Open and honest questions

On Saturday I attended a retreat on how to ask open and honest questions as part of my ongoing learning and growth as a member of the Worship Committee at USSB. 

It sounds so easy! Open and honest seems like such a natural extension of being a good listener, no? 

Actually, no.

The goal of open and honest questions are to help the person you are listening to deepen their thinking and understanding of the situation they are sharing with you. They are questions in service of the speaker, a gift you can give to help someone better process their thoughts, think differently about a situation, or reach their own epiphany. 

Why are they so difficult? Because we typically ask questions in service of ourselves, the listener. We ask inquiring questions to satisfy our curiosity. We ask diagnostic questions to try to identify the problem and solution ourselves. We ask leading questions to "encourage" the speaker to see our perspective on a situation, or apply our opinions as a possible solution. In short, open and honest questions are difficult because as we listen we are really preparing for what to say next, how to engage in the conversation in a meaningful way but in a way that ultimately serves ourselves. 

Open and honest questions require you to listen deeply to what someone is saying, to hear the themes, and to identify questions in service to the person speaking. For example, after sharing a difficult situation about my children, one of my group members asked, "How would you define your role as a mom in this situation?" That question allowed me to think more deeply about what my responsibility is, and isn't, in relationship to the decisions my kiddo is making. It wasn't a question that gave an opinion or asked for more detail about the situation; it was a question that made me think. 

Open and honest questions are the ones that make you pause when they are asked, a total body response as the question "lands" on you, and the best ones are questions that hit at the core of the answers you yourself need to be able to find.  In that vein, one of the most interesting challenges of open and honest questions is that the questioner shouldn't necessarily expect an immediate response. When someone asks you the question you need to answer, it might actually take awhile. Even if the answer isn't immediate, the work is going on inside. 

How can we incorporate more open and honest questions into training and learning? Isn't this the core of motivation and behavior change? How can we marry open and honest questions with training content to get to not just the what, but also the how and why of change?

Ignorance is bliss, knowledge is power & the fear of hypocrisy

First post of the new year, and I'm not starting out lightly...

Earlier this week, my friend Brian McGowan posted this tweet:

I spend a lot of time thinking about behavioral change, organizational change and performance improvement as an immersive learning designer, and lately even more than usual as I finish my book. We even designed a game on personal resilience in The Change Game. Suffice it to say, expertise in change and resistance is required for what I do every day.

I just never considered fear of hypocrisy as a motivation for intentional ignorance.

Some people might call it self deception, or denial...but those things are different. Those labels refer to people who actually know something but convince themselves that what they know isn't true. There are a number of reasons why someone would deny something they know to be true and not being a psychologist, I'm not going to examine those motivations. While self deception might be interesting to explore as an obstacle to change, I'm more interested as to why someone would intentionally choose not to collect the information they should have to make an informed decision.

Brian's tweet, and the subsequent exchange with Julie Dirksen, got me thinking about what that decision-making process might look like. As a rough pass, I've flowcharted it here:

I'll walk you through my logic...

If you have a question, you have a choice: seek the answer to the question or don't. I won't get into the validity of different data sources...let's just assume that you have a limited set of resources to pull data from and getting informed means that you look at all of them, and staying ignorant means that you don't look at all of them (ignorance then can refer to collecting data from only one, or a known biased, source).

After you decide to research the answer to your question, or not, you have a choice: change what I'm doing, or stay the course. Either way, there's a chance that you will succeed and a chance that you will fail. For the sake of this discussion, I'm also not going to explore the likelihood of success or failure based on your level of being informed versus ignorant...there is probably data out there that shows a higher likelihood that you will be successful if you're informed, but I'm focusing more on motivation and perception here, not the actual validity of the decision.

Whether you decide to change or not change, if you made an informed decision and are successful, your perception will justify your motivation to make an informed decision: knowledge is power. If you decide to change while remaining ignorant and are successful, you'll likely think of yourself as lucky, or perhaps even credit your own intuition or intelligence on making the "right" decision, which would reinforce risk-taking behavior. If you decide not to change and are successful, then you'll also likely credit your own intuition and intelligence, but instead of reinforcing risk-taking, you're reinforcing resistance to change.

So, what if you fail? Here's where I think things get interesting. If you change and fail, and if you were informed, you might blame bad data on the decision to change. You might also blame things like lack of experience, lack of knowledge on how to operate in the new environment, or not anticipating the full impact of the change...in other words, you'll likely think that you weren't informed enough. The same rationale holds true for the decision to not change that results in failure, but with a twist...if I was informed and decided not to change, was it because the data told me not to change or was it because I ignored the data that informed me I should change? And if I knew that I should change, and I didn't, does that make me a hypocrite?

But, if you fail, and you were ignorant? You can default to "I didn't know!" Informed failure requires the person to take responsibility for the outcome; ignorant failure allows the person to divert responsibility.

Organizationally, and in regards to learning innovation specifically, I hear a lot of objections to exploring new design strategies that sound like "our people aren't technology savvy" or "we don't have the money for those types of initiatives" or "our company isn't ready for that." But are you sure? I'm guessing your people are much more technology savvy than you think, that "these types of initiatives" are a lot less expensive than you imagine, and that while your company may not be ready for change, companies that don't change don't succeed.

