Each week I unpack one insight about questioning and one great question from the real world. When relevant, I also share articles and challenges that reinforce themes discussed in that week’s newsletter. Recurring themes include: decision-making, innovation, human connection.
👋Greetings from Atlanta.
This week’s insight highlights our ability to reframe the question we are asking when we aren’t excited about our options, and shares the mechanics for doing so. This week’s question teaches us how to kickstart a conversation that skips straight to the heart of the matter. I hope you enjoy them. Please let me know what you think.
💡Insight of the Week: Learn to tinker with your frame
Behind every creative breakthrough is a better question someone dared to ask. Stuck or uninspired by their options, the innovator paused to reflect on the underlying question asked and modified his or her frame. This adjustment likely took only seconds to make but it was catalytic. It opened up space to think. And it channeled energy down an exciting new path. Innovation books are littered with examples.
We treat these creative breakthroughs as eureka moments reserved for an exalted few. But these flashes are neither rare, nor luck. Rather, reframing a question is a deliberate act and learnable skill. Close up. Far away. Upside down. Inside out. We create our frame. If we change it, new answers reveal themselves.
Let me elaborate on this point. When we solve a problem or make a decision, the options we see always trace back to a question we asked or inherited. This question operates like a flashlight in a dark room. The answers we see depend on the direction we point our question. Better (or at least different) options sit just outside our view. But we can only access these answers if we pause and tinker with our question.
So how do we reframe our question? The key to reframing our question is to 1) relax the assumptions we have baked into our question and 2) point our question toward a vision or outcome we seek. An example may be helpful.
Let’s imagine our mutual friend Paul is turning 35 next week. Out of habit, I might ask you “What kind of party (i.e. location or theme) should we throw Paul?” But I could have just as easily asked “How might we make Paul’s birthday memorable?” Removing the assumption of a party helps us generate wholly different (and better) options.
So what are the actual mechanics of reframing a question? It happens in four steps:
Sense the need to ask a different question: The “when” of reframing is principally about recognizing the restlessness we feel when weighing options we don’t love or solutions that aren’t working. Rather than thinking longer or harder through our original frame, we treat this dissatisfaction as a cue to pivot.
Name the question that we asked: We are often in such a rush to get to an answer that we are only casually aware there ever was a framing question. We must retrace our steps and put words to it. It may require us to infer what question someone else asked that led to the unsatisfying options we now face.
Isolate and relax assumptions in our question: As a reminder, an assumption is an unexamined belief that needlessly narrows our frame. We will likely find assumptions in “how” we believe we should do the thing in question (i.e. a party). But we may also find them embedded in the goal (i.e. a memorable day).
Tinker with and select a new question: The secret to generating better options is to ask a question that emphasizes a vision of what we want to happen while introducing fewer constraints about how we will achieve that. A helpful structure begins “How might we…” and ends in the exciting vision we settled on.
Our new question may not produce a better answer. But it will produce different answers. And getting in the habit of considering different question frames will ensure the better options we wish we had are never hidden from view.
Source: Questions are the Answer by Hal Gregerson
❓Question of Week: What’s on your mind?
We’ve all been a part of conversations at work that take too many minutes to wind up. It doesn’t matter if it’s a scheduled check-in or a casual drop by (to the extent these impromptu chats still happen in a Zoom world). A few minutes of small talk stand in the way of real conversation. If it is a formal check-in, we will likely move on to a surface-level rundown of our priorities. “How is X project going? And what about Y?”
It can often be minute 18 of a 30 minute check-in before this manager-driven agenda locates the issue most demanding of discussion. A rushed conversation ensues. Solutioning (and the coaching that a moment like this begs for) are given short shrift.
Michael Bungay Stanier suggests kickstarting these chats with a more direct query:
What’s on your mind?
This simple four word question accelerates a conversation into a meaningful place within a few seconds of it beginning. It is neither too broad, nor too narrow. Rather, it invites people to pinpoint where they think the conversation should start. But it also provides just enough description as to where we think it should begin: something that is occupying their attention, whether that thing is a source of anxiety or excitement.
This question also conveys trust. It does away with an all too common cat and mouse game where the manager pokes around for concealed problems. Instead, it grants the employee space to reveal where they could most use support. And starting there gives the duo ample time to consider solutions. The rest of the agenda can then follow.
If you find “What’s on your mind?” too open-ended, Stanier offers two alternatives: “Where is the best place for us begin?” or “What is the most useful place to start?”
For each question, the goal and effect is to quickly skip right to the heart of the conversation. And as each question suggests, the key to kickstarting a great conversation is ceding the decision of where it begins to your conversation partner.
Source: The Coaching Habit by Michael Bungay Stanier
🏋️♂️Challenge of the Week: Start asking “What’s on your mind?”
Begin at least one conversation this week with “What’s on your mind?”
Note: It need not be a work conversation. These questions are just as likely to pull forward meaningful topics of conversation if used with a family member of friend. And they will produce far more thoughtful discussion than a far too generic “How are you?” which runs the risk of eliciting a one word answer.
Extra credit: Did you make it to the “deep end” quicker?
That's it for this week. I welcome and value your feedback (suggestions, critiques, insults, positive reinforcement). Thanks for reading!
Aaron
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