Nurturing a High performing team –The Art of asking questions
In my previous article, “The Sublime art of Coaching”, I had mentioned on how coaching can create a culture of learning and help individuals, teams to improve their performance and help them in their journey of being high performing.
To make an impactful coaching experience, one of the powerful tools in any Coach’s toolkit is the art of asking questions.
From my experience, I have seen and realized that asking meaningful questions can help to nurture individuals as well as high performing teams.
Meaningful and good questions can help individuals to think out of the box and help them figure out things for themselves and eventually lead to a path of learning, curiosity and adaptation.
In my experience, I have realized that no one likes unsolicited advice and I am one of them. I don’t like to be told what I need to do unless I am looking for advice.
It gives me an impression that the other person thinks that I don’t have an idea on the situation, or he/she is trying to communicate that my knowledge is minimal, and it can be quite frustrating and demotivating. Even if the other person is being trying to be helpful, I get the impression that the other person is being judgmental about my abilities. Likewise, rhetoric questions or judgmental questions also tends to put off and we tend to go on a defensive mood or get offended as it leads to a belief that we are being criticized.
As a Coach, it is very imperative we acknowledge the wisdom and knowledge of the coachee (in our case team members) and help them come up with solutions for their goals, problems instead of being prescriptive or telling else it will inhibit the high performing team.
How do we create an environment for High performing teams to GROW?
Recently I came across the book The Humble Inquiry where Edgar Schein explores that instead of telling, asking questions in an effective way would help to foster collaboration and greater communication in an organisation.
As Change agents we need to demonstrate humility to help build trust with the team members and in turn leads to open and transparent communication. He goes on to explain this specific strategy of asking questions as “Humble Inquiry”.
At the centre of Humble Inquiry are four distinct variations of Inquiry methodology:
· Pure, humble Inquiry
· Diagnostic Inquiry
· Confrontational Inquiry
· Process-Oriented Inquiry
Pure, humble Inquiry
“…asking questions to which you do not already know the answer; building a relationship based on curiosity and interest in the other person.”
When using humble inquiry, we’re not influencing the content of the other person’s responses. The motive for our question is sincere: to learn about the other person out of genuine curiosity.
Examples: “What brings you here?” or “What would you like to talk about?” or “What comes to mind for you about this new project?”
Diagnostic Inquiry
This form of Inquiry strives to further explore the problem at hand. We tend to steer the conversation towards something specific by focusing on feelings, reactions, causes, motives, next steps, previous steps etc. Through diagnostic inquiry we might be influencing the mental process of the other person in an unknown way.
Examples: “What may have caused this?”, what have you tried so far ?
However, we need to be mindful that we are not asking questions in such a way that it offends the individuals and they start to resist.
Confrontational Inquiry
We’re using confrontational inquiry when we insert our own ideas in the form of a question.
Confrontational inquiry isn’t likely to be humble inquiry. In confrontational inquiry, we are taking charge of the content of the conversation and often giving advice. In response, resistance is more likely, and relationships are harder to build.
“What did you do?” vs “Why didn’t you do something?”
Process-Oriented Inquiry
Process-oriented inquiry focuses on the quality of the conversation itself, rather than the content of a subject under discussion. We can use process-oriented inquiry to step back when we feel that a conversation has headed in the wrong direction. Questions like “What is happening?” or “Did I offend you?” help us explore dynamics and possibly redirect a conversation.
Thus, we can see that to have an impactful conversation and help the teams and in turn organisations in their journey of being high performing, it is imperative to create trusting relationship to help teams to focus on a path of learning, curiosity and growth.
Schein identifies three key steps for practicing humble inquiry:
· Do less telling.
.Learn to do more asking in the form of humble inquiry.
.Do a better job listening and acknowledging.
As Change agents we need to help in building a culture of curiosity and respect, where we value people’s ideas and in turn encourage sharing.
