Lessons from the Book The Book of Beautiful Questions

 

Part I: Questions for Better: DECISION-MAKING

We can’t rely on our instincts when making decisions, as they are subject to biases and irrational risk aversion. We must instead use evidence and outside sources to make better decisions.

The question method allows us to organize our thinking around what we don’t know. It helps us step forward in the face of uncertainty. We are wired to make quick, instinctive decisions, but it is important to think carefully about important decisions.

When making decisions, we are prone to falling into a raft of traps, according to the researchers John Hammond, Ralph Keeney, and Howard Raiffa. These traps include fear of the unknown, overconfidence in our own forecasts, and an inclination to favor information that confirms our preexisting assumptions and biases.

The first thing to do with that flashlight is to turn it on yourself. The path to better decision-making begins by questioning your own beliefs, biases, and assumptions. It is difficult to do, and today, it is easier to seek out information that confirms your view.

The what if strategy is simple and effective: consider the possibility that your beliefs or assumptions on a particular issue might be wrong. Consider the opposite of whatever you believe about a particular issue, and then consider the possibility that the opposite might be true.

There is at least some scientific basis for the Opposite George strategy, which was employed by the Seinfeld character George Costanza. In a 1994 episode of the show, George decides to do the opposite of whatever he’s inclined to do in a given situation.

To be able to question your own thinking, you must be humble enough to admit that you don’t know something or that you might be wrong about what you think you know. This goes against a natural tendency in many people to defend what they believe.

The need to be right can affect more than just business decisions. It applies to politics, where people may be loath to admit their vote for a candidate was a mistake, despite strong evidence to the contrary.

Critical thinking is the process of evaluating and analyzing information, and it involves asking several fundamental questions. It requires you to be open-minded and objective while still being fair-minded.

Critical thinking starts with demanding that there be substance behind any claim. It involves asking questions such as, Does this evidence come from a solid source. and What are they not telling me.

When trying to determine the truth, critical thinkers ask questions that search for logical fallacies. These questions are designed to root out faulty assumptions or tricks that may lead you to a false conclusion.

Critical thinking is not just about asking critical questions, but also about considering and questioning all sides of an issue, including the side you’re inclined to support.

Critical-thinking questions can be extremely helpful when making binary decisions, such as whether to accept a job offer or not. But when making important decisions, you should consider opening up more options by asking yourself what could happen if you made a certain decision.

When making decisions, try to choose from at least three options. Do this by projecting three different potential outcomes or scenarios. The third option you generate should be an unusual one that goes against the others.

To get a different perspective on a decision, ask yourself what your friend would do in the situation. This will help you step back and see the situation from a different perspective.

When trying to take an outside view on a decision, you can consider the experience of others who’ve had to make a similar decision. You can also turn to an advisor or consultant who may have experience working with others who’ve made similar decisions.

Taking the time to question decisions does not mean you should waffle on them or put them off indefinitely. When people put off making decisions because of uncertainty, they can end up having to make them at the last minute, under pressure.

The negativity bias, which is the fear of negative outcomes, can lead us to make choices that may not make sense or be in our best interest. It can limit possibilities in business, in one’s career, and even in living a full life.

Questioning can help you identify the fears that may be influencing your decisions and behaviors. It can be difficult to figure out what you’re really afraid of, but often, once you do identify it and verbalize it, you can start to come to grips with it.

When you’re considering a high-risk challenge, ask yourself what would happen if you failed, and how you would recover from that failure. Then consider what would happen if you succeeded, and how that would look. This can help you see that even a small risk can have big rewards.

The What If I Could Not Fail. question allows us to see the world through a different lens. It permits us to see the constraints of failure removed, which allows us to think more boldly and imaginatively.

The What if I could not fail. question can be applied to any area of your life. It can be used to evaluate whether you’re doing what’s safe and comfortable, or if you’re doing what’s difficult but worth it.

We have a tendency to focus too much on the present, which causes us to ignore long-term aims and consequences. To counter it, we must try to imagine how we will feel about something in the future.

When deciding which option will allow you to evolve and flourish, consider which option will allow you to do so in a way that allows you to learn, experiment, and create.

To determine whether you’ll be able to grow and develop at a company, start by asking how others there have added new skills and expanded responsibilities.

When making decisions for the long term, think about each important decision as a chapter within a larger story. Ask yourself how that chapter fits with the larger narrative, and whether it serves your obligations, relationships, and values.

The final question is to consider the future. When you face a decision between two diverging paths, ask yourself whether your choice will make a better story when you look back in five years.

