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The Purpose of Asking Questions

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What is the purpose of asking questions?

What is your answer?  Stop right now and answer this question for yourself before you read on. Why do you ask questions?

I have asked hundreds of people this question.  The answer is almost always the same: to learn.  And while this is not wrong, it isn’t complete, either.  If we primarily use questions to learn, then we are not unlocking their full potential.

Questions are like Swiss Army knives – they can be used for many purposes we don’t naturally recognize. Yet the better we understand how to use questions, the more we can accomplish. As you learn their purpose, you will be able to understand how to use questions in different ways more effectively.

Let’s take a look at the purpose most people come up with: to learn.

Our life is full of questions each day.  

  • What time are you getting home?  
  • When will the project be completed?  
  • Would you like a dipping sauce with your fries? 
  • Should I go to bed now or read until I fall asleep? 
  • Why am I stuck in this relationship? 
  • What would it have been like had I worked a little harder when I was younger? 
  • Why did I invest in that?  
  • Is that the best you can do? 
  • How did I get so lucky to be in this situation?

Not all questions are created to learn. In the next few posts we will explore some purposes of questions. As we learn the varied purposes we can more effectively use questions.

The Unspoken Question

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Read the following excerpts of a few famous speeches.

John F. Kennedy: “In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility — I welcome it. I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it — and the glow from that fire can truly light the world. And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.”

Winston Churchill: “We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender…”

William Wilberforce: “But when I reflect, however, on the encouragement which I have had, through the whole course of a long and laborious examination of this question, and how much candour I have experienced, and how conviction has increased within my own mind, in proportion as I have advanced in my labours;-when I reflect, especially, that however averse any gentleman may now be, yet we shall all be of one opinion in the end; when I turn myself to these thoughts, I take courage – I determine to forget all my other fears, and I march forward with a firmer step in the full assurance that my cause will bear me out, and that I shall be able to justify upon the clearest principles, every resolution in my hand, the avowed end of which is, the total abolition of the slave trade.”

Mahatma Gandhi: “I believe that in the history of the world, there has not been a more genuinely democratic struggle for freedom than ours. I read Carlyle’s French Resolution while I was in prison, and Pandit Jawaharlal has told me something about the Russian revolution. But it is my conviction that inasmuch as these struggles were fought with the weapon of violence they failed to realize the democratic ideal. In the democracy which I have envisaged, a democracy established by non-violence, there will be equal freedom for all. Everybody will be his own master. It is to join a struggle for such democracy that I invite you today. Once you realize this you will forget the differences between the Hindus and Muslims, and think of yourselves as Indians only, engaged in the common struggle for independence.”

One thing these speeches have in common – and why they are so powerful – is they answer a question that is intended to lead the hearers to action. There is some unanswered question each tackles. Do we have what it takes, individually, to maintain freedom? John F. Kennedy knew it was worth the struggle. Do we have the resolve, the energy it takes to continue to fight? Winston Churchill affirms so. Should we end the abomination that is the slave trade? William Wilberforce demands it. Is it worth the effort to continue to fight for freedom? Gandhi encourages us toward this goal.

In each of the speeches, whether explicitly used or not, they end with a question. Oftentimes they are asking, “What will you do now?” There is a reason why motivational speeches are so popular on social media like YouTube and Facebook. It’s the same reason why we love a good rousing speech in movies, in books, and even in real life. They drive us to action because they awaken within ourselves an understanding and motivation that was not there before. With that new motivation, they implicitly ask, “How will you now act?”

Questions don’t need to be explicitly stated to be a powerful question. Nor do they need to be verbally answered. So, if the question isn’t explicitly stated and there is no verbal answer, was there even a question at all? It is a mental exercise to think of this one. It’s akin to the tree falling in the forest. But psychologically, the answer is yes. You can never ask a question explicitly and never receive an answer, and it can be just as powerful as a question that was verbally asked and answered.

Many good quotes are actually implicit questions. In fact, we often answer quotes that have no direct question. Here are a few quotes with follow up questions that may naturally come to you as a result of reading the quote.

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” (Oscar Wilde)
Question: Have I been trying too hard to be like everyone else?

“You know you’re in love when you can’t fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.” (Dr. Seuss)
Question: Have I felt that way?

“What the mind of man can conceive and believe, the mind of man can achieve.” (Napoleon Hill)
Question: What far out thing can I conceive?

“What we can or cannot do, what we consider possible or impossible, is rarely a function of our true capability. It is more likely a function of our beliefs about who we are.” (Anthony Robbins)
Question: Where am I limiting myself because of an incorrect belief of who I am?