On a personal note, it takes a certain type of emotional fortitude to deal with the data that research may turn up, and some people, and some organizations, truly don't want to have to face the decision to change. As part of the Twitter conversation with Brian and Julie, Julie shared a link to an article on self-deception, and research was shared out that showed "ignorance is bliss," that people who remain ignorant are happier. I don't disagree with that; shirking the responsibility of knowledge puts you in a childlike position of letting others make the informed decisions for you. There are lots of times I'd love to "not know"...how much work there is to be done to fix broken systems, how much injustice exists in the world, how many problems there are to tackle, big and small. I'm sure life would be easier and I'd get more sleep.

But then I read a comment on the Noam Chomsky interview on self-deception and I believe the same  applies to intentional ignorance. Choosing to be uninformed is bigger than just displacing responsibility of action; deciding to be ignorant defines who you are, either as an individual, as an organization, or as a society. The brackets are my addition, with apologies to Richard for applying his thoughts to a different, but related, topic:

RichardSabi

It is interesting that people respond with indignation to the idea of liars {the ignorant} being happier. Some commentators said it was obviously not the case.

Ah, for me the question is rather, what is the pay off for living without self deception {ignorance}?

Could it be self-respect, the ability to appreciate beauty even in a flawed world, resiliency and fortitude, and dare I say it, spiritual maturity?

May. 07 2011 04:52 PM

I do believe that knowledge is power and with great power comes great responsibility (attribution to Voltaire and Stan Lee). While it may not make us happier to be informed, I believe it makes us better. Fear of hypocrisy is a poor excuse for remaining ignorant; better to resolve yourself to informed action than remain in the dark. An informed society is a higher functioning society, an informed organization is a higher performing organization, and an informed person is a more responsible decision-maker.

In 2012, may you be better informed and ready for the changes ahead, because there are always changes ahead...

Shameless learning promotion

If you follow me on Twitter, you may have noticed that I've been promoting (read: pimping) my pre-conference workshop for DevLearn 2011, titled How to Promote Learning Engagement Across the Enterprise.

I am really excited about this workshop.

Over the past several years, I've worked with organizations on adopting new learning programs and technologies, including organizational adoption consulting of emerging tech like virtual worlds. Time after time, in organization after organization, new learning technologies are introduced with the attitude "if we have it, they will use it." Um....no. These initiatives aren't JUST a technology introduction...often they represent a cultural change. In the triad of organizational adoption (people, process, technology), most organizations focus on the technology first, sometimes on the process, and often the people are an afterthought.

For learning professionals, people are your customers. How can you make your customers happy? How can you gain new customers?

I'm excited about this workshop because I'm going to be talking about the part of what I do that most people don't usually get to see. Most of my speaking engagements focus on leveraging new technologies for learning and design strategies, but this session is going to focus on what happens after an organization says yes to innovation. Dare I say, great design is not enough?

I hope you'll join me in Vegas and practice some of the critical competencies that go beyond design: marketing, sales, first experience strategies, and data collection and analysis.

Its time to make like Don Draper and channel your inner sales lizard. Fedoras welcome.

Activity leads to...everything

Several years ago now, I was taking on sales responsibilities as part of my job. I had never sold anything before and I had no idea how to do it. My mentor and then boss, Kevin Kruse (@kruse), wisely advised me "activity leads to sales." His point, as I understood it...you won't sell anything if you're not actively trying to sell things. With enough activity, opportunities come your way and eventually that leads to sales. 

I've found over the years that his advice isn't just relevant to sales. Activity leads to opportunity, change, and growth. I'm not talking about random or unstructured activity...I'm advocating strategic activity, activity backed by a plan and purpose. The most successful people I know are the people who throw themselves out there, take risks, make mistakes and keep moving forward. With their activity, new options and opportunities present themselves, their plans and activities change and expand as they accomplish their goals, and they are constantly evolving. 

Evolution is the ultimate change. Change is constant, but evolution is not...evolution is a fundamental change in form or structure, a change that is an improvement, that demonstrates an adaption to context and environment. Activity is the catalyst to change, to adaption and to evolution. Without activity, there is little chance of accomplishing your goals, fewer chances to try new things, fewer opportunities to learn new skills. 

Activity leads to everything. So, what are you doing?

Thanks to Marcia Conner for the tweet that inspired this post:

@marciamarciaMarcia Conner

Achievement seems to be connected w/ action. Successful ppl keep moving. They make mistakes but don't quit. Conrad Hilton

It's all about change (and resilience): The Change Game

Three years ago when Tandem Learning started this entrepreneurial journey, we fancied ourselves a services company. Over time, though, as we saw the intersections between the work that we do and the business challenges our clients are facing, it became clear that there were some solutions that could help a variety of organizations.

Take change management, for example.

What started out as a custom project for a client who wanted to help their employees be more resilient in the face of big organizational changes led to our partnering with Linda Hoopes of Resilience Alliance and using her book, Managing Change with Personal Resilience, as the basis what has become Tandem Learning's first product, The Change Game. 

We're really excited about The Change Game.

On an individual level, this game helps people identify how they react to changes in their own lives and through reflection and recognition, provides them with strategies to help them break the destructive patterns of resistance to change. 

On an organizational level, The Change Game provides companies with a new tool in their change management toolbox...addressing employee resistance, providing a common organizational language to identifying patterns and instances of resistance to change, and providing managers and organizational leaders responsible for implementing changes specific data around which to provide coaching to employees. 

If you'd like to learn more or to see it, send me a message and I'll be happy to show you around. If you'll be at Learning Solutions 2011, come find me for an in-person tour.