You can use targeted questions to try to get a better sense of what you're meant to do. Before looking at some of the questions designed to identify your true passion in life, consider a contrarian question: Should I even be asking, What's my passion.

To better understand your strengths and weaknesses, ask yourself what you’re good at and what you’re naturally interested in. Then, examine your past activities and behaviors from a detached perspective to find out what still resonates with you today.

To figure out what your tennis ball is, ask yourself: What makes me forget to eat. This question helps you distill purpose to its essence by formulating a single sentence that sums up who you are and what, above all, you aim to achieve.

If you want to tackle a truly ambitious beautiful question, consider this one: How might you apply your signature strengths to a pursuit that is of natural interest to you and helps others. By addressing all three elements of passion, you can help guide you to something that both engages you and enables you to use your gifts to make a difference.

Part II: Questions for Sparking: CREATIVITY

The Kelleys’ philosophy about creativity is based on three core principles: creativity is essential to business and career success, we are all creative, and we can develop our creativity by following certain steps and behaviors.

The questions that can help you be more creative are designed to help you shift perspective at critical moments. They are meant to help you see creative opportunities and challenges in a new light. Even if your creative work never goes beyond the room where you labor over it, it can have a positive impact on you.

Creativity not only provides a highly satisfying experience during the process, but it also offers benefits beyond personal satisfaction to the creator. It can make you more successful professionally.

Creativity is becoming more and more important in the workplace. If you can create, you are more likely to be in demand. However, many people don’t believe they have the ability to be more creative.

The most common wrong question to ask about your own creativity is Am I creative. The truth is that everyone is creative, and it is a mindset that can be developed.

The three questions that people often ask about creativity are: Am I creative. How creative am I. Where will I find an original idea. The short answers are: everywhere and anywhere.

The source of creativity is usually not a bolt from the blue. It is more likely to be something right under our noses. Most original creations come about when someone takes existing elements or ideas and combines them to create something new and original.

The idea that creativity must come from completely original ideas or sources is a misconception. Almost all new ideas are combinations of preexisting ideas. The magic happens when creators like Fadell and Miranda look at existing ideas and are inspired to think of something different.

The process of problem finding is opposite to the idea that creative people should be trying to think of ideas that emerge as fully formed solutions. It suggests that ideas and solutions will come along the way, but the problem is the starting point.

What stirs you. What bugs you. What’s missing. What do you keep coming back to. What is ripe for reinvention. These are all questions to help you find a problem worth solving.

When you notice an idea or thought popping up over and over, it might be worth asking yourself: Is this a problem that is trying to find me. Sometimes a theme may follow you around without your being aware of it.

To become better at finding problems, we must become better at seeing them. This can be done by looking at the world around us more closely, and seeing the familiar as if it were new.

The simple reason most of us don’t notice the details of what’s going on around us is that we stop looking too soon, says Tom Kelley. It’s not just a matter of how long you look but where you focus as you’re looking.

Consider the problem from a business standpoint as well. If you find that others are pursuing the same idea, what’s your twist. How might your approach differ from others.

When you’ve found your problem, ask yourself if you can own it. If others are pursuing it, ask yourself what your special twist is, and what you can bring to the table that others can’t.

The Why. questions are important because they help you understand the significance of the problem. They help you get to the root causes of the problem, and they help you understand why it hasn’t been solved already.

The place where you create must allow for focus. Focus is the new IQ, and the enemy of focus is distraction. Today, distraction is built into social media technology.

The problem with digital distractions is that they can keep you from concentrating, which is a necessary part of creating. To cope, you must ask yourself what you can do to protect your attention.

If you’re trying to protect your attention, consider seeing it as a precious resource. You can better protect it by shifting from a managers’ schedule to a makers’ schedule.

You must create barriers of space and time to foster creativity. You must make a conscious effort to prune the vine and cut back on activities and new projects that may interfere with deep work on primary projects.

The morning versus night question is often answered by saying whether you’re a lark or an owl. For those who answer owl, just be aware that you may be missing out on a particularly fertile period of creativity for many artists.

The shell can be a wonderful place to escape from the cacophony of the world. It is a time to connect with your best self, and it is a time of being unplugged, when you can feel as if you’re plugging into your best self.

The process of creating a novel is similar for author Ann Patchett. She begins by having an idea for a new book, and it is a thing of indescribable beauty. She feels certain it will be the greatest book she has ever written. But to bring it to life, she must first capture that vision and pin it down on the page.

