Translator: Ava Cramp Reviewer: Claire Ghyselen
My mother-in-law is the best.
She's one of the most caring people I know
and she is always willing to help.
Not that she tells us what to do.
She would never do that.
She just occasionally asks:
"Have you ever thought about doing some gardening?"
Or, "Wouldn’t it be nice with some clean dish towels?"
And she always adds:
"I'm just asking."
Just asking?
Right!
Well, I’m certainly not going to change my dish towels
just because my mother-in-law asks me to.
Even though she’s probably right:
I should do some more cleaning
and some gardening.
That is actually my garden.
But there are bigger problems
in this world.
The crazy thing is
that when we act around the biggest problem
we have in our world,
we all behave the same way I do
when my mother-in-law asks well-intended questions
about my dish towels.
The one problem behind every problem that involves human beings
is that we don’t listen to each other’s experiences, insights and ideas.
I’m a philosopher
and I have spent my entire adult life wondering why that is.
So, I’m really proud to tell you: I figured it out!
And I’m here today to let you in on the secret.
It comes down to one thing:
The power of questions.
By design, questions connect the person asking the question
and the person answering the question with the subject matter of the question.
It’s not something we decide.
It just happens.
Think about an everyday situation
where I ask you:
"Do you know where the bathroom is?"
I’m the one having a problem.
I need to go to the bathroom.
And you help me solve that problem by telling me where the bathroom is.
Sometimes I don’t even have to say anything.
I can just do this,
and you will discreetly point me in the right direction.
It’s magic!
Questions have the power
to connect people with each other and the world they share.
But -
and this you probably don’t know -
questions also have the power to do the opposite.
Questions separate people:
one person asking, another person answering,
and the feeling of separation is exactly what causes the problem
behind the problems
and makes it difficult for us to communicate.
Let me give you an example:
This is my son Rasmus.
In this picture -
oh, look at him -
in this picture,
he is 13 years old and he wasn’t much of a talker.
He seemed to believe that words are so valuable
that he had to guard each syllable with his life.
As a mother, there’s nothing I want more
than to pay attention to my children’s needs.
But in order to do that, I need to know what their needs are.
So, what do you do
when you have a child who doesn’t talk a lot?
How do you get insight into his mind, feelings, concerns and needs?
Well, up until a couple of years ago,
I would ask Rasmus how he felt and what was on his mind.
I remember the mornings: "Did you sleep well?"
And the afternoons: "How was your day?"
And I remember always getting the same answer:
"Hmm ..."
In fact, the more questions I asked, the more "hmms" I got.
I think it’s safe to say that we had a hard time communicating.
So, I started thinking about my relationship with Rasmus
in light of the relationships between managers and silent employees
that I have been observing during my many years
as a leadership consultant.
I know it’s a cliché to compare the role of a parent
with the role of a manager.
But I found something really interesting about human interaction.
So, please bear with me.
The first person who came to mind was Jytte.
I was working with Jytte at a factory in the late '90s.
Like Rasmus, she wasn’t much of a talker,
but one day she stopped working
and then she asked me a question
that instantly changed my attitude toward the work we did.
She asked:
”How long do you plan to work here?”
Now, I was trying really hard to do a good job.
In fact, I was just about to beat all records,
so I didn’t feel I had to explain myself.
I replied:
”Three more months and then, I start at the university.”
Very happy.
Jytte nodded
and then she said:
“Then I will have to ask you to slow down.
You see, you may be able to increase your pace for three more months.
But I’m not starting at the university anytime soon.
So I have to work at a pace I can keep for 20, maybe 25 more years.
And when our manager sees
that you can increase your pace beyond my pace,
he will expect me to do the same.
And that’s simply not possible for 25 years."
I knew she was right.
So, I did what she asked me to do
and slowed down.
A couple of years later, I found myself dealing with the same problem
but from a different perspective.
My first job after graduating from the university,
was as a strategy consultant for CEOs and senior managers in big corporations.
And Peter,
who could might as well have been Jytte’s manager,
was one of them.
However, Peter asked different kind of questions than Jytte did.
Instead of: “How long do you plan to work here?”
Peter asked: “How do I increase productivity in my company?”
In the beginning, I tried to come up with good answers, like:
"Let's make a benchmark analysis."
Or: "I think you need a new strategy."
But after a couple of years I realized that I didn’t have any good answers.
In fact, I wasn’t even sure that Peter was asking the right questions.
So, I got curious about the questions.
Do you see any difference?
You have probably heard people talking about the importance
of asking the right questions or at least asking better questions.