“If you don’t stand for something you will fall for anything.” (Malcolm X)
question: What have I fallen for because I haven’t taken a stand?

“For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
Question: What time have I wasted being angry when I should have traded it for being happy?

“Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.” (Mother Teresa)
Question: What small thing should I do with great love?

Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” (George Bernard Shaw)
Question: What part of my life have I been trying to find when I should have been trying to create?

“Do one thing every day that scares you.” (Eleanor Roosevelt)
Question: What have I done lately that has scared me? What will I do today that scares me?

The New Symbol of Our Persecution

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Please read the whole thing before commenting, lest you assume I am actually expressing an opinion.  Rather, this is a thought experiment.

In the 1930s & 1940s the Nazi persecution was led, symbolically, by the swastika. During the Crusades, the Christian persecution was led, symbolically, by the cross.  In both instances, a group of people felt it was within their right to persecute others who did not believe and live the way they did.  In these two examples it crossed over into killing, but persecution does not need to go that far to be labeled persecution.

This morning I saw a video of a woman, who was not wearing a mask, shopping at a grocery store in NY.  She was the only one without a mask. Everyone else wore one and the situation escalated quickly. The mask-wearers were yelling at her, cussing at her, and threatened her to the point that, fearing for her safety, she had to leave the store. This is an example of persecution of someone who did not believe nor live the way others wanted her to. And what was the symbol?  It was the mask.

Somehow, the public has turned the mask into a symbol of a caring, thoughtful, careful person who is doing their part not to spread COVID-19. In fact, this is what Dr. Fauci just said. If you wear it, the public identifies you as the embodiment of these characteristics.  If you don’t wear a mask, however, the public has labeled you as someone who doesn’t care if others die, making you heartless. It has also labeled these people as anti-science. The mask has become the symbol of a perceived better way to live. It has also given those who wear the sign the perceived right to persecute those who don’t.

Some may think that I am going overboard.  That this was an isolated incident.  And while I don’t think this level of persecution happens frequently, from my own experiences I have found this to be true. I have watched as commenters post hateful, scathing posts on Facebook aimed at those who refuse to wear a mask.  I have watched the furroughed brows behind the masks of those who are looking at those who are not wearing masks.  At Costco, where everyone is asked to wear a mask, I watched scowls form and heads shake in disbelief as they watched someone who did not wear a mask.

On the flip side, I have seen posts of anti-maskers posting reasons why they don’t wear a mask.  But here is the difference: I haven’t seen one post (and I’ve looked) of an anti-masker tearing apart another for his decision to wear a mask. They get testy when they are forced to wear a mask, but they don’t persecute those who choose to do so. I don’t see those who are not wearing a mask at a store look at others and say, “You idot!  Wearing a mask won’t help you or the people around you!”  They generally keep their opinions to themselves and maybe a small group of friends, but let the pro-maskers wear their masks without persecuting their choice.

Could it be that the mask is the new symbol of socially approved persecution?  Whether or not wearing a mask works, and whether or not we should or shouldn’t isn’t my point. Do I think that those who wear masks and persecute those who don’t are bad people?  No.  My point is that symbols can embolden us to do what we would not normally do – to take rights and liberties to persecute another.

I bring this thought experiment up not to debate on whether the mask should be worn or not, but to rather ask, “What symbols might I adhere to that artificially give me the right to persecute others?”  It could be as simple as wearing a name-brand piece of clothing with the thought that those who can’t wear it don’t have enough style or class or money and then we treat them as lower-class.  Or maybe those who don’t prescribe to my religion are somehow less than I am. Or those who don’t act in a certain way are less civilized and therefore, I have the right (even duty) to set them straight.

I believe just about everyone does this to some degree – some more than others. It is human nature.  But to what degree do each of us do this?  I saw a quote by a leader of my faith, Quentin L. Cook who said, “There are some who feel that venting their personal anger or deeply held opinions is more important than conducting themselves as Jesus Christ lived and taught. I invite each one of us individually to recognize that how we disagree is a real measure of who we are and whether we truly follow the Savior.” If we were to secularize it, we could say “There are some who feel that venting their personal anger or deeply held opinions is more important than conducting themselves as (a kind human being). I invite each one of us individually to recognize that how we disagree is a real measure of who we are.”

It is never that the cross for Christians was meant to incite persecution, but the Crusaders interpreted it that way.  It is not so much that the symbol justifies our actions, as it is our interpretation and then acting on it.

“What symbols might I adhere to that artificially give me the right to persecute others?”

 

 

 

 

(Subscribe to the Question of the Day podcast for a quick does of more insightful personal questions.

Challenging the Status Quo With Questions

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When I was young – maybe about eight years old – my father asked me a question that jarred my little brain. He said, “We put a lot of expectations on the world we live in and take them for granted. What if things were different each day? What if, when you turned the water on, one day it was cold, and the next day it was hot, and you were surprised each day? What if the sun came up at 6 am one day, and the next day it didn’t come up until 11 am and you never knew from day to day when the sunrise would happen?”

Up until that point, as most eight-year-olds, I had made a lot of assumptions that things are the way they are. Dad would go to work. I would go to elementary school. I would need to finish my homework and chores before I could play. I would be fed a nice dinner before I went to bed. My father was pointing out to me that we can challenge our assumptions. Through this theoretical exercise, he helped me see life in a completely different way. The purpose of asking me the question was not for me to answer it, but to challenge my thinking. I attribute this question many years ago to the beginning of my fascination and ability to find new, creative solutions to situations where many other people go with the status quo.

This is a tactic that many good salespeople use. “How long does it take you to complete this process?”

She answers, “Five days.”

“If I could show you how to shorten it to two days and save 25% on your costs, is that something you would be interested in?”

Is the salesperson interested in the answer? Of course, because it tells him if he is on the right track. If the potential buyer answers “No,” then he will need to probe more to find out what the real issue is. If the buyer answers, “Yes,” then not only does the salesperson know he has piqued her interest, but for the buyer, it challenges the status quo. She may not have ever realized it could be done and suddenly a whole new world opens up with possibilities.

Here’s another example. After I graduated from high school I served a two-year mission for my church. Each week I would write to my family and tell them about the previous week’s work and how I was doing. In one particular letter it was obvious I was discouraged. The person I was teamed up with was not particularly fond of working hard and he had a poor attitude. Eventually, I let myself fall in that slump as well. In this letter, I complained about how hard my mission was.

My father wrote a letter in response and asked me a few simple questions. Paraphrasing, he wrote, “You feel your situation is difficult. But what is going to happen when you are married with a couple of children and they want your attention, but you are working 50 hours a week, you have responsibilities in the church, you are the person who is responsible to fix things around the house and keep it up, and you feel the pressures of having to provide a good living for a growing family? If you can’t take the pressure of what you are doing now, how will you be able to deal with what most certainly will be your future?”

This completely shattered my status quo. It jarred me out of the funk I was in. It helped me understand that I better buck up because if I think this is hard, I’ve got another thing coming toward me in a few years. If I buckle now, there is no way I will be able to live a normal life later. From that point on, my attitude changed and my work increased. No longer did I droop in a poor attitude and work ethic. Rather, I built up my capacity for working hard and having a good attitude.

His question did not require an answer. In fact, it was more powerful without an answer. It challenged my status quo, broke it, and with that open space I was able to create a new world.

Questions Without An Answer

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Our life is full of questions each day.  

  • What time are you getting home?  
  • When will the project be completed?  
  • Would you like a dipping sauce with your fries? 
  • Should I go to bed now or read until I fall asleep? 
  • Why am I stuck in this relationship? 
  • What would it have been like had I worked a little harder when I was younger? 
  • Why did I invest in that?  
  • Is that the best you can do? 
  • How did I get so lucky to be in this situation?

Typically we think of the purpose of a question is to receive an answer. But many of the questions we ask are so subliminal, we don’t even recognize it for what it is. They are such a natural part of who we are that we are not cognizant of what we are doing, but it happens even hundreds of times a day.

Each time we ask we have the opportunity to learn.  So we should recognize that we don’t expect an answer from all of the questions we ask.  They are questions that are not looking for an answer.  They serve a different purpose altogether.

Take for example, “How did I get so lucky to be in this situation?”  When we ask ourselves this question, we aren’t really looking for an answer, but for an affirmation or an emotional validation of our feelings.  We don’t expect a little angel to appear on our shoulder and answer with, “Because you have been a good little boy/girl.”  Rather, we use it to recognize our situation.

In fact, in the list of questions above, only the first four have a definite answer.  The remaining questions serve as more of this recognition of our circumstances without ever expecting a real answer of ourselves or of another.  They are validation questions.

This is another reason we ask questions – to recognize our feelings.

What Questions Are We Not Asking?

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At one point my wife attended a number of small group activities where the participants were a select group of women. This group was very picky about who they let join them.  Not all people wanted to or could be in this group because of the restrictions.  So the group stayed small and selective.  Yet at the same time they didn’t want to make others feeling badly that they weren’t invited so they didn’t broadcast that they formed this group.