The first stages of creating can be so humbling and frustrating that it can cause the creator to give up immediately or to stall indefinitely. To stop hopping, you must chart a clear course of action for each of your ideas.

To develop an idea, you must pick one butterfly and pin it down. If you find yourself engaged in lengthy preparations, ask yourself if you are rearranging the bookshelves.

If you can capture that fragment of an idea floating in your mind by writing it down, sketching it, or giving it form in some way, then there is something upon which to build. Whether it comes from the middle or the end of the story, it is still a beginning.

When you are working on a creative project, you should try to access various perspectives on what you are creating. This will help you get unstuck and generate new ideas.

If you can work your way through the difficult middle stages of creativity, confidence and enthusiasm tends to return as you draw close to completion. Finishing up a project and adding those final tweaks and polishes can be so satisfying that you might not want it to end.

The most successful people are those who are willing to ship early and often. In order to be able to ship often, you must be willing to ship early.

When seeking feedback on your work, try to find those who you trust and who are entirely on your side. Ask yourself who your trusted advisors are, and then create a board of those people.

When receiving feedback, be wary of the former and receptive to the latter. Ask yourself whether the feedback is suggesting that you alter your vision or just improve upon the execution.

To remain creative, you must constantly be on the lookout for new challenges and ideas. The best way to do this is to follow your curiosity.

Curiosity can be a wonderful source of creative inspiration, but it can also work against you in terms of getting the work done. If curiosity is unfocused, it can keep you endlessly bouncing from tree to tree, idea to idea, subject to subject, never digging too deep on anything because you’re quickly distracted by something else.

To keep your work fresh, you must give something up: reliable material, proven methods, and familiar turf. You may need to find a place where you can do so safely.

Part III: Questions to Help: CONNECT WITH OTHERS

The thirty-six questions method, developed by psychologist Arthur Aron, helps create intimacy between two strangers. It involves asking each other personal questions and responding to them, and it usually results in a positive feeling toward each other.

Questions can be used to strengthen relationships between people. They can be used to rekindle a spark between long-term couples, and they can be used to strengthen the relationship between people who might have less in common.

Questioning is a powerful tool that can be used to connect with people around you. We should endeavor to ask authentic questions rooted in curiosity, and try to suspend judgment and withhold advice as we focus more on inquiry.

When it comes to making connections with others, questions are a great way to get things going. However, at critical moments of introduction or reintroduction, we tend to rely on generic, superficial questions that lack the ingredients of genuine interest and curiosity.

Good conversation requires planning. When it comes time to exchange words with another person, we’re all sort of empty-headed, but it helps if you come prepared with specific questions that invite people to tell stories.

The open up and go deep questioning strategy is to take questions that are closed, such as simple factual or yes or no answers, and make them more open-ended. You can do this by crafting the question so that it is asking for more of a feeling, an experience, or a story.

The thirty-six questions experiment was conducted by Arthur Aron to see how long it would take for him to get to know his date. He found that the questions he asked were almost always deep and open-ended, which allowed his date to reveal things about himself that he might not have revealed if the questions had been more superficial.

The open up and go deep questioning approach works well in family settings as well. Try asking your kids what they wish they did more of today, and why.

To be able to respond to your question, you must do more than ask questions. You must listen. The act of listening is an underappreciated yet remarkably effective tool for building trust with just about anyone.

Good listeners have a physical, mental, and emotional presence, and they know how to integrate all three. They are able to silence their thoughts and pay full attention to the person speaking.

As a reminder to keep your mouth shut, try asking yourself the WAIT question, which stands for Why Am I Talking. This simple question can help you develop a reflective attitude that prevents you from interrupting and interjecting while listening to someone.

Paraphrasing is a classic interviewing technique used to invite people to better explain themselves. It involves repeating back what you’ve heard in the form of a question. It helps ensure clearer communication and builds agreement and trust between the speaker and the listener.

The AWE question is one of the most effective follow-up questions. It pushes people to go beyond top-of-mind answers, and it helps them think out loud about a difficult subject. It can be useful when talking to a friend or family member who’s having a problem, but it’s also a powerful tool in business.

When you listen and ask questions, you’re showing interest and being interested makes you interesting. People who listen and ask questions are less likely to be defensive.

The human tendency to give advice is especially difficult to overcome, and it can negatively affect the way managers relate to employees, as well as communications between family members, spouses, and good friends.

Questions can help guide the horse toward the water. By asking the ones that can help someone sort through options and see through the fog of a situation. When people are dealing with a challenge, they may have their own ideas about what’s causing the problem and possible courses of action.

