The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 294: Warren Berger - How To Ask More Beautiful Questions

Episode Date: January 21, 2019

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk Episode #294: Warren Berger - How To Ask More Beautiful Questions Commonalities of sustaining excellence: Intelligent... Smart Hard-working Ambitious Humble -- This is a really important quality.  No ego or arrogance.  They admit when they are wrong.  Willing to acknowledge when they're wrong.  They are open to listening to others and their ideas. Curiosity - They are not trapped by their own expertise.  They are open minded, curious, looking around. Able to adapt Communication skill -- The willingness and ability to ask great questions The genesis of becoming a questionoligist -- Warrens calls himself a questionoligist.  The art and science of asking questions. He originally was a journalist and developed a skill for asking questions doing that job. "Questioning was a tool of the trade" Warren was writing about design and the idea of questioning kept coming up with leaders in business. "The ability to ask good questions would lead them thru the innovation cycle." The holy trinity of questioning: Why?  Trying to understand What if?  Ideation, brainstorming How?  Get practical.  "How can we take the first step?" Big open ended questions -- They are the stems Each one does something completely different Questioning as a manager: Find time to have the conversations and ask questions of your team members Must be thoughtful and prepared We've gotten out of the habit of being questioners, and now it's always about doing.  "Slow down, ask questions.  Why are we pursuing this strategy? Understand why?" Go To www.LearningLeader.com Text LEARNERS to 44222

I think there are people whose curiosity is so strong it overcomes those other pressures. In other words, there are people whose curiosity cannot be tamped down because it is so strong. And they don't care if they get judged. They want to know more than anything else. That's more important to them than being judged or any of these other factors, external factors, that we talked about. And so those super curious people are the ones. who continue to act like a child in terms of their questioning and their curiosity. And I think a lot of times they end up being really successful.

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You get three months free when you run your first payroll with Gusto. Try a demo and test it out at gusto.com slash leader. That's gusto.com slash leader. Welcome to the Learning Leader Show. I am Brian Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. It is Mindful Monday. Text learners to 44222 in order to join thousands of other fellow learning leaders from all over the world.

Text learners to 44222. Now, on a nice featured leader, it's a great one. It's Warren Berger, the creator of the popular website, A More Beautiful Question.com. Author of the book of Beautiful Questions and the bestseller, a more beautiful question, the power of inquiry to spark breakthrough ideas. I'm guessing you could understand why I would love this too. Warren's been featured on stages all over the world, every TV station you can imagine,

because he understands the power of inquiry to spark breakthrough ideas and prove your life. Warren is a questionologist. He collects beautiful questions. A few of the topics we got into. What is the Holy Trinity of questioning and why it's important to your advancement as a leader? Then why do we stop questioning as we get older?

How and why we should reverse that trend? Then how can we foster a workplace of inquiry and why it's vital that we do? Ladies and gentlemen, this one is so good. It's Warren Berger. All right, Warren Berger, you study something that I think is vital for fantastic leadership. So I am very excited to have you here on The Learning Leaders Show. Welcome. Thank you.

It's great to be here. I, to get us going, I study leaders who sustain excellence and am fascinated by what others have found in their experiences with excellent leaders. And this is something you also have studied, you've written about, and it's fascinating to hear what you've said. I'm curious from your perspective over time. What are the commonalities among leaders who sustain excellence? Wow. Yeah, that's a big question. Some of the things are obvious. Like, I think the great leaders have to be extremely intelligent, right? They're smarter than you're a average person. And that we sort of expect. They have to be really hardworking. They have to be ambitious. And those are all the kind of normal things you would expect from a successful leader. The ones that are less, the ones that are more surprising. to me are humility. You know, I think humility is a really important quality in a successful leader because I see a lot of leaders get into trouble because of their own, because of their ego

and because of their arrogance or because of their unwillingness to admit that they might be wrong about something or they might have made a mistake. And it gets people into trouble. So, So that humility in the sense of being willing to acknowledge that you're not perfect, that you need to listen to other people, that you need to be open to new ideas, humility in that sense is really, really important. I also think, and this gets to my subject, curiosity, very important for a successful leader. You know, you can't be too much, you can't be trapped within your own expertise and say, you know, I know everything I need to know and therefore I'm set and I can just coast on this forever. You need to be a open-minded, curious leader who is always kind of looking around and wanting to learn something new and willing to adapt. So that's really, really big. And then, of

course, you know, leaders who know how to communicate well with colleagues, with the people working for them. And that's where questioning can be, that can be a big tool because they can use questioning as one of the ways that they communicate well with the people around them. Your work originally was shared with me by a very intelligent mentor of mine. And he said, you should read the book called A More Beautiful Question by Warren Berger, the power of inquiry to spark breakthrough ideas. Very lucky. I got. turned on to your work years ago because of that. And now as we focus on the leadership part, your most recent book, the book of beautiful

questions, one of the parts is questions for stronger leadership. So I've shared the first, you know, one book and the second book. But then I'd also like to take us back to the beginning of your story of what is this whole, the genesis of this. I mean, you've built a career on questioning, on asking questions, and then sharing why it's so vital and important for people to ask great questions. So could you share some of that, the genesis of that for us? Yeah, sure. Yeah.

