You can’t get the right answers, if you don’t know the right questions

I heard this phrase yesterday, and it reminded me that, in much the same way that they say that when the pupil is ready, the right teacher will come, if you are feeling blocked, try asking  different questions.

Many people get stuck on “Why?”  but this seldom takes you very far.  “What can I learn from this?”  is often a much better question. 

We tend to think that we are at the centre of everything that is happening.  I suspect more often we are bit part players in other people’s dramas.  We might ask “How could he do this to me?”  but a better question might be “What is going on in his world?” 

A great question to have in your back pocket is “Who do I know who could help me with this?” 

Rather than jumping to trying to understand what is going on, get pen and paper and make a list of every question you can think of and pay attention to the less obvious ones.  Another tip is to ask “How would XXX handle this?”  and you can pick any number of people who you think might have an interesting or resourceful approach.

“Sometimes questions are more important than answers.”    Nancy Willard

“Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.”   Dr. Seuss

 

Tags: answers, blocks, questions

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 30th, 2009 at 20:33 and is filed under General, Hints, Tips & Techniques, Mini-Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.