Inquiry — It Ain’t Just Asking Questions

Inquiry is a powerful and time-efficient skill to draw on when managing others — so I’m not surprised that startup leaders often ask me how they can “get better at inquiry.”

There are certainly some hacks I can teach you (i.e., ask more questions that start with “What” and “How” and fewer questions that start with “Why”) — but what often holds leaders back from excelling at inquiry is not their lack of technique, but rather their emotional state when trying to engage in inquiry.

The Latin root of inquiry is quaerere (“to ask/seek for”) — -which also happens to be the same root that gave rise to the word “quest.” This is cool! Because it’s a helpful reminder that inquiry, much like a quest, is a bit of an adventure. You don’t know what you’re going to discover or encounter along the way.

And while the working definition of inquiry is: the act of seeking information through questioning — I firmly believe that the practice of inquiry is a whole lot more than just “asking questions.”

In my experience, inquiry is not just a set of actions, but also the emotional state in which you engage in those actions — a state that I can best describe as a combination of curious and caring.

When you’re effectively engaging in inquiry with another person you feel genuinely curious about what they have to say and the perspective they have to share. And that curiosity stems from a place of care for or belief in the other person. My coaching professor Carole Robin even went so far as to call it “love.”

[True story! When asked by a classmate of mine, how we could get ourselves to feel “curious” about the people we coach if we don’t organically feel that way, she replied simply, “Well, you have to love ’em. You have to find something to love about your clients — even if there are other things about them that you don’t love, even if the thing you love is small, you have to find something to love. Because if you love them, then you will be curious.”]

You don’t need to love your teammates or direct reports all the time or love everything about them, but if you want to engage in inquiry — the only way you’ll be able to tap into that powerful state of caring curiosity is if you can find something to love about them.

Now, even though love, curiosity and care are prerequisites to inquiry, the practice of inquiry isn’t always easy, warm or comforting. Sometimes your inquiry to others will be challenging. Sometimes your inquiry will elicit distress and discomfort. I’ve had several experiences where I ask a single question and seen someone break down into tears right in front of me. That wasn’t a sign I had done something wrong — but rather a sign of how safe the other person felt with me and how much pain was bottled up in the realization they reached in stretching to answer my question. When you’re on an inquiry quest with someone else, you sometimes find insights and treasures and sometimes you find some scary painful sh*t. That’s why inquiry (much like quests) demand some level of courage from all involved. And it’s critical for you, in the role of inquirer, to be aware of your emotional state upfront so you can ensure you’re in that “caring curious” state rather than in another state that could threaten or undermine your ability to be effective as you proceed.

Emotional States That Can Undermine Your Inquiry

When you’re about to have a conversation with someone and have the intention of starting with inquiry, it will be useful to do a quick self-inventory of your emotional state to make sure you will be able to follow-through on your intentions successfully. Do you feel curious? Is that curiosity stemming from a place of care?

If you’re not sure about either of your answers to those first two questions, work through this additional list:

Are you feeling…..?

• Angry/Threatened: It will be extremely challenging to engage in inquiry when you feel an intense need to protect and guard against a perceived threat. Far better to take a break (could be a pause of just minutes or a longer break of a day or more) before re-initiating the conversation by leading with inquiry.
• Vindictive/Argumentative: When you’re hooked by a need to prove yourself right (“I told you so!” “How can they not see how I totally called this?”), you’re not going to be effective at inquiry. A sign you might be in this state is when you find yourself asking the other person questions that start with: “Well, don’t you think that_________?”
• Judgmental/Contempt: When you’re caught up in evaluating another person’s behaviors, choices or character and assessing them as lacking or negative in some way — that’s a danger zone for trying to engage in inquiry. Remember that inquiry comes from a place of care for/belief in the other person. When you feel strongly judgmental of someone or even feel contempt towards them (i.e., a belief in your own superiority) you simply can’t inquire effectively. The disgust and other negative feelings will leak out through your tone, language and nonverbals and the other person won’t open up in the way you might hope they will.
• Ashamed: Engaging in inquiry is potentially quite vulnerable both for you as the inquirer and for the other person as the one who is disclosing and divulging. When you’re plummeting down your own shame spiral, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to be effective at inquiring. At best, you’ll be too distracted by your own shame to be present and at worst, you’ll resort to discharging your own pain by blaming or shaming the other person through your questions and inadvertently drag them down with you.
• Flooded: And, finally, as you may have learned in a T-group or otherwise, you can’t be effective at inquiring when you are emotionally flooded. Each person’s threshold of “flooded” is different and it’s important to know the signs that best indicate to you if you are flooded. (Are they physical signs? Or can you only tell when your cognitive ability starts to decrease sharply?) Remember that “flooded” is beyond a zone of stress or discomfort or upset where you are experiencing emotion, but your brain can still take in and consider other perspectives, look creatively for solutions, remember details of what has been said and summarize/synthesize what other people are saying accurately. If you can’t do those things, these are signs you may be flooded and need to take a hard-stop break (20 mins or more) before re-engaging in the conversation and attempting to inquire again.

Recap

When you are engaging in inquiry skillfully….

• You’re not asking a question to prove a point or argue your case or sneaky-Socratically get the other person to say exactly what you want her/him to say.
• You’re not asking a question to shame or blame or punish a mistake.
• You’re not asking a question to make someone feel small or wrong or somehow less than you.

When you’re effectively engaging in inquiry, you are asking questions from a place of genuine curiosity and that curiosity is stemming from a feeling of care.