That was until one person took a picture and posted it on Facebook.  Their intentions were pure – they wanted to share their happiness about being a part of a wonderful, loving group of women.  There is nothing wrong with this, except that there were others who saw the photo and felt badly for not being invited.  They realized there was a party going on that they weren’t invited to. Should those persons be strong enough to be able to understand that they can’t be invited to everything?  Yes.  But that often isn’t the case.  Because of that one posted photo, a lot of hurt feelings were created and the unpleasant work of damage control started. In this case, the woman who posted the photo didn’t ask what the unintended consequences might be.  

This brings me to the point: What questions are we not asking that we ought to be asking? 

Within our businesses, our careers, our families, our marriages, with our children, with our personal relationships – what questions have we not asked that we should have asked?

Don’t Ask a Question You Don’t Already Know the Answer To

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I remember watching a TV show years ago about lawyers. I don’t remember what the show was or anything about it, except for one line.  It was a senior lawyer speaking to a junior lawyer and he said, “Don’t ask a question you don’t already know the answer to.”  And in the context of his line of work, I might agree.  

In fact, I love that statement for so many reasons. If we want to control the situation, we must make sure we are asking questions that focus and guide the person to whom we are asking the question. To do that, we must know the answers.  This is a powerful means of helping others bring out the best in themselves and is a subject we will dive into more later.

Yet at the same time, in other contexts, I don’t like that quote.  Why? Because oftentimes there are questions we don’t ask that, for our development, we should. 

Without asking ourselves questions, for example, we stunt our growth.  We limit our exploration and discovery of our potential and the potential of those we care about.  The options we have before us are left unexplored.  We can become stagnant, apathetic, and worse, we may fall behind in our growth as a human.

The same goes for questions we don’t ask others.  We limit their potential growth, capacity, and motivation because the answers are left unrealized.

Why don’t we ask questions we ought?  Sometimes the answer to this lies within the above quote: We know what the answer is but we don’t want to face it.

How many times do we know that our career is not going anywhere, but we don’t want to question it because it will interupt the status quo? How often do we not ask a teenager the tough questions because we don’t want to damage our relationship with them? How often do we not ask an employee a question about their behavior because it is just better that we don’t know what is really going on or we don’t want to deal with it right now?

There is Never a Right Way to Ask A Poor Question

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At one point in my career, I was hired as a consultant for a large organization that had a huge amount of bureaucracy and had decades of old tradition. It was apparent that most new employees were to fall in line. In fact, I even heard of the senior officers of the organization tell his team of thousands of people to, “keep your heads down and color.”

My role was to come in and help create a radical new cultural environment. It was to disrupt the norms and put new norms in place. Within the first six months, I had several people – more than is naturally appropriate – ask me a question most people wouldn’t be asked. But because I was in the position to make changes, they felt they could. They asked, “Have we beat it out of you yet?” They were asking me if the culture and bureaucracy had discouraged me so much that I finally realized I couldn’t make the change I was sent there to do.

This same unsaid question was the culture of the organization and was rarely if ever verbalized. It was one of those silent questions that everyone asked, but no one would answer out loud. Why? They were told what to do. Period. “Here are your marching orders. Now go. Do.”

Many times, as I have worked with base-level employees on how to improve their work, they said, “If management would just ask us what we felt we should do and how we should do it, we could tell them. There are so many simple fixes that could make everyone’s lives better and save money, but instead of including us, they just tell us what to do.”

For many managers and executives, this seems like a crazy idea. “What? Give them the reigns and allow them to do whatever they want?” No, that’s not what I’m saying at all. But what if asking questions could help them not only discover better answers but help them be motivated beyond what a day off would give them?

For example, rather than telling employees what their job responsibilities are, what would happen if you asked them? Might they take a renewed interest in the results of their work? Might they be more dedicated because they are the ones who came up with the responsibilities? Might they come up with better ideas and solutions than you might have come up with?

Just maybe.

If, instead of telling our children that they need to be nicer to members of their family, what if we asked our children what they feel they should do instead? What if we let them come up with the solutions to problems they don’t realize they have? Might they have ideas that we have never thought of before? And might they be more motivated to act on those ideas? And might they be more effective than what we would have forced on them?

Just maybe.

But this takes time! It is by far easier to tell someone what to do than to work with them, through a series of questions, to come up with their own answers (which, by the way, might be the very same answers you have already decided upon). 

