Recommendation
Retired MIT professor Edgar H. Schein makes a solid case for humility. He explores the way American culture prioritizes action, practicality and competition over courteousness and respect. Schein encourages openness and curiosity about others in the form of “Humble Inquiry” – “the fine art of drawing someone out, of asking questions to which you do not already know the answer, of building a relationship based on curiosity and interest in the other person.” To counter a working environment often short of manners and civility, getAbstract recommends this slim but powerful book to executives, managers, leaders and anyone who wants to know how to ask a polite question and who really wants to know the answer.
Take-Aways
- “Humble Inquiry” means “asking questions to which you do not already know the answer” and “building a relationship based on...interest in the other person.”
- American culture focuses on “Telling” instead of “Asking.”
- When you tell instead of ask, you can offend or demean others.
- Asking builds better relationships because you put others’ needs before your own.
- Use “diagnostic inquiry” to ask clarifying questions to find out feelings, reactions, causes, motives, future actions and the big picture.
- “Confrontational inquiry” means telling people what to do or giving advice while phrasing it as a question.
- “Process-oriented inquiry” focuses on the inquiry itself.
- Problems arise when boundaries change, such as when “task-oriented” relationships become personal.
- Barriers to humble inquiry include status, rank, role and internal psychological makeup.
- Practice humility by slowing down, becoming more mindful, developing greater awareness of your surroundings and asking questions.
Summary
“Humble Inquiry”
American culture encourages “Telling” instead of “Asking.” But telling hinders relationships, because when you tell people what to do, you assume they’re incompetent or lack information and that you’re the expert. “Asking” fosters better relationships. When you ask people for their input, you humble yourself and empower them. This nourishes long-term, productive interactions.
“Humble inquiry is the fine art of drawing someone out, of asking questions to which you do not already know the answer, of building a relationship based on curiosity and interest in the other person.”
When you ask instead of tell, your partner can lead the conversation, and that builds trust. If you hear something you didn’t know or even something you didn’t want to know, you’ve still learned from the exchange. Telling shuts down communication. People hurrying through the workday do ask questions, but often their questions are biased toward action and are not humble inquiries.
“The culture of ‘Do and Tell’ does not teach us how to change pace, decelerate, take stock of what we are doing, observe ourselves and others, try new behaviors [and] build new relationships.”
Humility comes in three forms: “basic, optional and here-and-now.” Across all cultures, humiliating another person – causing someone to lose face – is a social offense. Avoiding it means practicing basic humility. Certain cultures have class systems or hierarchies; people born into a particular status level never lose that status. Members of upper classes enjoy higher rank and different treatment than members of lower classes. Even within such systems, people treat each other with a minimum, basic level of respect and civility.
“Life in civilized society is reciprocal, and we all learn the rules of the culture in which we grow up of when and how to reciprocate.”
Optional humility occurs in cultures where people earn prestige rather than being granted it as a birthright. When someone’s achievements might humble those who observe them, the observers can choose to be admiring or disdainful, making their humility “optional,” because they have choices about how they react.
“A low-key question along the lines of ‘How do each of you feel about the direction we are going in?’ produces far better decisions than motions, seconds and votes.”
Humble inquiry is a part of “here-and-now humility.” If someone has something you need, you can humble yourself and ask for help, or you can refuse to ask and not get what you need. Here-and-now humility can be difficult to perceive during peer interactions in which everyone shares equal status. Consider an operating room. If everyone treats doctors as deities, patients suffer. People of high status find it challenging to “become here-and-now humble,” because that means recognizing that, at certain times, they are “dependent on subordinates and other lower-status team members.”
More Forms of Inquiry
Other forms of questioning include “diagnostic inquiry, confrontational inquiry and process-oriented inquiry.” For inquiry to be truly humble, it must be genuine. When you ask a question, don’t promote your agenda. “Try to minimize your own preconceptions, clear your mind at the beginning of a conversation and maximize your listening as the conversation proceeds.” Good starting phrases for a humble inquiry include: “What’s happening?”, “What brings you here?” and “Can you give me an example?”
“Questioning is both a science and an art.”