At this point, I call myself a questionologist, which is, you know, kind of a made up term. but it should be a real thing because there are ologists for almost every kind of field you can think of, everything you could study. And yet there isn't one for the art and science of questioning. And, you know, I think there should be. I think there should be something like that. So I'm sort of creating that. I'm sort of, and there's a few other people too that out there doing this.

So that's kind of my area now. Where, how it came about, I mean, if you go way back. back 25 years, I was a working journalist and writing for the New York Times and the LA Times and some magazines. And so questioning was a tool of my trade. You know, as a journalist, a question is, it's one of your most important tools, really. It's something you use every day. And you try to get better at it.

You try to figure out which questions work and which ones are maybe not as effective. So on that level, I guess I was a questionologist even back then. I was always working hard on my questions and thinking about them. But then I had a kind of an epiphany or a breakthrough, I would say, maybe seven or eight, six, seven years ago. I was writing a lot about design. And I was actually getting ready to write a book on design thinking. and one of the things that kept coming up in my work was questioning. I would talk to entrepreneurs, I would talk to designers, I would talk to innovators of all kinds, CEOs who were very, very creative, all kinds of, you know, successful people.

And I kept finding that one of the things that drove their success was the ability to ask good questions. And it was particularly strong in the innovation field. You know, I found that if an innovator could ask good questions, it was central to their ability to create and innovate. You know, they would use questions to identify a problem first. You know, they'd say, why does this problem exist? Or what's going on? What is causing this situation to be not as good as it could be? And that's where they'd start.

and then they'd use questioning to figure out, well, what could we do differently? What are the possibilities here? And they would, questioning would sort of lead them through the whole innovation cycle. And I thought that was fascinating. And I hadn't really seen anybody talk about that before, talk about how questioning was so central to innovation. So that became a thing I was really obsessed with. That led to the book, a more. beautiful question, which really is trying to make the case that questioning is the starting point of innovation. And then from there, I've taken it in other directions because it's really not just about innovation. It's not just about coming up with a new idea or a new product.

There are so many other ways that questioning is really, really important and valuable. So with the new book, I'm kind of looking at, okay, I've covered innovation. What is the connection between questioning and, say, decision making or how does questioning help with leadership? So that's where I am now. I'm sort of looking at these other areas in it building on what I talked about with innovation. Okay. I want to bounce around a bit. There is something you call the Holy Trinity of questioning.

So we're going to dig in here. Why, what if, and how. Can you explain the Holy Trinity of questioning? Yeah, what that is, I discovered as I was talking to people, talking to innovators, and also as I was doing research on breakthroughs and innovations, there was an interesting cycle that innovators went through as they came up with an idea and started to develop it. And it matched up pretty well with the cycle of why, what if, and how. And the reason why those three questions work so well as a cycle of innovation is because, first of all, their big open-ended question stems, right? they're the beginning, they're the first words of a big, open-ended question. So that's part of it.

But the other thing is each one of those questions does something very different. So the first question, why, when we ask why we're trying to understand, we're trying to figure something out, we're trying to get our arms around a mystery. So an innovator comes upon a problem and they ask why. Why does this problem exist? Once they have some understanding of why the problem exists, they could simply walk away at that point. They say, okay, there's a problem here.

I kind of understand why it exists, but now I'm going to move on. However, innovators, successful innovators, don't do that. They take ownership of the problem. Now that they understand it, they begin to, ask, well, what if we tried to do something about this problem? What if we tried this? What if we tried that? What if we turned the whole thing upside down? So at that point, they're doing, you know, what we might think of as ideation or brainstorming. And I think of what if as the question of brainstorming, the question of blue sky possibilities. Okay, so they go through that cycle. Right. Now they've got a lot of

ideas. They understand the problem. They've got some ideas, but that's still not, that still doesn't lead to innovation. To actually get to innovation, you now have to get very practical. And the most practical kinds of questions are how questions. So you've got a bunch of ideas now, a bunch of what if ideas. Now you've got to figure out how are we going to do it? How do we get started? How much is it going to cost. How can we take the first step? How do we create a prototype? So you kind of, the successful innovators move from understanding to imagination to finally getting stuff done. And why, what if and how lead you through that cycle. Okay, let's get even more practical. So playing off what you're what you're talking about. I love the how part. Let's paint an avatar

