The Powerful Question

There is a Powerful Question you can ask that will turn almost any conversation you’re having into a knowledge producing exchange. Surprisingly, the Powerful Question is not the one you ask at the start of a conversation. Rather, the Powerful Question is always asked in response to a conclusion or opinion that a colleague provides. The Powerful Question is, “Help me understand your thinking, how did you reach that conclusion?” Each time the questioner frames the question, the wording is slightly different in order to fit the context. But what stays the same is asking the other person to let you in on the connections that exist in his/her own mind – the reasoning. What is so powerful is being able to access the thinking behind other’s conclusions - gaining an in-depth understanding of their perspective.

Let’s try it out on some typical conversations. Here is a conversation between two people who have been implementing a change effort in an agency. The two people have very different ideas about what needs to be done to sustain the change effort after the external funding ends.

1. Melissa: I’m concerned about the agency being able to sustain this change effort. For that to happen agency employees will need to understand the principles behind what we are asking them to do. Otherwise they have to keep coming to us for answers.
2. Jerry: I understand the concern about sustaining, but I think it all goes back to ROI. If we want to sustain the project past the funding, we have to prove to the agency that they can afford it – that there will be some return on their investment.
3. Melissa: Smith and Jorgensen have shown that it’s futile to try to prove ROI on issues like this. Where we need to put our efforts is in helping the agency keep it going after we have stepped out of the picture. Ultimately that is what those at the top are going to consider – was it sustained after we quit funding it. And for that, agency employees need a much more thorough grounding in the content itself – the underlying principles.
4. Jerry: It takes time to do the steps of this process, that is, the investigation, the analysis, and the reports. Accountants know exactly how much a person’s time costs and can figure how much time each step takes. Time is money and the agency is not going to invest that time unless they can see that it will pay off.

The form of this exchange is a familiar one to most of us:
1. Melissa - conclusion
2. Jerry - differing conclusion
3. Melissa - you are wrong for this reason and restatement of previous conclusion
4. Jerry - you are wrong for this reason and restatement of previous conclusion

Most of us would probably agree that this conversation does not seem much like an exchange of knowledge. We get the sense that even if Jerry and Melissa were to continue for another ten minutes, neither would learn much from the other.

So how would a Powerful Question work in this situation?

There are several places in this brief dialogue that a Powerful Question could be used – but let’s use the first opportunity, which is after Melissa’s first statement. If Jerry used a Powerful Question there, the conversation might look like this:

1. Melissa: I’m concerned about the agency sustaining this effort. For that to happen agency employees will need to understand the principles behind what we are asking them to do. Otherwise they have to keep coming to us for answers.
2. Jerry: Hmm, that’s a different idea than I have about what would be useful for sustaining, help me with your thinking about what it is about principles that make them important in this situation?
3. Melissa: For me it is the old saying about teaching someone to fish versus giving them a fish. I think we’ve been giving them fish and we need to teach them to fish. I noticed the employees can repeat a process they have already dealt with, but when they’re faced with a new situation they seem not to know how to proceed. That leads me to think that they’ve not grasped the principles that would allow them to address a wide variety of situations.
4. Jerry: I hadn’t really hadn’t thought about it in terms of generalizability, but I see your point – that they are unable to generalize beyond a specific instance they have experienced. I think there is an equally serious issue related to sustaining and that is whether management sees there is a return on investment. I’m now wondering if the ability to generate ideas for new situations would be seen as a ROI.

The form of this exchange is:
1. Melissa - conclusion
2. Jerry - probe of her reasoning (the Powerful Question)
3. Melissa – reasoning and data on which her conclusion was based
4. Jerry – acknowledgement of new knowledge and connection to an additional conclusion of his own

In this conversation, Jerry has discovered something he did not know about how the agency employees are acting. He gained this knowledge because rather than responding immediately with his differing opinion, he asked a Powerful Question to see what he could learn from Melissa about her view.

The conversation does not have to be a disagreement in order for a Powerful Question to be of use. Here is a conversation in which both parties agree – but again little learning occurs in the absence of a Powerful Question.

1. Melissa: I’m concerned about the agency sustaining this effort. For that to happen agency employees will need to understand the principles behind what we are asking them to do. Otherwise they have to keep coming to us for answers.
2. Frank: Yes, the principles are very important. Maybe we ought to have a module on the theory behind what we are doing. I think we short change people when they don’t know the major thinkers in this field.
3. Melissa: That might be a good idea, but for me the issue is sustainability – I think they need the principles so they don’t have to be so dependent upon us for answers.
4. Frank: Why don’t we put together a reading list of the important articles and books and send that out. I think people would really appreciate having the original source rather than us translating it for them, as you say, they probably don’t like to have to keep coming to us.

The form of this exchange is:
1. Melissa - conclusion
2. Jerry - agreement with conclusion (for his own reasons)
3. Melissa – restatement of conclusion (thinking he didn’t “get it”)
4. Jerry – agreement with conclusion (for his own reasons)

So how could a Powerful Question improve this conversation? Jerry could ask nearly the same Powerful Question that Frank asked after Melissa’s first conclusion in the conversation above. But for variety, let’s have Melissa ask a Powerful Question after Frank’s statement.

