Name: Humble Inquiry
Rating: 4.1 (70 reviews)
Author: Edgar H. Schein

What’s in it for me? Learn communications skills help you get the best from your team.

It’s Monday morning, and your boss calls you in and says, “I’ve noticed that your work is poor, and I think that you’re approaching the problem incorrectly…”

Put on the spot like this, how do you think you would feel? Probably pretty disheartened and downcast, right? What’s more, rather than trying to improve your work, you might start resenting your boss.

Now imagine a different approach. Your boss says “How’s it going with your work? Would you change anything?” With this subtle shift, you look at the situation differently, and feel engaged instead of put down.

These blinks show the power of “humble inquiry,” or, in other words, how to ask instead of tell. The secrets of communication that will be revealed are vital for leaders in any sphere.

In the following blinks, you’ll also learn:

what the best way is to win a relay race;
how you should behave in the presence of a Nobel Prize laureate; and
why we shouldn’t shout at children.

If employees can’t freely express what they’re thinking, you can’t build a successful team.

What comes to mind when you think of a great team? Consider some of your favorite sports teams whose courage and unity on the field resulted in a winning season.

So what makes a great team? Is it enough to put a bunch of talented people in the same room?

Well, no. What makes a great team is the relationships between team members.

Strong communication skills cement these relationships. Each member of the team, from the quarterback to the lineman, is comfortable telling each other anything.

“Go left!” “I’m open!” “Great pass!” Each player expresses what they need to say without fear; opinions are voiced freely and everyone gets a chance to participate.

Many leaders in business try hard to emulate the teamwork found in sports teams they admire, but ultimately fail due to communication barriers, often between managers and employees.

Employees are often simply too afraid to share with their boss any issues they might have, fearing that voicing their needs or criticism will reflect poorly on them. Think about it: would you feel comfortable walking up to your boss and telling him the company strategy was full of holes?

This lack of communication can have terrible consequences. For example, it was precisely this sort of communication breakdown – the inability of information at the lowest levels of a company to reach those at the top – that led to the devastating Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Businesses leaders therefore need to create and nurture an environment where employees feel that they can freely share their thoughts and ideas, no matter what they are.

This is, of course, easier said than done. The following blinks will show you how.

To build a good team, you need to ask questions that show trust and include and respect others.

Imagine you’re the head of your department and, to build morale, you challenge another department to a relay race.

You’re the first off the mark, and as you reach the first swap, you shout “Stick out your left hand!” to your employee so you can pass her the baton.

Use humble inquiry to steer conversations and to evaluate their quality.

Humble inquiry can be further divided into two other types of inquiry, depending on what you need to accomplish.

For example, if you need to push a conversation in a certain direction, you can use confrontational inquiry. This type involves introducing your own ideas in the form of a question.

Our obsession with status or social rank gets in the way of humble inquiries.

Rank plays an all too important role in business and culture today. For instance, if someone saw a CEO golfing with the office janitor, that would be hot company gossip the next day.

Why is this? This obsession with status and rank merely places unnecessary barriers between people, and prevents fruitful relationships.

Kernaussagen in Humble Inquiry

Über den Autor

Edgar H. Schein is the Society of Sloan Fellows Professor of Management Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has received many awards and honors throughout his career. He has also penned a number of books, including Organizational Culture and Leadership and The Corporate Culture Survival Guide.