ask the questions that will create a vision of a new viable and sustainable future. Look for the great questions. Ask the questions you are really curious about, ask the questions that hold the power.

Question the questions you ask yourself, really get curious and pay attention and see if you can find the question behind: When will we get "back to normal?" When will this pandemic end? Learn to ask instead what you think the world will have learned from this? What are the lessons we learned in business and in life from these times? There are myriad more empowering questions we can ask ourselves, our teams and our companies of course, and if you can master the shift into asking better questions and learning to become a problem giver instead of merely a problem solver you will develop the vision and chart the trajectory to your greatest impact in the world.

In a time when we are all lacking security and vision, my hope is we will all find some way to step up to make a difference and I truly believe that comes from a commitment to ask the right questions, to ask questions with purpose, and to ask the hard questions as well.