Diagnostic questions examine “feelings and reactions” or “causes and motives.” Asking how people feel or how they’re reacting to a situation could push their boundaries; they might consider such questions intrusive. In fact, depending on the context, diagnostic questions may or may not be humble inquiries. Diagnostic inquiry calls for asking several types of questions, including:
- “Clarifying” – These queries involve “steering the conversation and influencing the other person’s mental process.”
- “Cause and motive” – Such questions probe for actions and their consequences, for instance, “What may have caused this?” and “Why do you suppose this happened?”
- “Action-oriented” – These inquiries focus on past or future plans of action. They could include, “How did you get here?” and “What have you tried so far?”
- “Systemic” – These inquiries help you assemble your “understanding of the total situation” and give you a picture of other people’s thoughts, actions and feelings. Examples include, “How do you think she felt when you did that?” and “What do you think he will do if you follow through?”
“Even ordinary conversation is a complex dance involving moment-to-moment decisions on what to say, how to say it and how to respond to what the other says.”
Confrontational questions relay your ideas in question form and they are rarely humble inquiries. When you give advice phrased as a question, people feel defensive. Listeners can tell whether you care about them or if you are just trying to insert your own views.
Process-oriented inquiry is the most difficult and potentially most rewarding kind of questioning. It shifts the focus of your probing onto the inquiry itself. Such inquiries can be humble, diagnostic or confrontational. For example, you might humbly ask, “Is this too personal?” or “Have we gone too far” instead of confronting your counterpart with, “Why were you so defensive just now?” or “Are you upset?” Despite potentially being awkward, process-oriented inquiries allow both parties to readjust their expectations. Humble inquiry takes time and practice.
“Doing and Telling”
Western culture’s preference for doing and telling is the “main inhibitor” of humble inquiry. Society in the United States is based on the individual. This mind-set considers each person’s rights and freedoms more important than those of a group or society at large. Americans and many other Westerners are practical, action-oriented and individualistic; they value getting the job done over building relationships. Here-and-now humility is hard to achieve in societies so fragmented by rank and status. American society doesn’t readily acknowledge an individual’s dependence on others.
“The social art of asking a question has been strangely neglected.”
Americans are competitive and want to win; US politicians and salespeople build relationships with their constituents and consumers, but only as a means to an end. Americans become impatient doing business with cultures that value relationships more than productivity. They don’t want to sit through get-to-know-you dinners before getting down to brass tacks. In the US, “status and prestige are gained by task accomplishment, and once you are above someone else, you are licensed to tell them what to do.” This causes problems when high achievers are unwilling to listen or learn from lower-status individuals.
“Timing, tone of voice, and various other cues tell the listener about your motives.”
Americans value telling more than asking because requesting help or clarification denotes weakness. You’re supposed to know what you’re doing, especially if you manage or lead others. Stephen Potter, author of Gamesmanship, said in the 1950s that Western cultures live in a state of “gamesmanship” or “one-upmanship.” He believed that Americans keep score by “making a smart remark, putting down someone who has claimed too much and turning a clever phrase, even if it embarrasses someone else in the conversation.” Consider the pre-election presidential debates. Observers became more concerned with who “won” the debate than with the issues the candidates discussed. Americans fundamentally believe life is a competition with clear winners and losers. They have little patience with listening to information they think they already know.
“In the telling mode, we hope to educate, to impress, to score points, to entertain; when we are in listening mode, we want to be educated, impressed and entertained.”
The culture of the US is changing as people realize that the world is becoming more complex and interdependent. Americans across a range of occupations – airline pilots and their crews, surgical teams, sports teams, conductors and their orchestras, and others – see how much they rely on their team members. People who trust each other work well together, but first they must slow down and take the time to build the critical foundation of trust.
Barriers to Humble Inquiry
Status, rank, role and internal psychological makeup inhibit humble inquiry. Subordinates and superiors follow their own codes of conduct. Subordinates generally obey “rules of deference” that govern how they act in front of their superiors, while superiors generally obey “rules of demeanor” or appropriate rules of behavior in front of their subordinates. People notice when someone fails to follow these unwritten rules, such as when a boss publicly berates an employee.