Warren, we have a 37-year-old mid-level manager who has 17 people who report to them. And they are looking to be an excellent manager and leader within their company. They want to help their people be successful. They want to help the company as a whole. They have a big responsibility. And they're saying, this all sounds good. And they're also saying, you know, I think I asked pretty. good questions. I think I'm pretty curious. I listen to this podcast for a while. You know,

the host talks about curiosity constantly. I think I think I'm pretty good about this. But if you, if that person walked into your office and said, all right, Warren, I want to get even better. I want to be better when it comes to the power of inquiry, to asking better questions so I can be a better leader for the people I serve. What are some of the things that would be talked about in that one-on-one mentor-mentee conversation? Well, I would say to them, you know, the most important thing with questioning is just finding the time and being willing to ask more questions. A lot of us, because we've developed a style of working that's very much about getting stuff done, and that's good. You know, I mean, we have to get stuff done.

You know, it's a fast, it's a fast moving world, and we've got a lot of responsibilities. and if we're ambitious in our jobs, we're probably taking on a lot of a lot of responsibilities. So, you know, we all have to get a lot of stuff done and we have to move quickly. The problem is that sometimes works against your ability or your willingness to question.

And what will happen if you don't ask questions is you will start to move into, directions without necessarily thinking it through as well as you might have. So you may end up making decisions based on some type of a gut instinct. You may end up going down a path with your career or with your group. You're within your company. You may be pursue, start to pursue something. And if you haven't thought it through enough,

if you haven't asked enough questions about it, you may be going down the wrong path, and you may not know it until you've wasted a lot of time. So I think the biggest thing is to say to yourself at the outset, you know, I already know how to question. We all know how to question in a way. I mean, it was something we were doing when we were five years old. We were asking questions a lot. What's really happened over time is we've gotten out of the habit of being questioning people.

and we're more doers now. So it's really just about developing a habit and working on a habit and getting yourself to say, you know what, the next time I have a decision to make, I'm going to slow it down a little bit. I'm going to ask myself a few questions before I jump right into something. I'm going to ask questions on a regular basis about my career, even though maybe I think I've kind of figured it out. I'm still going to step back every once in a while and ask questions about my career. And I'm going to ask basic questions about my company, even though in a meeting, we may feel like it slows down the meeting if somebody asks fundamental questions. But it's very valuable to say every once in a while be in the habit of stepping back and saying, hey, hey, guys, why are we pursuing this particular strategy that we're all working so hard on right now?

let's go back and reexamine the whys there just to make sure it makes sense just to make sure things haven't changed since the last time we thought about this so I think what I would be telling someone is just work on habit forming and it's like any other habit it's like you know running or something whatever it is you want to make a part of your life you just got to get out there and do it and the same with questioning you got to find time to do it and you've got to make the effort to do it. And that's what it's all about. Most of us, we don't see the value in it, so we don't do it. And so, you know, my job, what I have to do is convince you there's value in it. I do that by showing you, you know, all the innovations, all the breakthroughs. I'll show you

that successful people have incorporated this as a habit. And then once you conclude that there's value in it, then it's up to you to develop the habit. So I've watched you give a speech where you share the stat that kids ask 40,000 questions between the ages of two and five. And I live this, Warren, because I have a four-year-old daughter. Oh, she's a, do you know the four-year-old girl? Yeah. Is the ultimate questioning machine.

She sure is. And it actually is inspiration for me. She helps me. by the way she asked because she asked obvious questions that or they're simplistic, but they're beautiful in a way to use some of your language because it makes sense. But over time, we, we slow down. We ask fewer questions. So I'm curious, why do, but not all of us, but a lot of us.

So why do we, why do some people continue to ask questions, like George Ravling, my 81 year old friend out in California? he acts like a four-year-old. He's 81 when it comes to his curiosity, and that's why he's brilliant. But some of us slow down and don't ask as many questions. Is this a genetic thing? Is this something we're taught in school? Is this something our parents have impacted, our bosses?

What is it about questioning and why we slow down? I'm curious to understand that better. Yeah, it's a very complicated issue. I don't think there's any one answer to it. It's something I've thought about a lot, obviously, and done a lot of research on it. I believe all of us have that questioning ability and have that curiosity within us. But what happens is sort of external forces as well as our own need to feel appreciated by other people. Those things work against questioning.

They tend to work against questioning. So you've got the fact that when you're four years old, five years old, you're asking a lot of questions. You're in a very safe and comfortable environment. You're usually asking questions of your parents. And you know that they're not going to, you know, they're not going to judge you or laugh at you. But then when you get out into the world and you start going to school and you're with peers, you start to become very conscious of the fact that your peers may not, they may judge you based on the questions you ask. And so you start to get more careful about the kinds of questions you ask.

And then there are even pressures that involve like time pressures. You know, when you're in class, you know, you may get the sense from your teacher that there really isn't time. We don't have time for any more questions because we've got to cover. all this material. So there are all these forces that kind of tell most people, hey, you better be careful with asking a lot of questions. It may be seen as an annoyance. It may be, you may be challenging someone's authority if you ask questions, or you may be wasting time, or you may be revealing to other people around you that you don't know something. And they might think, they might judge you for that. They might say, you should know that already. So all those things cause

us cause most people to ask fewer and fewer questions as they go through grade school. And then it just continues in the workplace where you have the exact same pressures that you had in the classroom. You know, there's no time. There's no time for questions. You might get judged for asking questions. Your boss might not like it. So all those pressures continue.

Now, why do some people not succumb to those pressures? I think there are people whose curiosity is so strong. it overcomes those other pressures. In other words, there are people whose curiosity cannot be tamped down because it is so strong and they don't care if they get judged.

They want to know more than anything else. That's more important to them than being judged or any of these other factors, external factors that we talked about. And so those super curious people are the ones who continue to act like a child in terms of their, questioning and their curiosity. And I think a lot of times they end up being really successful.

They do very well. If you look at the people who are doing in who are doing very well in Silicon Valley these days, they are all those types of people. And a lot of times they didn't fit in that well with the school system. You know, someone like Steve Jobs being the classic example, you know, he never, he never did very well in school and just kind of ended up dropping out, you know, at one point. And there's, there's a lot of examples like that of really successful entrepreneurs and leaders who never quite fit into that system. And part of it was because of their questioning, you know, their, their curiosity and their desire to keep asking questions kind of made them not fit in very well within that rigid answers, answers based system. So it, um, it's an interesting thing.

And I think, I think we need to, we need to encourage more people to be like those people. And the challenge is how do you do that within an education system that is very structured and is very geared to answers. Yeah. And obviously of saying, well, we have these standardized tests. We got to prepare for. And I, I, I, I sympathize. it with teachers because I go to those parent teacher conferences and they're I mean I they're really impressive people I've been lucky I think with with the teachers of the my daughters and but but there are some things that that they're hamstrung when it comes to well part of our job is we've got to get them ready for these tests that's part of what we have to do and and so I feel some of their

pain with dealing that and I you wrote so I believe I read that you wrote this or maybe somebody else. But you talk about the fact that a leader or just a person in general must have the confidence to be humble, correct? Did you say that or is that somebody else? Yeah. Yeah. What does that mean? The confidence to be humble. Yeah. Well, there's a balance that you have to strike as a leader that, okay, you have to be humble in the sense of willing to admit you don't have all the answers. However, it takes a confidence to do that. Yes. Because if you think about it, the way we have thought about leadership traditionally is as this person

who has all the authority and has all the answers. And it is a person that everyone is going to turn to when they want to know what to do. And so if you've been raised and trained to think of a leader in that way, it's really hard to then adopt a new model of leadership that says the leader doesn't have all the answers. The leader is someone who should be asking good questions. And, you know, you have to have a lot of confidence to embrace that new model because you, there's no guarantee that people are going to follow you if you do that. However, there is evidence that they will, you know. There is evidence when you look at the successful leaders who do behave this way,

people follow them. And people actually, I think people follow them even more faithfully. People have more respect for them. They have more confidence in them because they see an honesty there. They see an authenticity that maybe the other leader who's trying to pretend he has all the answers. they can kind of see through that guy on some level. They can see, you know, I don't, he claims to have all the answers, but, you know, I don't really think he does because I've seen him make some mistakes here

and there and I've seen, I see some things he's missing out on. So I think really people will follow you and they'll follow you more faithfully and you'll be more successful if you embrace. the questioning leadership model, but it takes a lot of confidence. Well, you have to, I think it takes a lot of security in oneself because at the, at the heart of it, what you're talking about is the insecure leaders versus the secure leaders, the leaders who have developed some comfort in their own skin, of their strengths and weaknesses, self-awareness we're talking about.

And we're all probably right now picturing the great leaders we've worked with and the poor leaders we've worked with. And this is a critical part is that they are confident enough to say, I'm not sure, I don't know what you know what why is it this way you know they're they're willing to the to ask for help they have that courage and confidence to to ask others for their help and that i think shows the humility it shows relatability i mean who in the world knows it all nobody so when you try to act like you do we don't trust that person we don't want to follow that person so i think that's at the heart of it, but you have to develop, I think, some awareness. You have to develop confidence.

You have to, I think, be comfortable in your own skin. All these things take, I think, thought and introspection, right, surrounding yourself with people who tell you the truth. I think that takes all of those things. And then you're willing to say, huh, I don't know. I'm not sure. And so I think this leads me to my next thought, which is, I get a lot of emails Warren from people who say, I work in this big company and the company's doing well, doing fine. And I'm really into growth and learning and improvement. But I'm surrounded by people who come in and they work hard and they do their job, but they don't really, they don't listen to a podcast or really read books.

So how do I create this culture or foster a workplace of inquiry when I'm not necessarily surrounded by that on a daily basis? So how can I create this environment? And again, we're speaking at the person who's not the CEO, but someone who's kind of a mid-level person that they want to create this environment of inquiry because they know how powerful it can be, but they feel not stuck, but it's tough. It's an uphill climb. Yeah, what I would say is lead by example. I think, and it doesn't matter what level you're at, we're all leaders on some level, right? Yeah.

And if you work with a group of five people, you can be a leader within that group of five people that then can be the shining example for the larger company. And I think that's what you have to do. You have to create and try to foster a culture that you live by and then hopefully spread it to the people immediately around you. If there are people reporting to you or you have colleagues, spread it around them. and then hopefully, you know, other people in the company begin to see what's going on with your group and they get really interested in that. And pretty soon maybe it works its way up to the top.

Now, for the whole company to be a culture of inquiry, it has to generate from the top. But I think it can happen in, I think there can be pockets that show the value of it or that it attract attention that the leader might say, hmm, that's interesting what's going on there. And then the leader of the company might talk to you and say what, I'm curious about why you're, you know, within your group, you have a regular session each week where you, you ask questions of each other or you have a, you guys tend to talk a lot about art or some, you know, And I'm curious about what's going on there and why you're doing that. Is it working for you?

And hopefully the leader then sees something that maybe gets spread to other parts of the company. So I think that's what you have to do. You can only change what you have the power to change, which is yourself and then your immediate surrounding. And then you can hope that that begins to get noticed and, appreciated by others, and then it becomes a, you know, a company-wide thing, hopefully. So the research shows that questioning is the starting point of innovation. We know this. Yet, it's not necessarily embraced by business leaders as a whole.

Why do you think that? Well, I think it's seen as inefficient. You know. It's slow, you mean? Yeah, it slows things down. Yeah, the idea is we're looking for answers. We don't have time for questions. Now, that's illogical. But it's what people say. You know, it's illogical because answers come from questions, right? But people don't think of it that way. You know, they think the answers are laying around out there and just need to be found and scooped up. So what they're missing is, is the idea that you have to start with good questions before you're going to get to good answers. They see the questions as, you know, just a step backwards. Oh, you know, if we're asking questions, we're not doing something.

We're not getting something done. And also there's an impatience. You know, I think a lot of business people are very results driven, right? They want to see, they want to see things happen right away. Short, short-term players. Like they're worried about this quarter, this month, this quarter, right? instead of playing the long game. The problem with questions and especially good questions, beautiful questions, they don't have easy answers.

If I ask you a question like, you know, how could we reinvent this industry that we're in? Or how could we solve this problem that people within our sector have been having for the last 50 years and no one has figured it out? If I ask that question, we're not going to be able to come up with an answer in the next 15 minutes. and companies and businesses are impatient. They want answers right away. They want problems they can solve right away. They want things they can get done right away. So it requires a certain level of patience that is often not there in the business world.

And I think it does lead to short-term thinking. When you don't embrace that kind of, when you're not patient enough to embrace that kind of questioning, you're going to just end up with short-term results. You're going to end up doing the same things you've been doing all along and just trying to maybe do them a little faster. You know, that works up to a point, but then you see companies and organizations get into trouble because you can only do the same thing for so long

before somebody else, you know, kind of eats your lunch. Or technology just makes what you're doing almost obsolete overnight. And that's why today this has become a really big issue for leaders, today. I think, I really think it wasn't as big an issue years ago. I think you didn't have to be a questioning leader. It wasn't quite as important to be a questioning leader 30, 40, 50 years ago. Because you could, as a business back in the old days, you know, you could build that, that better mouse trap. And then you could coast on it for a long, long time. As long as you did a good advertising program and you marketed yourself pretty well, you know, you could have a good long ride on that

one product, that one answer that you'd come up with at some point. That doesn't work anymore. You know, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's style of doing business where you just kind of coast. That's, that's gone. So that's why the, the new leader has to be always looking in new directions, always, um, kind of reinventing the company. Always, um, kind of reinventing the company. always thinking about, gee, where is our customer today in terms of their needs as opposed to where they were yesterday? Because it's probably totally different. Their life is probably different now than it was five years ago. So that's why now it's become more, more important than ever to be that curious, questioning, open-minded leader who's always shifting and always adapting.

So you're a questionologist and you collect beautiful questions. So I want to ask this in a different way. So knowing that, I am someone and I don't think I'm rare in this case that really does not like small talk. It's not very enjoyable. My body language when I'm engaged in small talk is probably not great. I'm trying to work on that, but I'm just not interested in how's the weather, how was the, how was your weekend? These are basic questions that we ask. So you being the questionologist who collects beautiful questions, how I personally am okay getting, going pretty deep, pretty quickly when it comes to questioning, assuming I sense the person is genuinely curious. So how can we get better at this? So what are some better, like let's get tactical. What are some better questions to ask other than, you know, the weather, it's snowing out or it's, you know, how was your weekend or how are you? Or what do you do?

Like, what are some better questions that like, like we all could implement right now? We, after the recording is over, we write down some of the questions that you've said and now we're going to actually implement them. One of my favorites is, is to ask someone, what are you excited about right now in your work or in your life? What are you passionate about? the thing that does is it shifts away from the trouble is if you ask someone you know what do you do you're kind of forcing them to talk about their job that may not be the most interesting thing in their in their in their life right now um it may be something else or it may be that if you force them to talk about their job um they have to go into kind of a boring description of what their

job is and that may not be, you know, the thing that really sparks their interest or gets them engaged. But almost all of us have something that we're working on that we're kind of excited about right now or something we're pursuing. And I think that's what you want to get at. You want to ask someone to share with you what is it that what is the mission they're on right now? What is the thing they're trying to do? What problem are they trying to solve? you know, that's what you're trying to get at. If you can get a person to talk about that, they will open up. You know, I actually tried this just the other day when I went to a cocktail party.

And, you know, I just came right on a nest. One of the first things I said to someone was, you know, what are you excited about right now? What are you passionate about? And boy, they just went right into it. I mean, they didn't waste any time. and they really were anxious to talk about this entrepreneurial kind of endeavor that they were just getting started on, and they went right into it. Now, if I used rote or traditional questions, like, how are you? What's your job? They might never have talked about that because they might not have felt that they had permission to talk about it.

You know, so anyway, if you ask that type of a question, you're, you know, what are you passionate about? What are you excited about? You're giving someone permission to share something really, that really sparks their interest. And you're going to really get the best of that person and maybe have a chance to share something with them based on your experience that helps them with this thing that they're passionate about. So I think that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a, That would be my advice of a great way to start almost any conversation. What are some of your other favorite beautiful questions in general? You know, we're talking one-on-one conversation with somebody. You know, I won't, you know, just, just you, whether it's a cocktail party or a colleague that you work with, what are, what are some general questions that are some of your favorites that elicit great, great conversations? Well, okay, so, you know, you come home from work and your spouse, comes home from work and you see each other and people tend to ask, you know, how is your day? And that's another one of those rote questions where people say, oh, it was fine, you know,

they'll give you kind of a rote answer. So you can ask something a little more specific like, what made you laugh today? You know, and that'll just draw out something a little more specific and maybe something that kind of makes you feel good. So that's one of my favorite questions when you're talking to people. Another favorite question is, let's say someone's telling you about a problem they have, right? A challenge they're dealing with. A lot of us automatically shift into advice mode, right? When someone tells us a problem, we say, oh, this is what I think you should do.

Or this is what I've done. Yeah, that type of year. Now, the problem is with advice is we tend to give too much of it. And a lot of times it is not what the person really needs. They don't really need to hear your opinion of what should happen or, you know, your view on what should happen. They really, they're really trying to figure it out for themselves. And so a great thing you can do using questioning is just to help them try to surface their own ideas. So when someone tells you about a problem they're having at work or whatever,

you just ask them, if you could try anything to solve this, what would you try? And that kind of forces them to think about it themselves. And then they may come up with some idea. And then what you can ask is, this is my favorite question. I call this the awe question. And what else? That's a very valuable question to use for follow-ups. So someone says, yeah, I would try this.

think, you say, and what else? What else would you try? So now you're forcing them to come up with a second idea and maybe a third idea, right? And what you're, you're kind of using questioning to help a person solve their own problems. And then you can, you can end up by saying, well, you know, which of those ideas do you think you could actually take action on? Which one might you be able to do something about starting tomorrow? And you kind of lead the person to an action plan that they could, they could do. It's kind of borrowing a page out of the world of therapy where if therapists are famous for not answering your question, right, they don't tell you what to do when you're having a problem. They ask you, you know, what do you think? What do you think you should do? And, you know,

we kind of laugh at, you know, people kind of laugh at that and say, gee, why don't they ever give an answer? All they do is ask questions. But what they're doing is they're trying to draw you out. And they're trying to, they're trying to help you solve your own problems instead of turning to somebody else for answers. So, um, so you can do that. You don't have to be a therapist and you don't have to be a professional. You can do that as a friend. You can help someone to, you know, think about, think out loud about their own problems or challenges. Well, most people are much, they're going to take their own advice before anyone else's advice. So you have to foster and create an environment that they give themselves advice.

And I think that's what asking great questions does. You're absolutely right. That's what ultimately they're going to listen to themselves more than more than they're going to listen to anyone else. And by the way, this leads me to another question that's really interesting. It has to do with the idea of talking to your friends and listening to your friends versus listening to yourself. There's a great question for yourself when you're faced with a difficult decision. and the psychologist Dan Ariely has talked about this a lot. But you think about it from the standpoint of, okay, I've got this tough problem.

I'm trying to figure out what to do about it. What if my best friend had this same exact problem in the same situation? What would I advise him or her to do? And the reason this is effective is because research has shown we give better advice to other people than we give to ourselves. I think it's because we're too close to the problem. When it's our own problem, we're too close to it sometimes to see it objectively. There's a lot of emotional stuff that gets in the way. but when we can see it as another person's problem and a person we care about, a person we want,

you know, we want to help. When we look at it that way, we see it in a different light. We see the situation and the problem a different way. And often we see it more clearly. So that's a really good tool to use every now and then when you're trying to figure something out or make a decision. Think about what you'd advise your best friend to do in that situation. Is there a better question or what would be a best friend?

question, then how can I help you? Well, how can I help you is actually a really good question. Is it? Yeah, I don't have any problem with that question. I think that's, in fact, in the leadership section of the book, I talk about that as being, you know, one of the great questions that any leader should be using a lot. The only change, you know, sometimes when I work on questions, I sometimes use the word might instead of can.

How might I help you? Yeah, yeah. So sometimes I do that because might is a little more of an open, open-ended word than can. Ken implies, you know, what I'm capable of doing. Might, it opens up to all kinds of things. It might opens up the possibilities. So when I, I tend to think, you know, when you're trying to solve a problem, especially as a group, as a company, we often say as a company or as a group, how can we do a better job at this?

How can we do this? How can we do that? I like to change that to how might we? How might we do a better job of this? How might we do a better job at that? That phrase, how might we, has gotten very popular now in the world of design and among tech companies. They're using how might we a lot.

It just is a little more open-ended. It's a little more of an open way to phrase that, the question of how might we solve this problem, how might we find a way to improve our this or that. Yeah, I think. But how can I help is great. I mean, I think it's great as long as you follow through. Exactly. That's, that's one of the keys because if you ask it in a way that is just superficial.

Right. And then you don't follow up on it. It does more harm than good because now you're, it's almost like a false promise you've made to people. So I think you have to be, you know, you have to be very honest when you're using that question. And if someone makes a request that you can't and you know you won't follow through on, you need to tell them then, you know, that that's not really something I can do. Is there anything else? Is there anything else I can do for you? Because that's not really practical for me to do that request for whatever reason.

Yeah. This made me think, Warren, a good friend and colleague and the leader of the firm where I work, Doug Meyer. He actually shared your information with me recently and reintroduced you to me. And he asked that a lot. But I've had a previous guest on Scott Gerber who said, you know, in the networking world, that can be a bad question because it seems phony or inauthentic. It's certainly bad if you don't follow through. And one of the reasons I think Doug exhibits great leadership is because he's really good about the follow through on that question. And so I know, I won't always have an answer, but when I do, I know it's going to probably be answered very quickly and it's going to get done.

And he's going to be the reason that it gets done. So I think from a leadership perspective for all leaders, if you're going to ask that on a regular basis to the people on your team, you must be prepared and follow through. Because if not, that is a quick way to lose trust and credibility with your team. Yeah. And I think another thing I would say about how can I help. I think it's better as a follow-up question than as a lead-in question. In other words, if you're just kind of doing a fly-by through your organization or through your colleagues, you're just kind of passing through and barely engaging with people.

And then the first thing out of your mouth is, you know, well, how can I help? Just let me know. If there's anything I can do to help, just let me know. And then you move on. That's not, that is kind of phony. That's kind of inauthentic. However, if you actually stop and you engage with people, and I think your first question shouldn't be, how can I help? Your first question should be, you know, what's your biggest challenge?

It kind of goes back to that what are you passionate about question, right? But what are you, what's your biggest issue these days? What's your biggest challenge? What's the thing that's keeping you from doing what you would really love to do within your group or, you know, within your sector or whatever. You want to start by that kind of asking about the challenges and trying to understand what the challenges are first. And then I think a great follow-up to that is how can I help? Because now you've got a sense of, okay, I see what's going on here. I see what the challenge is. Now it's appropriate to step in and say, you know, is there anything I can

do to help in this situation? And I think that comes across. is more authentic. And it also is, you know, it prepares the person to answer the question. If you, if you ask that question too quickly, you're going to catch people off guard. And they're not going to have, if you just come out and say, how can I help? They're going to be like, oh, I don't know. I don't really have anything, you know, but if you set it up by drawing out what their challenges are, then you're in a natural position for them to say, well, yeah, you know, we could use help with, when it comes to that challenge I was describing to you, we could use some help with this or that in this area or that area.

And now you have a specific kind of thing to work with. Always the beautiful answer who asked a more beautiful question. E. Cummings said that. I know you, that was inspiration behind your book titles, Warren, this is really useful. I've enjoyed our conversation. In fact, so much because you're a collector of beautiful questions, I love learning about beautiful questions and adding them to my word bank, so to speak, that I'd like to do something that I haven't done too much. But see if you're cool with this. I love for today's end of the podcast club, for people, all listeners, to tweet us your favorite question or your favorite question.

or your favorite questions, Warren, if you're cool with this. Tag me at Ryan Hawk 1-2 and at Glimmer Guy. G-L-I. Are you cool with this, Warren? Yeah, absolutely. At G-L-I-M-M-E-R guy. I want to collect more beautiful questions, and I want to source this from the great listeners

of the Learning Leader show. And I'm sure Warren is a collector of these as a questionologist, so maybe he can learn something new, too, from you if there's a question that you use that has led to dynamic, fantastic conversations with other people because that's when we really learn. That's how we grow. We do this through asking great questions and having fantastic conversations.

So end of the podcast club. Tweet, Warren, and me at Glimmer Guy, at Ryan Hawk, 1,2, and share your favorite question or two that has led to an incredible conversation. I think that's a great idea. I'd love to see some of those questions, and I may incorporate them into my work. I love it. Let's make that happen, everybody. So thank you.

Warren, other than Twitter, which I just said, where would you send my listeners to learn more about you online? Yeah, I've developed a very expansive site called A More Beautiful Question.com. And just put those words together, a more beautiful question, squish them together. And that's it. A More Beautiful Question.com. And it's a great site. You'll find all kinds of stuff on there if you have interest in the subject of questioning

tons of articles and resources and quizzes you can take. and, you know, a list of songs that have questions for the title. And there's all kinds of fun stuff on there. So if you're interested in questioning, you know, that's kind of a good, all-purpose place to go. Love it. Warren, thanks again for being here and for investing your time with me and my audience here at The Learning Leaders Show.

I absolutely want to continue this dialogue as we both progress, man. Thank you so much. Thank you, Ryan. I really enjoyed it. And they're great questions, by the way. Thank you so much, man. Wow, I had really high expectations for that one, given the fact that Warren's work has really impacted me as a conversationalist and an interviewer.

I was gifted a more beautiful question a few years ago, and then Doug Meyer reintroduced it into my life a few weeks ago, and that compelled me to reach out to Warren to have this talk. Wow, I'm so glad that happened. I've learned a lot through the course of reading his books and now having this conversation. I meant it about that end of the podcast club. I'd love it if you would tweet Warren and I your most beautiful questions so we could get even better. I hope you enjoyed this one as much as I did.

If so, tell a friend or two, perhaps one that has never listened to a podcast, or at least not this podcast. I love that it spreads one person at a time. How to scale? You do things that don't scale. And that's talking about this show, one person at a time. a time and I love it. And thank you so much for continuing to do that, which gives me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis. I'm so appreciative. I will talk with you next week. Can't wait. This episode is once again brought to you by Gusto. Gusto offers modern,

easy payroll, benefits, and HR to small businesses across the country. They were even named Best Online Payroll by PCMag. And as a list, of the Learning Leader show, you'll get three months free when you run your first payroll. Sign up and give it a try at gusto.com slash leader. That's G-U-S-T-O.com slash leader. All right, you still there? Yeah. Thank you.

That was really good, man. I really appreciate it. I enjoyed it too. It was a great show, great interview. I appreciate that. So this is so meta, but when you're tasked with asking the question guy, questions, it gets in your head a little bit. You really think about, what am I going to ask this guy? Are they good questions? So I appreciate you. Is you going to be judging every question?

Of course. Of course. No, I appreciate you. Or I could be or I could answer every question with, oh, that's a such and such type of question we just asked. You are not very good at asking questions. No, I, it was fun. And your answers, I found useful as a big term I use, but just to be really useful and helpful for people in general. So that's what this whole show is about. I really do sincerely appreciate all that, despite some of my fear going in of asking questions to the question guy. When do you post this?

It'll probably be a few weeks. I'll certainly. I'll send you a note, let you know. And if you need anything, you know, photo or anything like that, just let me know. Okay. I will. I will. I appreciate I'll be following up via email.

Cool. Great. All right, man. Thanks so much more. Okay. Thanks a lot. Let's stay in touch. Definitely.

Definitely. Okay. Talk to you soon. All right. Bye. Thank you.