It's best to avoid giving unsolicited advice or criticism. The35 professional consensus boils down to one word: don't. It may cause the recipient of the criticism to reflexively shift to fight or flight mode.

Critical questions are not as harmful as criticism, but they are still negative and tend to dominate workplace interactions. Positive questioning is more important when the tension is high, as it can help resolve conflicts and improve communication.

Listening to others, asking them questions, and being nonjudgmental about their answers is a great way to gain insight into other people’s viewpoints.

Curiosity is a critical ingredient when it comes to questioning. It is important to be curious about others, and not just to listen intently, but to prefacing your own questions with phrases like I’m curious about something or I was wondering about this.

The best way to determine if you’re on the sensible side of an issue is to evaluate other sides and possibilities fairly. If we fail to do this, we can fall prey to weak-sense critical thinking, in which our critical thinking faculties are used only for defending what we already believe.

To be able to go into a conversation with an open mind, first try to take stock of your own positions, tendencies, and biases. Then, ask yourself why you believe what you believe. This will help you understand your own thinking.

When you are asking questions of someone you disagree with, don’t try to persuade them. Instead, find nonthreatening ways to ask them to take another look at their position.

When discussing an issue with someone, ask them to define their terms. This will help them understand the scope of the discussion, and they will tend to come up with less extreme terms.

When dealing with people who are very invested in a negative opinion, you should ask them to rate something they don’t like on a scale of one to ten. For example, you could ask them to rate how much climate change is true.

To approach a conversation with a different viewpoint, you must first understand and accept that they have a right to their own opinion. You must also be patient and willing to learn from them.

It can be difficult to ask questions of and about the people close to us. We may feel we don’t need to ask about them because we know them so well, but at times we would benefit from doing so.

The questions we ask ourselves and our partners are important in maintaining a healthy relationship. They can be summed up in one overarching question: What am I missing. Close relationships can suffer if we fail to pay attention to what’s going on right in front of us.

When it comes to responding to bids, questions are much better than minimal responses such as That’s nice or That’s interesting. When someone tells you about something that is bothering them, it’s important to listen carefully and help if you can.

It may seem like an apology is enough to end a feud, but it’s more effective to ask for forgiveness and then promise not to do it again. This is because we have a primitive instinct to prove that we’re right.

Questions are a great way to build trust and rapport with strangers, family members, and coworkers. They can also be used to better your work environment and collaborate with colleagues.

When you ask a manager for advice, you’re providing a welcome opening for the manager to give you constructive criticism. One of the most common ways to solicit advice is to ask your boss what he or she would do in your position.

Focus on the manager's key needs and priorities, and ask if there is anything you can do to help. This will show that you're interested in more than just doing your own job, and that you're an available resource.

Managers should learn to question up by asking questions such as Are you satisfied with your own performance. and What do you think is working well, and what is not. This helps build a stronger bond with employees, as well as helps the manager figure out how to better manage them.

Questions that are rooted in curiosity are typically received in a better way than questions that are confrontational. They help build bonds between employees, and between managers and employees.

Questions are a great way to help build rapport with others, but be careful about how you use them. They can be very helpful in finding common ground with difficult co-workers, but they can also be used to escape difficult situations.

The most basic way for a company to connect with its customers is to be willing to ask them what they need from the company. This has always been a starter question in business, and companies must keep asking it to stay relevant.

The new rule of selling is Ask, don’t sell. This same rule, adapted slightly, works for all types of business consultants: ask questions rather than give professional advice.

Part IV: Questions for Stronger: LEADERSHIP

There is a powerful leader walking the halls of Mott Hall Bridges Academy each day. She is Nadia Lopez, the founding principal of the school. She has learned to use diagnostic questions to try to uncover what might be wrong with a patient. She uses questions similar with her students: If they’re acting out, what does that really mean.

A new type of leader is emerging, and he or she is a visionary helper. These leaders not only chart a course for others to follow, but they do whatever it takes to get them moving in the right direction.

The old image of leader as the one who has all the answers doesn’t hold up in the age of VUCA. Today’s leader must be a flexible thinker who can empathize with and communicate with a more diverse culture of followers.

The challenge for leaders today is not to find out what everyone else thinks about leadership, but to clarify what they think about why they want to lead, what matters to them above all else, and how they might start to develop and articulate their own philosophy and strategies.

The demands of leadership are so great today that unless you are driven by a sense of purpose that transcends personal ambition, the pursuit may not be satisfying or sustainable in the long run.