1. Melissa: I’m concerned about the agency sustaining this effort. For that to happen agency employees will need to understand the principles behind what we are asking them to do. Otherwise they have to keep coming to us for answers.
2. Frank: yes, the principles are very important. Maybe we ought to have a module on the theory behind what we are doing. I think we short change people when they don’t know the major thinkers in this field.
3. Melissa: I’m not sure I see the connection you are making between “major thinkers” and “sustainability” – it would be helpful if you could clarify your thinking for me there.
4. Frank: Oh, I don’t know that there is a connection with “sustainability.” For me it just a matter of not wanting people to be embarrassed if they are talking about this project to others. They need to be able to reference those people who created the principles so they don’t look like dummies.

The form of this conversation is:
1. Melissa - conclusion
2. Frank- agreement with conclusion (for his own reasons)
3. Melissa – asking Frank for his reasoning (Powerful Question)
4. Frank – recognition that he was misunderstood Melissa

So in this situation both Frank and Melissa gained some knowledge because of a Powerful Question. They learned they were actually not talking about the same thing. That is very important knowledge to gain – how else to correct the misunderstanding?

Let’s do one more, this time one that is initiated by Margaret seeking Melissa’s knowledge.

1. Margaret: We are three quarters of the way through this project and I have been thinking about what more we need to cover with the agency. You have more experience with this kind of project than I do, so in your experience, what we should we be considering at this point?
2. Melissa: I’m concerned about the agency sustaining this effort. For that to happen agency employees will need to understand the principles behind what we are asking them to do. Otherwise they have to keep coming to us for answers.
3. Margaret: Help me understand the connection you’re making between sustaining and principles? I don’t disagree with it at all; I just don’t quite see how you are putting the two together.
4. Melissa: Well, I’m not sure I have thought it through completely. I’m aware that with many projects like ours, agencies are able to stay focused on it while we are involved and then their enthusiasm seems to wane and they go on to something new. I’ve seen data that shows that only 10% of our projects continue after we leave. So I’m struggling with how to keep that from happening here. I think one of the issues might be that they don’t really know enough to continue. For example, maybe they run into a situation they have not faced before and they use the process they used last time, but now it doesn’t work because the situation is different. And they don’t know how to modify the process to use it in a different situation. So when it doesn’t work, they get discouraged and give up trying. If that’s right, then it seems to me what might make them capable of modifying the process would be to understand not only the “what to do” but the “why it works.” And the “why it works” is what I’m calling a principle. But, now that I lay it out like that, I see that I’m making an assumption that the issue is modifying the process – maybe we could find a way to test if that’s an accurate assumption before we go too far down that path.

The form of this exchange is:
1. Margaret – question to get an answer
2. Melissa - conclusion/answer
3. Margaret – inquiry (the Powerful Question)
4. Melissa – the reasoning that lead to her conclusion – in part newly constructed during the response

The remarkable thing about Powerful Questions is that they produce knowledge not only for the asker, but also for the teller, as we saw in Melissa’s final response. Melissa has come out of this conversation with more understanding both about the problem and the answer, than she had before the conversation. And certainly Margaret is better off than if she had just accepted Melissa’s conclusion as truth offered by a knowledgeable expert.

When experts know a subject really well, as Melissa does, they often develop rules of thumb and short cuts that they know to be correct, and that they have employed so often, that they have become automatic. Whitehead says, “Civilization advances by extending the number of operations we can perform without thinking about them.” Much of what experts know, they know without having to think about it. As Whitehead notes, that is a very good thing. But the world keeps changing and some of those things they “know,” if left unexamined, become outdated an get them into trouble. When you ask an expert or colleague for their reasoning, you cause them to make visible thinking that may have been left unexamined for some time. Frequently, the expert’s response to a Powerful Question is, “You know, now that I think about it…..”

If Powerful Questions are so useful, why don’t we ask them all the time? The answer lies in a funny quirk of our minds - the tendency to evaluate. Any time we hear a conclusion offered by another, our first reaction is to judge whether or not we agree with it.

If we disagree with it, we assume the other is misinformed or ignorant and our tendency is to provide the correct position, as we saw in the Melissa/Jerry dialogue. Thus, we have no need to ask a Powerful Question because if the other is wrong, why bother to probe their reasoning?

If we agree with it (as in Frank’s example) we have no need to ask for the other’s reasoning because we assume it is similar to our own. But, as in Frank’s case, that assumption may be incorrect.

This evaluation tendency is so inherent in our thinking that it is tacit – we do it without even thinking about it. But, unfortunately, it prevents our asking Powerful Questions –and thus it prevents the exchange of knowledge. To get past the evaluation tendency we have to unlearn our response – and unlearning is much more difficult that learning.

We can’t unlearn our evaluation tendency itself, which is a very necessary and useful part of out thinking process. What we need to unlearn is our response mechanism. Instead of giving voice to our agreement or our disagreement immediately, we need to respond with a Powerful Question.

But an important caveat! Powerful Questions have to be asked, not as a trick question intended to uncover the flaw in the other’s thinking in order to use it to our own advantage – but out of a real sense of curiosity.

When we hear a view we disagree with, rather than viewing the other as misguided or ignorant we need to assume they have a reasonable explanation for the conclusion they have drawn – an explanation we are unaware of. If we hold that view, it would be natural to ask a Powerful Question.

(The Powerful Question is based on Argyris' (1996) Model II skills)