RW8 Asking good questions, empowering good people

This short related-work podcast follows up on the last conversation with Michael Bungay-Stanier, to present the seven coach-like questions from his book ‘The Coaching Habit’ for helping us to stay curious longer, jump to advice a little more slowly. I also reflect on my experiences trying to apply this in my academic life where I see it as one of our most powerful tools to help empower and develop good people.

Related links:

Previous podcast conversation: Michael Bungay-Stanier on the power of curiosity and taming your advice monster

Michael’s link: https://boxofcrayons.com and https://www.mbs.works

Book: The Coaching Habit

TRANSCRIPT

(00:27):

I'd like to follow up here on my conversation with Michael Bungay Stanier, where he talked about the power of staying curious a little bit longer and being slower to jump into advice so that we make sure that when we are giving advice, we're giving advice to the right problem. And I think that as academics or people working in industry, working with people in our supervisory or our management roles, this can be one of the most powerful tools that we have at our disposal for developing the potential in others. And that's what we're all about in the people side of academia. I think in our teaching and in our supervision, and I don't know about you, but I was never trained to take on these sorts of more human aspects of a role we're taught how to do research, how to write papers.

(01:23):

And if we're lucky, we may have had a good role model or a good mentor, or some people may have more natural skills in this regard. But I know for me that when I moved into my first academic position where I was managing people and projects and PhD students, I just felt totally overwhelmed. I felt like I needed to have all the answers, even though I was totally out of my depth and to cover up for that. I know, and, and to sort of put forward the persona that I did know what I was doing. I know that I play out many of Michael's advice monsters - the tell-it, the save-it the control-it. I don't know how I came across this, but in 2007, I happened to see an advertisement for a training course for personal coaches, for development coaches. And I really liked that the language that they used and the emphasis on development, and it just felt like that could be something useful to do.

(02:23):

So I went and did this. It was over a number of months at weekends and online sessions in between sessions and the impact bringing that coaching like mindset back to my job was absolutely transformative. I no longer felt like I had to have all the answers. And there was literally a weight taken off my shoulders and allowed me to be much more authentic and genuine in saying when I didn't have the answers, but I could ask, I was better at asking questions and helping people find their own solutions and collaboratively exploring the solution space. And it was so much more powerful, I think for me and for them.

(03:10):

And I liked the way this sort of bringing a coaching mindset to our supervision and management really empowers the people that we're working with in a way that helps them think through their own issues and mobilize their own abilities and resources and expertise complemented by ours when it's useful and the way that it can result in so much more increased autonomy and, and development for them. And there's a lot of sense. This connects to a lot of the self-determination theory work about the importance of, or autonomy and competence and relatedness. So it really addresses some of those as basic human needs. And it's also a lot of neuro-biological research that talks about the power of having your own insights, your own 'ah hah' moments in coming to solutions rather than being told what to do.

(04:05):

So I wanted to follow up here on what Michael talked about at the last conversation where he said in his book, ‘The coaching habit say less, ask more and change the way you lead forever’. He talks about seven key questions, and even I trained as a coach and I subsequently 10, 12 years or more later did, 10 years later did a masters in applied positive psychology and coaching psychology. I knew the power of questions that I actually had collected pages of examples of different sorts of questions to ask. But there's something about the way he's captured the essence of really important core questions that I like in his book. That's, it just makes it really accessible and approachable. So let's walk through the seven questions.

(04:59):

The first, this one that he talks about is a Kickstarter question. It's saying, what's on your mind. What are we talking about today? And I really liked this because it puts the agenda, puts the emphasis on the person that you're talking with to own the agenda and to drive the conversation from their own needs space. The second question is, and what else? And it could become the third and fourth and fifth question repeated. And what else? Because often he talks about the fact that what people say first, isn't the real thing and that asking and what else, and what else, tell me more about that helps you get down into what's really going on there rather than the superficial off the top of the head response. This is actually a question I teach students when I'm teaching them qualitative research methods and doing interviews that, and what else is their most powerful question to ask in that context as well? Because we know doing qualitative research that often you don't get those deeper insights until you've helped people delve more and more into an issue.

(06:15):

So the third question that he suggests is then what he calls a focus question. So we've explored the, and what else and what else. And you can imagine lots of things on the table. And then you're asking, what's the real challenge for you here now note, and he made this is that he talks about this as being a really important question as well, that you're not just asking, what's the challenge. Because that's putting, putting the focus on the challenge, but you're asking, what's the challenge for you here. So it's about, well, you, as the person who's got to solve the problem, what's the challenge for you. And then it's the, what's the real challenge is that out of all the possible things we've talked about, and there are various sorts of challenges, see, what's the challenge. That's the most critical one. That's going to make the biggest difference to address that you're having the most trouble toward to work out. And I invite you to play with different emphases in, in how that question can be, have provoked different thinking. So you can say what's the real challenge for you here.

