One of the most important books in my work life is Edgar Schein’s Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling. Direct, empathetic, and short, it is a book of wisdom and technique.
As Schein sees it, to develop genuine bonds with others, we must accept and embrace the reality that asking good questions requires a true humility before the other person’s knowledge and experience. Unfortunately, we are mostly acculturated to do the opposite: to ask questions with the intention of leading our conversant to the conclusion we desire or have already reached.
Schein convincingly shows how counterproductive these inclinations can be. He offers, instead, a compelling case for why we are incapable of understanding someone else’s perspective and ideas unless we believe that they know more about them than we do.
Sounds patently obvious, and yet how often is our natural inclination to ask and not really hear the answer, while we keep our minds busy formulating our answers and arguments? Schein shows us how to counteract that habit and alter our thinking to focus on finding out, not answering.
In the world of professional communications, this surely is among the most fundamental skills. If we’re trying to help an institution or a leader find the right words and methods to get a big idea across, we must start with genuinely accepting that we possess an inferior grasp of who they are, what they want to accomplish, and where they want it all to go.
As Schein puts it, “What we choose to ask, when we ask, what our underlying attitude is as we ask—all are key to relationship building, to communication, and to task performance.”
Schein makes clear, this is not about playacting or practicing a set of techniques, although he shows how to blend attitude with method in a set of enlightening mini-case studies. Accepting that we don’t know and aiming to understand rather than trying to persuade—it’s a change of spirit as much as of mind. To build deep relationships with other people, we must actually accept this.
Every time I’ve read Humble Inquiry, I’ve thought, this isn’t a way of learning, it’s a way of being. Give it a try. It may change your work. It may even change your life.