And if you google "good questions," you will get more than 10 billion results,
confirming the very old and very strong belief
that some questions are better than others.
But looking at these two questions
the biggest difference is not what the questions are about.
As it turned out, they both had to do with productivity.
The biggest difference is who poses the questions.
It’s not about what, it’s about who.
Look at these two: Jytte and Peter.
Jytte is looking at a machine, making sure everything runs smoothly,
and then sometimes she takes a moment to tell her young colleagues
how to think and act around the factory.
Peter, on the other hand, is looking at you,
telling you and everybody else about his vision for the company.
Then sometimes he takes a moment to visit the factory and look at the machines.
Who would you say has the biggest impact on how things are done in this company?
Can’t hear you …
Jytte!
Well, my experience is
that Peter’s questions result in benchmark analyses,
strategies and implementation plans,
while Jytte's questions have immediate impact
on how people think and act around the factory.
It’s not about what; it’s about who.
So, why?
Why does Peter ask me
how to increase productivity in his company
when he could just listen to the questions
and the conversations Jytte has with her colleagues?
If Peter knew that Jytte is asking temps to slow down
because she is afraid that their pace can have a negative impact
on her workload,
he might introduce different performance targets
for permanent employees and temps,
allowing everybody to perform their best, given their different conditions,
and thereby increase productivity.
But Peter doesn’t know that Jytte is asking her colleagues to slow down.
In fact, he knows nothing about the questions
people are asking each other in his organization.
And neither do these people.
Across the world, leaders, whether corporate or political,
make decisions without knowing which questions matter
to their employees and citizens.
They do, however, ask a lot of questions themselves.
In an endless stream of employee engagement surveys and opinion polls,
they collect answers to the questions they think are important.
And they use these answers to inform us about their decisions
about our companies and communities.
Please, raise your hand
if you were ever invited to participate in a survey.
Of course you were.
One survey provider alone collects answers for more than 20 million questions,
each day.
So tell me:
what do you do when you receive a survey or a questionnaire?
Maybe you do as my son used to do
and say: "Hmm."
Maybe you don’t really care.
Maybe you think that surveys have not that much to do with you.
Maybe you just do it
because you think it’s important to the people conducting them.
So,
maybe you don’t say a lot,
if nothing at all.
And whatever the surveys show has little to do with what you know is important
to the company or community you are part of.
So, on the one hand, we have Jytte’s questions
which have immediate impact on how people think and act.
And on the other hand, we have millions of leader-defined questions
that result in a lot of "hmms."
It’s not about what; it’s about who.
And when who is always the same,
like when I’m the one asking all the questions when I talk to my son,
and leaders and consultants are the ones asking all the questions
in surveys and interviews,
we end up like this,
with the same perspectives dominating the way
we think and talk about our problems,
and the same experiences, insights and ideas being left out
in the decisions that shape our world.
It’s not about what; it’s about who.
So, it’s time we realize there is no such thing as "just asking."
Every time you ask a question,
you insist on making your perspective on the subject matter,
whether it’s dirty dish towels or productivity,
the only perspective that really matters.
And if you ask a lot,
it doesn’t matter whether people agree with you,
they are certainly not going to change their habits
just because you ask them to.
It’s not something we decide; it just happens.
So, I’m not asking mothers, leaders or consultants to ask better questions.
I’m asking all of us to pay attention
to the balance in our relationships.
Whether it’s the relationship we have with our children, our co-workers,
or even the people we meet at the doctor’s office,
we must ask ourselves:
"Am I always the one asking or always the one answering?"
And if the answer is yes, we must turn the tables.
Like I did when I realized that my constant interrogation of Rasmus
made it impossible for him to share what mattered to him
and therefore learned to bite my tongue
whenever I’m just about to ask him a question.
Instead, I wait.
I sometimes have to wait a long time.
But eventually, he starts talking or behaving in a way
that gives me an indication of what is on his mind.
And then I ask, and he actually answers.
Or he asks,
and I answer.
And together we discover what matters to us.
And by flipping the survey logic around,
Peter can do the same.
Instead of asking all the questions himself,
he can allow or even invite Jytte and her colleagues
to ask each other questions about important topics like productivity,
and at the same time,
leverage all the experiences, insights and ideas that he needs
to make decisions that have an impact.
You see, questions have the power to change the world.
But for us to solve the problems that matter the most,
we must remember that questioning and answering
should be like a dance where we constantly shift position
in order for us to connect with each other
and the world we share.
Thank you for listening.
(Applause)