“Confrontational questions can be humble if your motive is to be helpful and if the relationship has enough trust built up to allow the other to feel helped rather than confronted.”
Your role and status determine how you relate to others. Meeting your friend for dinner is a different experience than going to the doctor or buying a new dress. Relationships can be “task-oriented,” and revolve around transactions that happen when you need something from someone. Or, relationships can be person-oriented, when you like each other or share the same interests. Problems arise when boundaries change, such as when task-based relationships become personal.
“In a relationship-building process, the most difficult issue is how far to go in revealing something that normally we would conceal, knowing at the same time that unless we open up more, we can not build the relationship.”
Researcher Amy Edmondson investigated how cardiac surgical teams work together on open-heart surgery. At lunch, many teams segregate, with professional peers sitting according to rank and status. One successful team’s members sat only with each other. This team performed more complex surgical procedures because everyone learned together as a team and eliminated barriers. Melissa Valentine conducted similar research in emergency rooms. To reduce patient wait times, one ER created small “pods,” each with an available doctor, nurse and technician. By rotating through the pods, each professional came to know their colleagues personally. Some hospitals “refused the pod system because it would force more closeness than the staff was ready for.”
“It takes...discipline and practice to access one’s ignorance, to stay focused on the other person.”
Joe Luft and Harry Ingham created the concept of the Johari window – a grid of the “four parts” of the “socio-psychological self” – to explain internal psychological forces which can impede humble inquiry. Some things are known “only to self,” while some are known “only to others.” Certain safe topics, like the weather, are part of the “open self.” However, people unknowingly send signals showing “blind self,” including body language, tone of voice, figures of speech, dress and behavior. Your “concealed self” harbors potentially embarrassing personal information you’re aware of but “are not supposed to reveal because it might offend or hurt others.” The “unknown self” refers to hidden talents, thoughts and feelings that others don’t know about you and you don’t yet know either.
“The ORJI Cycle”
Human behavior follows the ORJI cycle:
- “Observe” – Observation is an active process involving all your senses and cognitive processes. Humans are prone to focus their “defense mechanisms of denial” on things they don’t want to see. They also use “projection” and interpret matters according to what they do want to see. Many people deny their feelings or suppress them, an impulse that a task-oriented culture reinforces. This is the most critical step in the cycle. Careful observation lets people show humility by slowing down and encouraging questions.
- “React emotionally” – Reactions are based on observations and sometimes kick in before someone mentally processes an observation.
- “Make judgments” – People reach conclusions by processing and analyzing data.
- “Intervene” – This means behaving “overtly in order to make something happen.” Intervention, whether rash or considered, occurs when people act on their judgments.
Learning Humility
You can learn to be humble. Practicing humble-inquiry skills will help you in your personal life and at work, especially if you’re a manager or executive. Leaders must acknowledge their subordinates in order to communicate and establish trust. Expand your “perception and insight” to “identify when and where you might do less telling and more asking.” You will find yourself battling the anxieties of learning and unlearning: Learning new skills is difficult and may provoke anxiety. Unlearning bad habits and developing good ones is often even harder.
“Sometimes we don’t want to build a positive relationship; we want to be one up and win.”
Slow down and change tempo. Develop greater awareness of your surroundings. Learn to value personal relationships over task management. Reach out to others. For example, invite your work colleagues to lunch to get to know them better. Use humble inquiry on yourself. Ask: “What is going on here? What would be the appropriate thing to do? What am I thinking and feeling and wanting?” Consider whom you depend on and who depends on you. Practice mindfulness. Learning a new skill – drawing, painting, acting or the like – will humble you and broaden your horizons. Experiencing a new culture through travel polishes your humble-inquiry skills.
In the workplace, recognize the presence or absence of humble inquiry. Bring team members together with informal activities. One Swiss-German company had its executives participate in arcane sports no one knew – like shooting a crossbow – to bring people together regardless of different ranks.
About the Author
Professor Edgar H. Schein retired from the MIT Sloan School of Management. He is the author of several books, including Helping and The Corporate Culture Survival Guide.
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