The direct line from questions to culture

If like me you’ve a knack for sensing a proverbial elephant in the room that needs addressing, you might have also experienced a self-conscious pang before you open your mouth that sounds something like what on Earth am I missing here? Everyone else must know something I don’t know. Is calling this out going to make me look like a proper eejit…?

Getting to the heart of a matter, rather than skimming around the polite outside edges, takes a dose of conviction (particularly if you’re not the most senior person by a long way). But what matters as much as whether you ask the question at all is what kind of question you ask - and in particular, whether your question is generous.

Even though it can be uncomfortable to open up hard topics, it is the quality of your question that dictates everything that follows. A wise friend of mine, Jonathan Lincolne, once put it to me like this:

The questions you ask dictate the answers you get

The answers dictate the conversation

The conversation dictates the relationship

The relationship dictates the culture

This logic creates a direct line from questions to culture, meaning that the quality of your questions is a strategic act as much as anything else. Hurrah!

Of course, there are times that asking questions gets one into hot water because whatever you’ve raised is actually the subject of an accepted cultural norm (“we have all agreed to pretend like that’s not a thing…”) and you were the only one who didn’t get that memo. Many times I have been this person…

With the value of hindsight though, it is almost always the case that the question I was initially afraid to ask was something others were wrestling with, too. And even if a topic is off limits culturally, it will be opened up again someday by someone who yearns to be part of a more mature and productive conversation. And why shouldn’t that person be you?

If you choose to be the person that steps up, having the courage to ask a slightly risky question is immediately followed by responsibility. Both the responsibility to ask a question that moves the conversation in a productive direction and the responsibility to listen to the answer generously.

A confrontational or accusatory line of questioning is one intended not just to expose the elephant, but the person trying to hide the elephant. You might have asked the right question to get what you want from a conversation but doing so in a confrontational way closes conversation down, invites defensiveness, and does little to forward your relationship and therefore your culture (and will likely detract from it).

On the other hand a well-considered and generous question still exposes the uncertainty, and yet it also opens something up.

Space.

Space for a conversation that wouldn’t otherwise have happened. Space for exploration, discovering something, or creating a new possibility.

A generous question already contains the listening. If it doesn’t assume the answer, doesn’t assign blame, and leaves space for something messy or something you don’t yet know to emerge, you’ve done the hardest part already. The rest is just staying inside the space you’ve opened up.

If your question assumes who’s at fault: notice that and check in with yourself before you ask it.

Thanks for reading. Let’s unsquiggle this, good people!