Yes, it is easier to go through the motions. It is easier to be quick about it. It is easier to tell rather than to draw the answers out of them. But it often is far less effective.

Granted, if you are in a life-or-death situation, the last thing you want to do is pause and ask, “Now, I know the patient is bleeding out and we only have about 20 seconds until he is going to flatline. But think back to what you learned in medical school. What are the steps we need to take?” On the other hand, if we are thinking about growing the people around us, helping them, and trying to persuade them to make good choices and then act on them, questions can be the catalyst.

I recently heard a quote that I instantly loved. “There is never a right way to do a wrong thing.” In the context of this topic, we might change this to read, “There is never a right way to ask poor questions.” Too often we want to get to the solution – our solution. Full steam ahead without caring about the full cost of our actions. So we focus on the path that has the least resistance. We tell rather than ask.    

Think about it. How often has a parent berated a child for doing something that the parent didn’t agree with? “Why did you do that? What were you thinking? Who in their right mind would do that?” When this happens, what is the parent’s intent? It is not to correct the child (at least at first), it is only to seek an acknowledgment of what happened and then correct it. Too often we are trying to get to the solution but are asking the wrong questions to get there.

The Questions We Don’t Ask

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I remember watching a TV show years ago about lawyers. I don’t remember what the show was or anything about it, except for one line. It was a senior lawyer speaking to a junior lawyer and he said, “Don’t ask a question you don’t already know the answer to.” And in the context of his line of work, I might agree.
 
In fact, I love that statement for so many reasons. If we want to control the situation, we must make sure we are asking questions that focus and guide the person to whom we are asking the question. To do that, we must know the answers. This is a powerful means of helping others bring out the best in themselves and is a subject we will dive into later.
 
Yet at the same time, in other contexts, I don’t like that quote. Why? Because oftentimes there are questions we don’t ask that, for our development, we should.
 
Without asking ourselves questions, for example, we stunt our growth. We limit our exploration and discovery of our potential and the potential of those we care about. The options we have before us are left unexplored. We can become stagnant, apathetic, and worse, we may fall behind in our growth as a human.
 
The same goes for questions we don’t ask others. We limit their potential growth, capacity, and motivation because the answers are left unrealized.
 
Why don’t we ask questions we ought? Sometimes the answer to this lies within the above quote: We know what the answer is but we don’t want to face it.
 
How many times do we know that our career is not going anywhere, but we don’t want to question it because it will interrupt the status quo? How often do we not ask a teenager the tough questions because we don’t want to damage our relationship with them?
 
What question are you not asking yourself because you don’t want to face up to the answer?

Why are Quality Questions So Rarely Used?

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If the questions we ask have such a huge influence on our lives, why don’t we ask great questions all the time? Wouldn’t it be worth the time and effort to ask great questions? I believe the answer to this last question is yes. But before we settle on that answer, maybe we should ask another question.
 
“What gets in the way of us asking great questions?” I’d like to offer a few reasons I have learned through experience.
 
DEFAULT MODE. We often ask the questions that come to our mind by default and never really challenge the validity or the strength of the questions we ask. We are pretty loosy-goosy when it comes to formulating questions. We choose the path of least resistance.
 
Asking questions is like a muscle. The more we learn to ask great questions, the easier it will be. But for most of us, we ask the question that comes to the top of our mind and allow that to be the dominant question that creates the mental environment in which our solution (or lack of one) will live.
 
CAN’T SLOW DOWN. Rather than live by the default questions, why don’t we develop better questions? It’s a great idea, but most people won’t take the time. Developing quality questions takes quality time. It doesn’t just happen. Depending on the circumstances, creating great questions may take stopping, sitting down with a pen and paper, and thinking deeply about the situation. It may involve gathering a group of people (who, themselves, are highly busy) and having a brainstorming session.
 
Great questions that create value take time to develop. Sometimes they can be developed over the course of half of an hour. Other times those questions will only come after years of experience in knowing what questions are worthy of asking.
 
THE ALTERNATIVE IS EASIER. I have taught hundreds of classes and workshops that were unique and not “templatized” where I could repeat or repurpose the content again. If I were to do it right, I would take the time to understand the audience, the material, and then develop questions that would draw the most effective answers out of those in attendance.
 
But the alternative – telling the audience the facts and what to think – is much easier. It’s the difference between talking at them and talking with them – between teaching a lesson and teaching people. This is where parent-child lectures are born. Being the parent, you know what is right and you tell it to your child. This is so much easier and quicker than sitting down and asking strategic questions to help them come up with their own answers.

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