Breaking Down My #heweb10 Presentation, Part 1: Change Your Questions

This is Part 1 of 5 in a series that will break down the presentation I gave at #heweb10 in Cincinnati on October 12, 2010. You can download the full slidedeck on slideshare.

Regardless of whether or not you actually have people reporting to you, you must consider yourself a manager. You’re in charge of managing your projects and workload, and you’re in charge of managing your working relationships with both your colleagues and your boss. You have to approach these things proactively – you are in charge of managing your own reality.

In early September, I asked what people’s biggest challenges were in getting things done at their college. Consider what the following three answers have in common:

I would argue that all of these answers are playing some version of the blame game.

“It’s not my fault! Look at the people I’m working with. There’s just nothing I can do.”

And I’m not trying to make fun of Susan or Paul or Michael because goodness knows, every single one of us has been there. But it’s time to take a step back and change our point of views.

Every change, big or small, begins with a new question. That’s what Dr. Marilee Adams tells us in her book Change Your Questions, Change Your Life. The premise of the book is that every time you are faced with a decision, you ask yourself a series of questions. How you frame those questions dictates whether or not you will have a positive or negative experience. For example, consider this list of questions:

Every one of us has asked ourselves one of questions mentally, if not flat out verbally. But this is a really negative list of questions – it immediately puts us in the frame of mind of being in battle with those we are working with. Let’s flip it. Consider this list of questions:

This is a much more positive way to approach things – you’re trying to create win-win situations for both you and your colleges.

Consider this example: Someone you are working with is being a complete pain. They’re e-mailing you all the time, being combative and abusive. And, of course, since no one likes being treated that way you’re thinking “What is WRONG with this person?!” You start to play into it, e-mailing them back in the same tone they are using with you, trying to show them that you’re right and trying to take control of the situation.

Now take a step back for a moment – what if you had instead asked yourself what assumptions you were making and what things in the situation you were missing? Maybe you would have considered that the person causing the problems was having a tremendous amount of pressure placed on them by their bosses, pressure which was causing a ridiculous amount of stress. They were manifesting that stress through being combative and abusive with you.

Now, this is not an excuse for that behavior, but now you’ve taken the personal nature of it out of it. This is not about your personally – something outside of your control is causing it. Then maybe you take the next step of asking what you can do to help this person relieve their stress – you ask how you can create a win-win situation. You’ve instantly set yourself up for a more positive outcome.

One of the tools that Dr. Adams using to illustrate this concept is the Choice Map:

What the map illustrates is that you have two options every time you have a decision – you can use that first negative set of questions and go down the “judger” path, or you can use that second positive set of questions and go down the “learner” path. But here’s the key – most of the time we are asking ourselves these questions unconsciously. If you can make yourself aware of the questions you are asking, should you find yourself on the judger path, you can switch lanes mid-stream and change your questions. That will put you back on the learner path towards a more positive outcome.

You can download a copy of this map for reference on www.inquiryinstitute.com.

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