There is a wonderful book out there called A More Beautiful Question by Warren Berger. I was given this book during a training program about Coaching. When we become coaches we need to be able to ask questions and the questions we ask will determine how much a person will learn, and how much trust you will be able to create in your relationship. It is greatly important to be fully present in the moment, listen intently, and ask thoughtful questions. This book provides insights into the power of inquiry and how inquiry can provide breakthrough, innovative ideas.
In this book, Berger describes many stories where his identified innovative questioning technique was used successfully. His stories range from the invention of the Flex Foot Cheetah by Van Philips to creating a new type of school focused on the art of questioning by Deborah Meier. These stories link great success with how people address the world around them. I have taken a few lessons from this book and would like to share them with you here.
First, the power of inquiry is linked greatly to our success as coaches. I have been practicing coaching (as taught to me) for just over a few months. The idea behind coaching is that through questions and inquiry people learn and commit in a much deeper and much more efficient manner. Coaching creates "Aha!" moments. I have been identifying more and more opportunities to use these coaching methods and following the general pattern of coaching. The pattern goes like this:
First we ask questions that get us to understand the problem. It may not even be a problem, but could just be a perceived problem, or frustration, or anything that a person might need help to get through. We can ask things like "What frustrates you?" or "What would you like to talk about?" or in a business environment "What do you see as the problem?" Generally though, we create an open ended question to get us to better understand what the individual is going through and letting them describe it in their own way. In the book, Berger uses the "Why is this the way it is?" question in a similar fashion. In coaching we go a step further and get clarification. Use what the person being coached says and ask more questions. This is similar to what Berger describes in the book by opening and closing up our questions. That is, to get a better understanding we can try to close down a question more (more specific), or open it up (more vague) until we are satisfied that we are in the right "sandbox." I bring up this term "sandbox" as a way of visualizing the sometimes playfulness the next step will bring. Generally though, the coaching method to understand and clarify the problem parallels that of the "Why?" questions described by Berger. We can also use parallels to our Lean root cause method of asking Why? 5 times. In any way you want to see it, we are essentially trying to better understand what the true problem is in the given situation.
Why do businesses not tap into the overwhelming creative potential of people?
The next part is playful. We have found a "sandbox" which we will begin to play creatively to address potential options. Berger describes this as part of the "What if..." questions. He discusses how people spend this time to creatively approach the problem and come up with breakthrough innovations. For instance, he discusses the "What if..." question brought up by Edwin Land's 3 year old daughter when Land took her picture. She asked "Why can't I see the picture now?" This question led Edwin to start questioning all the assumptions surrounding photo development. He played in this sandbox by asking "What if..." multiple times to better describe potential opportunities surrounding this seemingly naive problem brought up by his young daughter. What if we didn't need a dark room to develop the photo? What if the dark room was inside the camera itself? What if the chemicals needed were inside the camera? What if the chemicals could be placed on the film directly once a photo was taken? What if the photo itself was the negative and positive image? So many what if questions and by playing in this new sandbox of instant photo development led to the invention of the Polaroid camera.
What if our businesses were able to tap into the creative potential of people? What if business leaders focused on developing the skills of all leaders and managers to drive that creativity everyday?
Berger leads us to the final portion of innovative inquiry. This is the "How?" question. More importantly he says that it is about the "How do I...?" question as asking "How?" could drive us into the non-useful question of "How can someone else do this?" Those that get to the "How?" stage of questioning focuses in on themselves, how can they themselves do something. In coaching, we make a parallel with the Commit to an Option and Follow Up steps. In those two steps of coaching, we are trying to help a person choose that one thing to work on. In Berger's book, he writes that there are often multiple "How?" questions involved with innovative inquiry. We don't need to go after the big how, but break it down into smaller, easier to manage how's. Coaching does the same thing. We guide people through a similar technique by narrowing down all the potential options to just one, and get into the question of "how do you think you will do that?" We then ask the follow up question of "...and when do you think we can do that?" This provides the commitment and accountability portion. Berger points out that often ideas fail at this stage, as we don't fully commit to answering the "How?" questions. In coaching, we recognize this is an issue, and we help provide some accountability to oneself.
How can we train leaders to bring out creativity of their people? How can we change the management culture to focus on developing people so that they may creatively solve problems everyday?
We can better visualize now how the coaching process and the innovative inquiry described by Berger might fit with each other. So we ask ourselves now, "Why do businesses not tap into the overwhelming creativity of people?" and we play in that sandbox for a bit with questions of "What if our businesses were able to tap into the creative potential of people? What if business leaders focused on developing the skills of all leaders and managers to drive that creativity everyday?" Finally we get to the how, "How can we train leaders to bring out creativity of their people? How can we change the management culture to focus on developing people so that they may creatively solve problems everyday?" I think this gets us to the point of coaching. The skills are coaching skills, skills of inquiry. The culture is defined by our behaviors, so we then focus on developing this skills in our leadership and management. As an organization we must be resolved to transforming they way we do business to focus on these things.
Through creating the environment of development of people, we allow for their creative minds to drive our business now and into the future. The innovation that results will be like none other experienced by that organization, except perhaps when the organization was originally formed. We can take this idea and find those people who are the sparks that spread this fire of innovative thinking. I have taken so much from Berger's book, and will be taking this parallel for coaching to help drive cultural change in the organization with which I belong.
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