The four questions that aspiring leaders should ask themselves to determine if they’re ready to lead are: Do I have a natural interest in helping others reach their potential. Am I willing to step back from individual achievement in order to help others move forward.

The idea that a leader’s first priority is to help others succeed is not new, but it has gained more acceptance with the growing servant leadership movement.

The balance for today’s leaders is to be confident yet humble. They must be willing to question their own judgments, defer to the needs of others, and share credit while also projecting a sense of authority and boldness.

A learning leader must be willing to abandon the past. They must constantly experiment with new ideas by being willing to roll out and test them quickly. They must also feed their own curiosity.

When you’re the leader, there are endless demands on your time. With all those pressures, can you find time to think. The only solution is to schedule time for regular reflection and then protect it from being bumped.

Core values are the second area worth exploring during a reflective period. They are a set of principles and behaviors that can guide you as a leader. They should be examined on an individual and organizational level.

As a leader, it’s important not only to have a code but also to clearly communicate that code to others. Your actions should be a reflection of your values, but words are also important.

A leader should have a code and a story, as should the organization as a whole. To try to uncover and clarify the company code, substitute we for I and ask similar questions about the past, starting with Why are we here in the first place.

The leader of an organization should ask questions that go beyond bottom-line concerns and figure out how the company should behave as a citizen of the world. The company should be committed to a worthwhile idea or endeavor, and should be in a position to lead and support it.

The more a leader tries to do, the less they actually accomplish. To avoid this trap, they must change their attitude and their behavior. They must be willing to choose among and between potential additions and expansions.

It’s harder to cut than to add. It’s also harder to say no than yes. To prioritize your activities and make the best use of your time, ask yourself the HBU question: At this moment, what is the highest, best use of my time.

The focusing question helps leaders focus on a single priority instead of a lengthy to-do list. It challenges you to focus on a single priority instead of a lengthy to-do list.

Leaders must be futurists, anticipating changes not yet on the horizon. They must figure out, in advance, how the organization can best ride the third wave. This requires asking speculative questions that help you envision a future scenario.

Speculative inquiry can be used to envision potential future threats. It can be used to push the boundaries of what is possible, and to anticipate and plan for the second part of the question: what if we had the capability to do what we now do much faster and more efficiently.

Leaders must develop a guiding vision of where their organization is headed, as well as be able to share that vision with others. They should consider applying a question based on an old Iroquois principle: What would the seventh generation think about what we’re doing.

The leader must have humility and be sincere about helping. They must be willing to act on the responses they receive from the people they ask.

The problem Campbell’s Soup faced back in 2001, when a large portion of its employees wanted to be somewhere else, can be found at many companies today. The only way to change this is for the leader to go directly to subordinates and ask them questions.

A leader should ask questions that elicit some sort of meaningful response. Ask open-ended questions with genuine interest and curiosity behind them. Avoid critical questions, such as Whose fault is this.

The questioning leader must be careful not to focus on the problem at hand, but on the person who is dealing with it. They must remove any judgment or ego from the questions being asked, and focus on the person’s needs and interests instead.

Questions are an important tool for the roaming leader to use to identify current concerns and needs, as well as to get a sense of employees’ goals, ambitions, strengths, and passions.

Leaders should ask themselves whether their employees understand the company’s vision and priorities. If not, ask them why. Be careful about performing an interrogation. Take the time to stop and look that person in the eye as you’re talking to them. Then listen attentively and ask follow-up questions based on what you’re hearing.

The most obvious reason to encourage widespread questioning is that many companies today need new ideas from as many sources as possible. Questions asked by all sorts of people can lead to important changes and improvements.

To foster a culture of inquiry, leaders must be models of questioning and problem solving. They should be very open about what they’re curious about, and how they’re learning and solving problems.

In the world of education, schools have long thought about how to encourage more student inquiry. To do this, they must create a safe environment for questions, as well as make questioning safe and rewarding.

Questioning is a form of inquiry that can be punished by being given more work. To reward it, you must recognize and incentivize it. This can be done by creating wonderwalls that showcase the most interesting, creative, sensible, and crazy questions asked by employees.

Companies should train people in questioning techniques, methods, and practices. This can range from teaching people how to brainstorm in questions to improving their critical thinking skills.

The last question about encouraging a culture of inquiry is how to make it stick. It’s a habit of mind, and the more you do it, the more natural and instinctive it becomes to question things you might have previously ignored or taken for granted.