(07:33):

Or you could say what's the real challenge for you here. Or you could say what's the real challenge for you, not for what you think everyone else would say, but for you. And what's the real challenge for you here, like in this situation. So that's a really powerful question to play with in lots of ways. And then once I've talked about that, then thinking about the next question, question number four is, is a foundation question, pulling people back to the heart of the matter, to what really matters in it by saying to them, and what do you want? So it's a forward-looking question about looking at what outcome we might be driving to. He then has what he calls a lazy question, which is how can I help? And I would add, you could also say, who else can help you here? And what other support could be useful for you here? And question six then becomes the strategic one because in all of this discussion, you could have explored different options or ideas or something that could be done. But if you're going that strategic question, number six is if you're going to say to this, what else are you saying no to? You know, you might remember from his last time he talked about there always prize, there's a prize and a price. So what do you need to say no to, in order to say yes to this. And then he closes the conversation with the learning question, which is what was most useful for you.

(09:22):

So there are the seven questions that Michael poses in his book. Now you don't clearly, it's not a formula. You don't have to go through each of them in exactly that order. They're sort of like tools in your toolbox and they'll play different roles in different conversations. And sometimes it's just enough to say, what's the real challenge for you here? Or how can I help? Or just saying, and what else? Getting people to think more deeply notice that there's no 'why' and there are no 'shoulds' and we can still offer some thoughts. So when we're exploring and what else, and that may be about now, and what are the options that you've been thinking of in solving this, we can still offer some thoughts and insights. And we could say something like, can I offer some of my own thoughts to add to your thinking or to put on the table? And that thing of asking permission to make a suggestion and being clear when you sort of shifting into a little bit of advice mode and you could even flag it more clearly, would you be interested in knowing my strong advice, but I put it on the table and see what you think about it is helping you also, I find it helps me and it might help you be a little bit more reflective about what mode I'm being in at this time, and still trying to leave the ultimate control for the decision with the person.

(10:52):

So the other thing about these questions is you of course find your own language. You don't have to have exactly the language that's, that's in the questions. As I said, they're just, they're just tools in a toolkit. And you can see how the thing about jumping into advice too quickly and not being curious in exploring, helping people explore the issue through asking good questions can lead to wrong advice and bad advice.

(11:23):

If we just take an example, imagine a student coming to you and talking about having that they're having real trouble getting into writing this paper that they want to write. Again, I don't know about you, but I will often project onto them. What would be my own situation if I was having trouble, if I was procrastinating for writing, and I could assume it's a time management skill, because that's my issue. It's a time management skill, or I could assume it's just a writing skill. I don't know how to structure a and so I could jump in with immediate advice. I will, you know, what have you got a timetable set up and have you structured your points and allocate a time things to it? And they often just look note when you're talking to people, how they're looking, you know, because they could be looking at you going, yeah, well, I'm sure I can do that, but you, you haven't really hit the nail on the head. So if you just ask them, what's going on with this, what's the real challenge for you around trying to get into the writing. You may eventually find out that it's actually a confidence issue, that they just feel like a bit of imposter trying to write it up and then it gives you the right problem that you're trying to address. And then you can actually explore that issue with them.

(12:47):

I also see jumping into advice too quickly happen a lot in doctoral colloquia and early career researcher forums, where the academic faculty panel are there literally with the expert label on. And feeling like you have to play that out and justify being there as the expert. And I've been in, in DCs and early career symposium where someone has presented or talked about an issue and the faculty have immediately jumped in and say saying, well, why don't you do this? Or you should do this or do this. And I can see the person is it, it's not connecting with the person it's, it's not really addressing what they're, what they're talking about. And just intervening and saying, can I just ask a clarifying question? Can you tell me what's really going on here? What's the real issue behind this? Or what's the real challenge here can totally shift the conversation. And it helps people feel a little bit heard and also helps them just reflect on their own situation. And as Michael said, last time, we can then get into advice mode, if that makes sense, but we're giving advice to the right problem.

(14:05):

I do want to make it clear though that I am far from being perfect at this or applying it all the time, as I'm sure if you ask the people that I work with. And I, I'm trying to be more aware of the situations where I'm more likely to slip into advice too quickly. And often I know that that's when I'm feeling a little bit busy or under stress myself, and it just seems like an immediately convenient way of, of getting the problem solved, but it's actually not that such a good idea in the long run. And it doesn't actually take that much longer just to even ask a simple question about what what's the problem that we're really dealing here. But it's an ongoing learning journey and lots of opportunities for practice in our roles as academics. And I also want to recognize that there are some times when we do need to take more of a 'command and control' stance rather than staying curious and slower to advice role. And that's part of learning. When is it appropriate to wear what hats?

(15:16):

So it's just such a powerful tool. It's a totally transformative tool shifting from needing to know everything, to needing, to ask good questions, to staying curious. And I hope that just sharing some of these questions as Michael elaborated them in the book might offer you some tools for different ways of thinking about engaging in the conversations that you have with the people that you're trying to grow and develop and, and elaborate.

(15:48): Outro

16:27 END

Acknowledgements:

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash