#465： The Powerful Questions That Will Help You Decide, Create, Connect, and Lead
Episode Stats
Summary
To move forward in life, we typically focus on finding answers. My guest today argues that we should spend more time asking questions. Name is Warren Berger, a self-described questionologist and the author of the book, The Book of Beautiful Questions: The Powerful Questions That Will Help You Decide, Create, Connect, and Lead.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast to move forward
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in life we typically focus on finding answers my guest today argues that we should spend more
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time asking questions name is warren berger he's a self-described questionologist and the author
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of the book the book of beautiful questions the powerful questions that will help you decide
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create connect and lead we begin our conversation discussing why having an inquisitive mindset is
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more important than ever in this fast-changing uncertain world of ours but why people are afraid
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to ask questions warren then argues that questions don't necessarily need to have answers to be
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useful and explains what he thinks makes a question a beautiful question warren then talks us through
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the importance of asking questions when you're trying to make decisions be creative form relationships
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and lead people while providing concrete examples of questions to ask yourself and others to be more
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effective in each domain after the show's over check out our show notes at aom.is slash beautiful
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question and warren joins me now via clearcast.io all right warren berger welcome to the show
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thank you brad it's great to be here so you are a self-proclaimed questionologist you've been spending
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a lot of time thinking and writing about what makes a good question a good question and you make the case
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that to move forward in life in today's fast-changing world we need to ask more questions which is you know
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it's kind of counterintuitive because we think if we want to move forward in life we're looking for
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answers so what is it how can questions asking questions improve all facets of our life personal
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business etc yeah you know i think of questioning as a mindset and a way of looking at the world around
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you you know with with sort of an open and curious mind and i think it's more important than ever these
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days to approach life that way you know that i'm open to learning i'm i'm going to question
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the information that comes at me i'm going to question the assumptions about why things are the
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way they are i'm just going to go through life with that kind of an attitude the reason i think it's more
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important than ever is because the world we're in right now is first of all you know think about
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what's going on with the glut of information right and we all know about this situation of
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bad information coming at people and distorting their their views and so in in a way it's more
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important than ever that we be questioning just basic things like the the the news information that's
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coming at us or the stories that we're being bombarded with on on websites so on that basic level
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it's important but i think it's also important in the larger sense that we're in a world now where
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everything is changing all the time and so you know maybe in the past you could coast a little bit
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on what you knew you know you sort of you'd sort of go through school and go through college and and pick
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up a trade or whatever pick up a a body of knowledge and then kind of kind of coast on that for a while
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but today i don't think there's any coasting you know it everything changes so fast that all of us
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almost have to be in constant learning mode and that's why questioning is so important because
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questioning is how you learn you know i mean you just that willingness to ask questions and take in
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new information and consider new points of view that's what's going to enable you to keep learning
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and the learning will enable you to keep adapting and growing yeah i like what you said about it's an
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attitude you take towards the world when you talk where you're talking about you know all this glut of
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information it's really easy to get cynical yeah but it seems like questioning is is a positive
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alternative to getting cynical yeah it is because part of what goes on you know i don't know if if you've
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noticed this but but i noticed with cynical people they have this attitude like oh i've seen it all
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you know i know it all like uh you know they always they always seem to take this view oh i've seen
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this before we've heard this before you know and so they part of what their cynicism is is built on is
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this idea that they've kind of already figured out the game and uh and there's nothing new for them to
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learn and and that's a really bad i think that's a really bad attitude because that kind of traps you
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in your in your current thinking or your current worldview you know so i think it's just it's just
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really really important to to have that openness you know that's that's what's going to keep you
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it's going to keep things fresh in your life it's going to keep you uh open to new people new ideas
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and it's just going to it's just going to make you a better person overall but what holds people back
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from asking questions because people don't like asking questions particularly as you get older
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you stop you start asking fewer questions what's going on there yeah there's a few things going on
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that you know it's really interesting if you look at the the research on questioning you know we all
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kind of have heard or we all kind of know from experience that kids are good questioners right
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kids kids ask a lot of questions that's kind of a known thing and what's interesting is if you look
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at that the research totally bears that out in terms of numbers you know kids who are three four
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five years old are asking just thousands and thousands of questions and but then what's interesting
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and what a lot of people aren't as aware of is that there's a a drop-off that happens when kids get
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to be six seven years old and as they advance through grades of school they seem to ask less and less
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questions and then that continues into adulthood so so i think you know it's interesting to think
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about why that's happening i think there's a lot of things that work against questioning i think of
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them as the enemies of questioning and one of them is just you know that fear of admitting to the world
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or to people around you that you don't know something so if you're asking a question it must mean you
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don't know something and therefore you know we think oh well that's revealing a weakness that's
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revealing something that's lacking in us so over time we seem to get defensive about that and and and
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we don't want to um we don't want to admit that that that we don't know something so that's a big big
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enemy of questioning and then there are just other things like time you know we we we get very
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conscious of of having to get things done and and move forward all the time in our lives and and
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questioning the very act of questioning to me is a is a kind of stepping back you know when you ask a
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question it's like you're stepping back you're saying hold on a second i want to know this or i'm
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wondering about that and to a lot of people that seems almost like it's not productive or something it
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slows things down so that's another sort of thing that works against questioning is just that that
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the pressure for answers and to get things done and to to just you know keep moving forward and then
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you know i i would say one other thing that that works against questioning and this sounds odd but is
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knowledge you know kids when they're very young aren't weighed down by a lot of knowledge and so
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they're you know they're asking questions all over the place but as we start to know more we we start
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to feel like okay we've kind of we're starting to figure all this stuff out and that causes us to ask
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less questions and i think it's that's that's kind of bad i mean that's like the knowledge is good
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but the the the lessening of the questions is bad ideally we we want to be knowing more and also
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questioning more so that even though we we're knowing more stuff and learning more stuff we still
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want to know even more and we want to learn even more so we have to kind of overcome that that trap
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of expertise that idea that oh i've got this figured out therefore i don't need to ask any questions
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so your first book was a more beautiful question so what makes a beautiful question a beautiful
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question are all questions created equal there's that all that's sane right there's no such thing as
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dumb questions but is that is that true well i i think there are there are dumb questions or there
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are stupid questions you know when when oftentimes i'm in a meeting and you know where the meeting is
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about is about uh you know how the how our organization is going to innovate and and someone
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asks a question about uh their vacation time or something like that you know so so there are there
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are questions that are off topic or that are you know self-centered and not concerned about what
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anyone else is is is working on that there are definitely bad questions you know but i think i i
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enjoy to me i one of the things i really like are naive questions which sometimes get dismissed as
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stupid questions and a naive question is when you you know you sort of step back and say wait a minute
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why are we doing this thing we're doing you know so it's like really basic right like like everyone
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is assumed everyone's already figured out oh this is you know as a group our goal is to do x and and
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now we're working on how are we going to do x and how are we going to do x faster and how are we going
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to do x more efficiently and then someone comes along and says wait a minute why are we doing x in the
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first place i love those kind of questions because um on the on the one hand they seem very fundamental
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and very basic and sometimes they they're annoying to people because they feel like that's too basic
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why are you asking that question but what they do is they force you to regularly challenge your own
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assumptions or reconsider your assumptions reconsider the thing everyone the thing ever everyone thought
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we agreed upon maybe it's time to just step back and say do we really all agree on this and does it
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really make sense and have we thought about it lately so i love naive questions to me those are
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beautiful questions but in general the way i would define a beautiful question is a beautiful question
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is a question that's ambitious so it's not like you know oh what color should we paint the walls in our
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kitchen and that's that's a fine question but it's not particularly ambitious you know i love questions that
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are ambitious that are actionable and that you know might bring about some kind of change they might
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bring about change in people's thinking or they might bring about change in the world or the change
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in your your company or your organization so so if you would ask a question like um how might i help this
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organization to do a better job of communicating with each other like maybe you've noticed that there's a
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real lack of communication in your group or your organization and you you sort of pose that question
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to yourself i love that because that's a beautiful question i mean that's ambitious right but yet it's
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something you might be able to actually work on and do something with and it's a question that if you
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answer it it could change things there could be a there could be a change that comes about because of
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that so those are that's the way i define a beautiful question i love that my favorite questions i think
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is kind of in line with what you're talking about are the questions that don't they don't have an
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immediate answer or they don't even have an answer at all but like they just get me thinking yeah like
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those are my my favorite absolute questions oh yeah yeah and and they can be those questions can come
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from anywhere you know there's a story that i tell in the in in my first book a more beautiful question
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about the polaroid instant camera and and how it it came about because um the founder of
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polar edmund land was out one day with his with his four-year-old daughter and he was taking
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pictures with a with a standard camera back in the 1940s and of course you know in those days you took
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a picture you had to send the film out and wait for it to get processed and all and it would be days
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and days before you ever saw the results and so he tried to explain this to his daughter his four-year-old
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daughter and she asked she said i don't understand why do we have to wait for the picture
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so that question like just blew his mind it just shifted um edwin land's thinking because
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it's like so obvious and so fundamental but he'd never really thought about
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you know why why do you have to wait for the picture and what if you didn't have to wait what
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if there was a way to you know create a a camera where you could get the results right away
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and that became the basis of him creating the polaroid instant camera so i think what's
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interesting is you know the questions have this power the right question has this power to
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unlock something in our minds or in our imagination that can be really amazing it can do you can do this
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to you in your own mind you can do this by asking yourself a great question or sometimes you can do it to
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other people when you put a great question out there it can just trigger something in other
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people and they'll say wow you know i never thought about that that question before but you know i'm
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going to think about that that that's that's got me going yeah and the one great thing about those
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type of questions is that you might not even get the answer you were thinking you would get
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right if you just go with that that openness it's like you throw it out there and it can go
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completely somewhere completely different and but it's because of the question yeah well
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well you know what i what i think of is that the the the greatest questions the most beautiful
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questions first of all there's no simple answer right you can't look it up on google if it's a
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really a beautiful question like how am i going to bring about change in this situation or in my life
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you're not going to find the answer on google you know you have to sort of as i like to say you
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know you have to do a different kind of search you know google's not going to help you and and i love
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that i mean i love the idea that that we can we can and we should pursue really ambitious questions
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that don't have easy answers and we don't know where they're going to lead us you know they may
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lead us somewhere that's not what we expected that's in a whole different direction than we thought
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starting out so in your latest book the book of beautiful questions you get really specific and
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offer suggestions like with specific questions for different facets of our life and um the one
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section i found really useful and i've been using in my own life since i read this book is the section
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on you know making using questions to make better decisions yeah well first off like how do people
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typically let's by decisions let's say we're talking about big decisions like you know not yeah what
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you can eat what am i gonna eat for breakfast today though you can question that right right but like
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the things like you know should i you know take that job where i have to move my family right uh how
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do people typically approach decisions like that that without asking questions that prevent them from
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exploring different options or even eliminating options right yeah well you know there's this very
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popular expression of going with your gut right and that's what a lot of people do when they're making
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decisions they kind of go with their gut instinct and you know there's two schools of thought on that
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through the years there have been a lot of people that really praise gut instinct and say yeah you know
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you should trust your gut and go with your gut and you know you remember malcolm gladwell wrote the book
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blink that was all about amazing decisions people made just in the in the flash of a of a second just
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based on a gut instinct so there's a whole school of thought that says you know just make gut decisions
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and it's great but increasingly the research if you look at the the scientific research on this
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it shows the opposite it shows that if we are making a lot of decisions just based on our gut instinct
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on what we feel in the moment we're going to make a lot of mistakes we're going to make a lot of bad
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choices and the reason for that is that we as human beings we tend to have all these biases we have
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these inherent biases that we're not even aware of and the biases can be things like you know we're
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biased in terms of short term instead of long term we tend to be much more focused on what's happening
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right now as opposed to what you know what's down the road we have a bias that's sometimes referred to
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as the negativity bias where we're biased negative things have a much bigger impact on us in our
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minds than than positive things and we have a lot of fear so we make decisions sometimes based on fear
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so the the point is you know you have all these um these biases uh and assumptions and things like
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that that are going to cause you to make a decision that might not be the best decision so i guess what
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i'm the the case i'm making in the decision making chapter is that you need to slow down the decision
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making process a little bit if you can obviously if you have to make a snap decision because of the
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situation you know then you make a snap decision but if you have time you know take advantage of that
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and think about your decisions more and one of the ways you can do that is by asking yourself
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questions and asking other people questions it's one of the ways you can bring more um you know sort of
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more information into the decision making process and open up more possibilities to choose from more
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options and it can also help you overcome some of those some of those biases you know just you know
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like the uh the fear issue when you're making a decision just asking yourself questions like you know
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okay what scares me about this decision and what excites me about it just asking yourself those
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questions to identify these these things that are under the surface it'll help a lot or asking a
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question like you know what what's the worst case scenario here what what's the worst that could happen
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if i make this decision and what's the best that could happen you know just getting yourself to think
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about those things will give you more information to help you make the decision yeah one of my favorite
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questions and i've used this a couple times on people when they've come to me with this question
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was the one about overcoming the bias of short-term long-term thinking because one of the hard things
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is that you don't know what your future self is going to like no right exactly um and you're just
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focusing on what you want now and so one of the questions that i loved was uh you know about whether
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you should take a job that has a pay raise or whether you should stay where you're at now because it's
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easy on your family things are good and the question was i believe you kind of invert it you you ask
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yourself all right let's say you you've already you're already living in that new city you've got that job
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let's say you get offered to move back home right but with a pay cut would you take that would you
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take it exactly so what that question is doing and this is the amazing thing you can do with questions
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you can shift reality you can shift perspective so you can basically say okay i'm trying to answer
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this question or make this decision based on the here and now but what if i shift things around i think
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about a year from now or i think about uh i think about it from a different perspective in some way
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that allows you to just come at the decision a different way so what what uh that that example
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you cited came from someone who who actually did that he he was you know he was he was facing the
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prospect of having to make a move and for a job raise or not and what he did when he when he made
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that little switch and he asked himself the question as if he'd already made the move as if
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he'd already made the decision and would he regret it would would he go back and take a pay cut to be
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back home what he was doing there one of the things he was doing with that question was he was overcoming
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his own fear of moving and change his fear of change basically so what that exposed to him what that
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revealed to him was that the thing that was keeping him really from taking the job was just a fear of
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making a change that's all and when he asked the question framed the question as if the change had
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already been made then it was a no no question at all it's like oh yeah obviously this is what i want
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so the only thing getting in the way was change and once he realized that then he realized okay
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i should take the job right because because um i shouldn't let a fear of change stop me from doing
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what otherwise is clearly the right thing to do so so you know that's what you can do with
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questioning you can sort of reframe things you can remove certain um constraints just temporarily
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you know i love the question that's in the book called what would i try to do if i knew i couldn't fail
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right that's a very popular question right now in silicon valley they love to ask that question
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so what you're doing with that question is you're temporarily removing the constraint of failure
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so that you can then think about possibilities in the boldest bravest way and you think okay i don't
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have to worry about failure anymore i've put that off to the side so what would i do and now all of a
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sudden you have you start to have very bold ideas you know well if i if i didn't have any fear of
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failure i would i would do this and i would do that and the reason that's so good is it it just opens up
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a part of your brain it opens up possibilities that might be ignored otherwise now the important thing
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to note is after you do that kind of after you think about that question and you you come up with
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these bold possibilities you still have to go back and understand that failure is a possibility
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so now you you go back and you you bring failure back into the the equation right you say okay i've
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thought of all these bold possibilities now i have to realize yeah failure could actually be
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be an issue here so how would i deal with it if let's say i did fail in this situation what would
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what would be the worst case scenario how would i recover from that so basically it's it's a really
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powerful way to to allow yourself kind of the freedom to really think and really consider all
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the possibilities yeah another powerful question that i got out of the book and i've used it on
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two people that came to me with some problems was all right if let's say a friend came to you with
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this exact same problem what would you tell them right like i just that that right that question
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i guess gives you some mental distance from your problem which allows it's incredible yeah um there's
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uh the the author dan dan arieli has talked about this and has has showed showed the research
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that that that that shows that we give better advice to other people than we give to ourselves
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which is weird right i mean it's like why would that be the case well there are reasons for it you
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know where it's like you know how sometimes you're too close to a problem to see it clearly you know
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so that's the way we are with our own lives like we're too close to it to see it clearly but but when
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our best friend is having a problem that we can see totally clearly right we can see our best friend's
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situation we know what what's in his best interest and so we're able to make a really great decision
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for our friend and to say hey i know exactly what you should do but then when it comes to ourselves
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we have trouble so again here's where you can use a little questioning trick you know just to just to
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say how would if my best friend were facing this decision that i face what advice would i give how would
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i advise my best friend to proceed and the chances are whatever advice you would give your best friend
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is also pretty good advice for yourself i love that and there's so many more questions in that
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section i love how specific they are let's move on to creativity because with the robots coming after
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our jobs yeah right uh success in today's economy requires creativity thinking differently yeah but the
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problem is a lot as you said a lot of adults you know not only they stop questioning asking questions
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they start thinking themselves as not creative right and i think the same you know things that are going
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on why adults don't ask questions also goes into why adults think they're they aren't a creative
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right they're just yeah it's it's it's it's just something we were sort of trained it's been trained
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out of us just as questioning was kind of trained out of us creativity is is trained out of us not
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intentionally you know but just the the systems we go through in in school and in in the workplace
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tend to discourage both questioning and creativity so so i you know i think of creativity is all
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about asking questions and and and but but one of the things i i say in the creativity chapters
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let's start with the most basic question of you know am i creative right which is what that's the
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that's the first question to deal with if you want to unlock your creativity is you got to deal with that
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that question that people wonder about is gee am i really creative i don't know and the answer to that
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is yes you are you know we all are and so you almost have to stop asking that question and reframe
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it a little bit as what are some of the ways i seem to be creative and try to identify that try to
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identify where you're where your creativity naturally seems to come out or seems to flow and the other
00:26:18.740
questioning you can do around creativity is you know one of the big things i i i talk about in that
00:26:25.440
chapter is that a lot of times creativity is about just finding the right problems to focus and work
00:26:34.400
on you know artists are always trying to do that innovators inventors are always trying to do that
00:26:41.480
they're trying to find that problem that that something that's lacking in the world something that's
00:26:48.200
missing a voice that's not being heard a device that people need and they don't have you know so
00:26:54.580
you're kind of just trying to ask you know what is the what problem can i make my own what problem can
00:27:02.060
i take ownership of and work on and and so that's that's a big question and then in terms of finding
00:27:10.680
that in terms of finding what it is you might want to work on you know you just ask yourself questions
00:27:16.100
like you know what stirs me or what or what bugs me you know what are things i see out there and it
00:27:22.500
drives me crazy i say why hasn't someone done this or or why doesn't anyone ever present this point of
00:27:28.060
view look for the things that that somehow raise your emotions a little bit or or really really
00:27:35.920
engaged and that may be the area where you want to search for a particular that you want to tackle
00:27:41.280
yeah i think you mentioned i think it was david kelly the guy at ideo he keeps like a notebook
00:27:46.540
yeah he keeps like a list like a notebook of like annoyances that come up throughout the day
00:27:50.960
so so when he's walking around every time he finds something noise i'm like you know the the fact that
00:27:56.840
certain kind of doors have to be pulled out instead of pushed in or or whatever um you know he he will
00:28:03.660
he will make a note of that and you know his his company is they're always working on innovations
00:28:10.620
they're always working on new ways of designing things and uh so he's he's just got this long list
00:28:16.680
of things that he thinks could be better designed and and i think all of us can can find things like
00:28:22.760
that now it doesn't mean that we're going to we're going to change every little thing that annoys us
00:28:27.500
but it just means you are you're looking for areas of opportunity and somewhere among that in that long
00:28:35.100
list that you start to compile there may be something that you can actually decide you know
00:28:42.060
what i'm not just going to complain about this i'm going to try to do something i'm going to try to
00:28:46.880
take ownership of this particular problem or this particular challenge we're going to take a quick
00:28:51.680
break for your word from our sponsors and now back to the show yeah one thing i've read about
00:28:57.240
creativity is they've done these experiments with kids and adults where they'll you know give them a box
00:29:01.520
of just stuff and the kids end up coming up and they had to like you know solve a problem with
00:29:06.600
just random stuff be like a hammer and a piece of cardboard or paper towel tube and the kids are
00:29:12.020
able to come with a lot more solutions than the adults and they think it's well they say it's because
00:29:16.580
you know when adults see a hammer they think well you just hammer nails with that a kid sees a hammer
00:29:20.600
they don't know that that's not you know encrusted in their brain yet so some other questions would
00:29:25.200
just be question making assumptions about stuff you know or asking questions that challenge the
00:29:30.260
assumptions of everyday life right yeah yeah yeah and you know the other thing that kids are really
00:29:35.860
good at and and um we can all learn from is uh kids kids will just try stuff so they won't think
00:29:42.340
about it they won't they won't like um you know worry and and be paralyzed by what should they try
00:29:49.300
they'll just go ahead and try it so what they're doing there it's interesting they're they're acting
00:29:55.320
on their questions immediately right so they're there's if you could see inside their head you
00:30:01.660
know they're saying what if i try this okay let's try it what if i turn this upside down okay let's
00:30:07.940
turn it upside down so they're constantly questioning but then they're also acting on their questions
00:30:13.020
really quickly and turning them into little experiments and that's one of the reasons why if you give
00:30:18.240
a kid some type of a little building project you know with with you know some funky raw materials you
00:30:24.760
know duct tape and and straws and things like that they're they'll be able to build something much
00:30:30.340
faster than a an mba graduate uh you know would be able to do it because they just are they're just
00:30:38.280
natural born experimenters and they'll start they'll start trying stuff right away so i think of that as a
00:30:44.380
form of questioning too i mean they're they're always in that mode of hey they're always in what if
00:30:49.960
mode you know what if i try this what if i try that so another area you talk about in the book are
00:30:56.020
relationships and questions and relationships and that i think again people don't ask a lot of
00:31:00.740
questions and relationships because questions are scary uh they're afraid of the answers they might
00:31:04.820
find out or they're afraid that the question will come off as too intrusive challenging um but you
00:31:13.000
argue that no questions can actually really strengthen relationships both personally and in business
00:31:18.440
yeah they the it's questioning the questions seem to do three things that are important for
00:31:24.940
relationships they number one they show interest so when you ask a question you're showing interest in
00:31:30.260
the other party number two they create understanding because as you ask questions you get information
00:31:36.020
back you understand more and the third thing is they just they build rapport you know because they
00:31:41.440
they create conversation they generate conversation which in turn builds rapport between the two parties
00:31:47.780
so i think of those as like the three three legs of the relationship stool right the three legs that a
00:31:56.680
relationship can can be built on and it's it's really interesting because it it matters and it works
00:32:02.800
both with new relationships so people you're just meeting as well as established relationships you know people
00:32:11.300
you might be really close to you know it's it's important in either case if you think about it with a new person
00:32:17.840
yeah you want to show interest yeah you want to create understanding and build rapport that's that's all really
00:32:23.900
important to creating a new relationship with someone but those things are also important with your
00:32:31.380
girlfriend of 10 years or your you know your spouse or your your brother or your your father-in-law or
00:32:37.860
whatever you know it's um it you want to even though you've known that person for a long period of
00:32:45.400
time you still want to show interest you still want to create more understanding and you still want to
00:32:51.540
have that rapport so i think questioning is just it's a really really valuable uh tool for that people
00:32:58.480
worry about it that it's it might be intrusive or something when you ask people questions but it's not
00:33:05.640
really the case um for the most part people are flattered when you ask them questions as long as
00:33:11.400
you ask the questions you know in a in the right way i mean the questions should be coming out of
00:33:16.760
curiosity you know um they should seem somewhat authentic like you really are interested you know if
00:33:23.320
you're asking kind of rote questions that like what's up you know those don't that those those don't have
00:33:30.780
that much power but if you're asking questions that really seem to have really seem to show interest
00:33:35.760
and curiosity generally people love that because hey they they they love that someone's curious about
00:33:42.260
them right well i mean you highlight this arthur aaron i mean i think his like his list of 36 questions
00:33:49.200
you can ask that can possibly lead to love yeah he did he he's been doing these experiments for years
00:33:54.780
he's a he's a uh psychology professor who's who specialized in intimate relationships and whether
00:34:02.180
people could build intimate relationships essentially whether they could fall in love with each other by
00:34:09.160
by talking to each other in certain ways and and one of the things he found was that um asking questions
00:34:16.820
of each other if two people you know are let's say getting together for the first time they're on a date or
00:34:22.180
something and they ask questions of each other it was really really powerful and then he started
00:34:27.920
trying to figure out what kind of questions are the are the best ones and he came up he ended up coming
00:34:32.540
up with 36 questions that were you know they're all about like you know if you could if you could have
00:34:37.940
dinner with anyone in the world who would it be or you know what how would you describe your relationship
00:34:43.280
with your mother and there were these sort of questions that that got at deep beliefs and feelings
00:34:50.080
that a person might have and he found that if two people did this these 36 questions with each other
00:34:57.040
it was pretty amazing by the end of the by the end of the experiment or the question asking session
00:35:03.360
they um they felt very close to one another a few of them actually did fall in love one couple got
00:35:09.760
married after they did his experiment and so but his point was again coming back to that idea that
00:35:15.860
just by showing the interest is is really important and then by creating an understanding
00:35:23.080
you know the questions if they're good questions will help you start to understand this other person
00:35:29.680
on a much much deeper level so i i think it's really valuable um i think guys especially guys can
00:35:36.620
really benefit from this this information because i i think women tend to be pretty good question
00:35:43.400
askers especially let's say on a date you know women will tend to ask questions but guys a lot of
00:35:50.960
times don't and and i don't i'm not sure i i think it may have to do with guys sometimes feeling like
00:35:57.520
they have to make a good impression on a date and that the way they're going to impress someone
00:36:02.680
is by you know telling stories or telling jokes or or you know whatever just kind of showing
00:36:08.480
showing something about themselves so they tend to forget about asking questions and and so they're
00:36:15.640
missing a really really important thing a really important element that could really help them build
00:36:21.520
a rapport with the other person yeah and one of the insights i got from there is really powerful
00:36:27.040
is like you can start off with those superficial questions that you usually do on a first date like
00:36:30.820
how many brothers and sisters do you have but then you go deeper be like what what made you the most
00:36:36.180
different from your siblings right right exactly yeah the the deeper you can go on questions and um
00:36:42.440
and you know people people worry about deep asking deep questions too soon but you know one of the one
00:36:49.000
of the people i quoted in the book said you know he he believes just jump right into the deep end
00:36:53.640
the deep end of the pool because you know there's there's no point wasting too much time on a lot of
00:37:00.040
surfacy you know shallow questions they're really not going to they're not going to get you that much
00:37:04.880
information but as soon as you start to ask a fairly deep question that really gets at someone's
00:37:12.980
feelings or what makes someone special or different as soon as you start to ask those questions that's
00:37:18.120
when you're going to start to be making a connection with that person and you know i i think most people
00:37:24.960
will welcome it and if someone doesn't welcome it then maybe that's a signal too maybe that means that
00:37:30.560
they're really not that interested in you right yeah and as you said this works for also
00:37:34.760
established relationships like one of the questions i got from the book and i as soon as i read it
00:37:38.440
i was like i asked my wife this question it was uh what's something you've always wanted to try but
00:37:42.960
haven't done yet and she's like that's a great question yeah like we had this great conversation
00:37:47.200
yeah and what's so funny is you know we we assume we know so much about people that have been in
00:37:54.380
our lives for a while and what what you will discover through that kind of questioning is
00:37:59.820
well there's a lot you don't know you know because it just doesn't come up in day-to-day
00:38:04.640
conversation so there's the it's a really great way to you know just to surface things that you
00:38:11.420
probably should be aware of but aren't aware of so uh related to relationship is this you know
00:38:17.780
this idea that we live in an intense time of political polarization yeah do you think questions
00:38:23.000
can bridge the gap between people on different sides of the spectrum well they can help you know
00:38:29.000
i mean right now it's you know it's tough i mean it's tough out there right now there's a feeling of
00:38:35.460
like we're just there's a wall between us and and you're either on one side or the other side and
00:38:40.700
you know it's it's it's a difficult time but i think you know any attempts to reach over that divide
00:38:49.440
are going to have to involve questions they're not going to involve statements statements won't do it
00:38:55.500
you know the problem we have right now is that both sides have their statements they have their ideas
00:39:02.140
they have their beliefs and when they try to communicate with each other the way i envision it
00:39:10.040
is like their statements are butting heads their statements are just banging into each other
00:39:16.180
and nothing good happens nothing good comes of it so by changing those statements to questions
00:39:24.000
we at least have a chance of starting to make a connection again you know going back to that idea
00:39:30.860
of what do questions do when you ask someone else a question number one you're showing interest
00:39:36.400
all right number two you're trying to create some kind of understanding
00:39:39.900
and then number three you're building rapport so we have to show interest in people who are
00:39:47.460
on the other side from us you know we we may be inclined to say i don't care i don't i don't
00:39:52.680
agree with them and therefore i don't care but if there's going to be any progress at all
00:39:57.480
you have to show interest there's a great line that someone in the book used which is lynn
00:40:03.100
nodded she's a playwright and she said i try to replace judgment with curiosity so when you're
00:40:11.820
encountering someone of a different point of view instead of automatically judging them try to bring
00:40:18.560
curiosity into the equation and curiosity would be you know why do they feel the way they feel
00:40:23.300
what what are some of the factors that might be going into that is there anything in their viewpoint
00:40:29.300
that i should think about or i should consider is there something i might be missing that that that
00:40:36.340
they're saying is there something they're not saying that is kind of under the surface so i think if you
00:40:43.180
bring that kind of curiosity to your interactions with other people um people on the other side it's at
00:40:49.740
least a start you know it may work it may not it all depends on how receptive they are to your
00:40:56.040
curiosity but if if they're receptive to it then they may turn around and ask you some questions
00:41:03.680
too you know okay why do you feel the way you feel and at least when you get on to that level
00:41:09.860
of conversation you're starting to exchange information a little bit instead of just
00:41:14.900
lobbing uh you know grenades at each other yeah i think that's a good point to make that you know
00:41:20.780
you need to go in the mindset that you're not going this isn't going to happen you're not going to
00:41:24.420
convince someone no no absolutely exactly that's a great point because everyone right now is is in
00:41:30.480
that mode of i'm gonna i'm going to beat you up with facts and i have my set of facts here and my set
00:41:37.760
of facts is so strong that there is no way you will be able to resist well sorry that doesn't work
00:41:44.660
we know that doesn't work um when people have made up their mind about something yelling at them
00:41:50.380
and citing a bunch of facts at them unfortunately it doesn't have much impact they kind of have built
00:41:56.660
up a defense against that and they have their counter facts that they will come back at you with
00:42:02.580
so um so you need to get beyond that kind of thing that thing of like i'm going to argue you into
00:42:09.100
my point of view and you need to instead be thinking in terms of okay is there any common ground
00:42:14.860
we can find is there anything we can agree on because that will be the the beginnings of a of
00:42:21.260
a dialogue at least and if there is a goal that you're trying to do through questioning a person of
00:42:27.360
a different point of view it's a very modest goal you just want them to consider your side just a
00:42:37.040
little bit that's all you don't want them to come over to your side you don't want them to accept your
00:42:42.620
side totally but if you can get them to just for a minute think about your side of the of the of the
00:42:49.840
issue that's a victory so that it's a small victory but it's a victory because at that point they've
00:42:55.100
gained a 10 you know they've gained a tiny bit of understanding of your side and and that's that's a
00:43:01.720
good start yeah i mean a question you can ask for that you you mentioned in the book was is there
00:43:05.940
anything about my position that you find attractive exactly that's a very powerful question
00:43:12.240
another way that you know another trick you can use with questioning is uh you know you can say
00:43:17.820
here's my position you know on a scale of of one to one to ten or how much do you disagree with it
00:43:27.160
and how much do you agree with it and the reason that's a really effective question is because
00:43:32.620
if people even if people disagree with your point of view rarely will they put it at the lowest number
00:43:39.140
so they won't say oh i give your your point at your point of view i give a zero i don't usually
00:43:45.840
they'll say well on a scale of one to ten i'll give your point of view maybe a two and then you can
00:43:51.400
say okay why are you giving it a two what is it what is it that that gives it a two instead of a zero
00:43:58.120
and at that point you're forcing them to articulate the positives in your argument you're almost you're
00:44:05.640
almost forcing them to articulate your side of the argument a little bit so again it's a it's a it's
00:44:10.760
just a way to make that little shift of perspective where all you want someone to do is to think about
00:44:17.080
your side just a little bit and by the way you should be doing the same thing with their side i
00:44:21.860
mean it's not fair to think i want them to think about my side of the issue a little bit without also
00:44:28.160
saying i'm willing to think about their side a little bit too yeah that uh one to ten trick that
00:44:34.100
reminded me it's completely unrelated to you know polarization but uh tim ferris we had him on the
00:44:39.040
podcast a while back ago yeah one little trick he had was when he goes to a restaurant and he's
00:44:44.400
asking the waiter you know is is this is this meal good is this dish good he asked on a scale of one
00:44:49.860
to ten uh what would you rank this dish but you can't say seven right because that forces usually
00:44:56.480
people was like oh you know it's a seven that's that doesn't really tell you anything but like if it's
00:45:00.140
nine that means it's really good if it's six oh yeah he's forcing him to sort of make that choice
00:45:04.160
yeah yeah that's interesting yeah yeah so and what he's doing there again is using questioning as a
00:45:09.740
great way to you know kind of manipulate thinking or you know shift thinking a little bit or um you
00:45:17.360
know force a different perspective on there and that's just that's the power of questioning what it
00:45:22.020
all all boils down to is you know what you're trying to do with questioning a lot of times is just
00:45:27.560
shift perspective a little bit you know we all of us tend to have a narrow perspective we're looking
00:45:33.900
at things just through tunnel vision and you know what you want to do is open it up a little bit open
00:45:40.060
up that tunnel vision a little bit so you see more you consider more you take in more information
00:45:46.580
and you have more possibilities to choose from you have more points of view that you're you're
00:45:52.880
considering you want to do all those things and questioning helps you do all those things you
00:45:57.920
know the last section was about leadership leaders need to ask more questions which is counterintuitive
00:46:02.900
because we think of leaders as you know the people that have the answers right the buck stops with me
00:46:08.120
yeah but yeah i think that's yeah why do leaders need to ask questions i think that's kind of the old
00:46:13.300
model of leadership right it's it's uh you know the the idea that the leader has all has all the
00:46:19.260
answers and to some extent that that's still there are still a number of leaders who still operate
00:46:25.720
that way today but i think it's there's a new model of leadership that's that says you know you should
00:46:32.220
be a questioning leader the reason is goes back to sort of what we were talking about at the outset
00:46:38.160
about this sort of changing world we're in now where everything is happening very quickly um change
00:46:44.860
is going on all the time and the idea that a leader can have all the answers is is sort of obsolete you
00:46:53.460
know i mean a leader in today's world should be uh very open to new information should be uh soliciting
00:47:01.760
uh points of view from all around him or her and should just be questioning why are we doing things
00:47:09.620
this way or uh how how should we react to to this new change that's going on a leader today just has
00:47:16.060
to be a questioner has to be curious and has to be open-minded if not what what the leader is going
00:47:23.800
to do is lead lead people off a cliff because what what will happen is the leader will be operating
00:47:30.500
in a very limited with very limited information with a a very sort of biased point of view about what
00:47:38.080
works and what doesn't and it's almost bound to fail in the world we live in today yeah and this
00:47:44.980
is not to say that leaders don't have a vision right leaders have a vision but they ask questions
00:47:50.280
to get to that vision yeah and and they they question that vision constantly as they go along
00:47:57.020
so they ask questions to establish the vision you know starting with what is my vision pretty basic
00:48:03.820
right but you know you do have to you do have to ask yourself that and articulate what do you really
00:48:09.020
believe you know why why are you a leader in the first place why do you want to be a leader and and
00:48:14.360
what are your sort of core values right so you need to ask those questions in the beginning and articulate
00:48:20.800
that vision but then you also need to be questioning that vision as you go along because you know as i was
00:48:29.340
saying it's it's like change is so constant now that the vision that you came up with at the beginning
00:48:36.800
of your venture whatever it is might not hold up as well now as it did a few years ago and maybe it
00:48:47.140
needs to be changed or you or just fine-tuned in some way but um but that's that's one of the things
00:48:55.080
that a leader has to do now is be willing to say okay you know last year i thought this but this year
00:49:03.800
i'm thinking more we should be doing more of this and that's okay that's actually what you should be
00:49:09.580
doing now as a leader you should be totally open to that kind of adaptability based on the change
00:49:15.860
that's going on it doesn't mean you're wishy-washy it doesn't mean you don't have that core vision you
00:49:21.100
can still have that those core values that core vision but it has to be much more adaptable now
00:49:26.700
has to be more flexible you see people leading companies now who are having to ask questions
00:49:33.720
like you know what business are we really in you know like last year we thought we were in the shoe
00:49:39.620
business but now people aren't buying shoes the way they they used to and maybe we need to adjust
00:49:45.340
the model so i think it's it's just become kind of a fact of life for leaders now and it's challenging
00:49:52.200
because it's it's uh it it requires almost a different skill set than leaders are trained
00:49:59.880
and are used to um uh using um you know that that that top-down model of leadership where you're
00:50:08.580
supposed to make snap judgments and then and then execute them it's this is a different skill set this is
00:50:15.220
this is more of the questioning leader is more of has to be someone who's willing to um you know
00:50:20.920
show a little bit of vulnerability which old leaders necessarily weren't used to and didn't like
00:50:26.860
to do you have to show that you have to be willing to admit that you don't have all the answers
00:50:31.220
and that you're open to um to new points of view and you have to be confident enough to do that and
00:50:39.560
believe that people will still follow you right so i guess the question that a leader should
00:50:43.940
constantly be asking is why why are we doing this yeah why are we doing this and uh again what was
00:50:49.520
on a on a personal level why why me why am i why am i leading this organization you know that's that's
00:50:55.860
a pretty basic thing you find a lot of people sort of fall into leadership positions or they or they
00:51:01.960
they climb up to them because it's a natural it's sort of a natural outgrowth of their career
00:51:09.260
advancement they just climb the ladder and eventually they're the leader and then they look
00:51:14.220
around they go whoa this is not necessarily what i wanted so um so i think leaders need to even be
00:51:20.920
asking that basic question of you know why do i want to be a leader do i really want to be leading
00:51:26.620
this group of people and and do i want it for the right reasons because if you don't want it for the
00:51:32.340
right reasons i mean if if the answer to the why question is all kind of selfish if it's like i want
00:51:39.520
to be a leader because it pays more money you know um or there's a lot of glory i'll get on the cover of
00:51:45.640
of a business magazine if you have those kind of selfish uh reasons for leading those are not going to
00:51:52.480
serve you well in terms of your followers that eventually your followers are going to get wise to
00:51:59.760
that and you're not going to have a loyal followers eventually so i think it starts with asking you
00:52:07.500
know why do i want to be a leader do i have the right motivations and then it's it moves to the
00:52:13.600
organization you know what are we about as an organization what should we be about what should
00:52:17.640
we stand for yeah i imagine it's scary to ask that question because the answer could be like well
00:52:21.740
maybe i shouldn't be a leader oh yeah definitely could and there's a lot of people out there who are
00:52:26.180
leaders right now who shouldn't be um you know one of the things that you see in companies is um
00:52:30.820
the star performer often ends up the leader the person who was the greatest salesperson in the
00:52:38.020
history of the company you know ends up being the leader and sometimes what you discover is that
00:52:44.200
really great salesperson probably should have stayed a salesperson because once they become a leader
00:52:50.920
it's a whole different world and now instead of it being all about them and their their individual
00:52:58.120
results or their individual performance now they're suddenly responsible for a whole group of people
00:53:03.940
and as a leader this sounds counterintuitive but in some ways you have to step back and and step away
00:53:13.100
from the spotlight because being a leader is not so much about individual achievement anymore
00:53:18.440
now it's about sharing credit with other people um you know worrying about other people's performance
00:53:25.520
as opposed to just your own so it's a it's an interesting thing and not everyone is cut out for
00:53:30.520
it and i think some some of these star performers at companies it would be nice if they realized that and
00:53:37.440
by the way it would also be nice if organizations figured out ways for those people to still prosper
00:53:43.600
and be very successful without becoming the ceo yeah you see the issue with founders of companies
00:53:49.460
they found they're really good at starting companies but then they want to maintain you know still be ceo
00:53:53.840
but they're not a good ceo they're not a good ceo and if they're smart they will outsource that to
00:53:59.540
someone who is a good ceo and you know some of the smart ones do exactly that i mean they they realize
00:54:05.840
hey i can't handle this i'm going to find someone who knows how to be a leader and i'm going to let
00:54:10.680
that person actually run the company but you know a lot of people there's ego involved there a lot of
00:54:16.760
people i don't know they they feel like they can do anything and they're not honest with themselves
00:54:22.140
about what they really are good at or what they really want to do right it's a bias a curse of
00:54:27.120
expertise like you think you're good at one thing absolutely it's that feeling like i can do it all
00:54:31.260
right well warren this has been a great conversation there's some place people can go to learn
00:54:34.940
more about the books and also maybe place to go find some questions that they can start using today
00:54:39.680
yeah well my my main site that i uh that i use is amorebeautifulquestion.com so just take those
00:54:48.220
four words a more beautiful question and just squish them together into one word and it dot com and
00:54:54.240
and you've got the site that basically has my new book the book of beautiful questions featured on it
00:55:00.740
but it's also got all the articles and essays and things i've written the research the data there's
00:55:07.440
some fun stuff on there like um i i created a list of all the songs i could think of that have a
00:55:13.700
question for a title you know like who wrote the book of love and things like that and i i'm up to i
00:55:19.520
think i don't know 60 or 70 songs now but you know there's all kinds of fun there's those quizzes you
00:55:24.700
can take on what kind of a questioner are you but it's it's basically a clearinghouse for all of my
00:55:30.580
information about questioning and anything that might be related to questioning and so that's the
00:55:37.020
place to go well warren berger thanks for coming on this has been a lot of fun thank you very much
00:55:41.140
i really enjoyed talking to you my guest today was warren berger he's the author of the book the book
00:55:45.640
of beautiful questions available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere you can find out more
00:55:49.900
information about his book and his work at amorebeautifulquestion.com also check out our show
00:55:54.860
it's at aom.is beautiful question where you find links to resources where you can delve deeper into
00:56:00.400
well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice
00:56:16.840
make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com and if you enjoy the show you've
00:56:20.940
got something out of it i'd appreciate if you take one minute to give us a review on itunes or stitcher
00:56:24.680
it helps out a lot and if you've done that already thank you please consider sharing the show with a
00:56:28.460
friend or family member who you would think get something out of it as always thank you for your
00:56:31.880
continued support until next time this is brett mckay telling you to stay manly
00:56:54.680
understand you we're now paying attention you and i'll be freaking out i'll be in high the next night