Utilizing Humble Inquiry to Increase Psychological Safety, Open Communication and High Performance in Teams
Stop telling and start asking! We are used to working in a culture of telling, directing, and recognizing status and knowledge as power. The type of work environment resulting from these cultural elements restricts a team's confidence and ability to make connections, contribute new ideas, challenge concepts, and create new pathways to doing the work. Telling, unfortunately, shuts people down, misses an opportunity to understand them, and removes the ability for them to contribute, add value and share in the process of problem-solving and creativity. Dr. Kate Price tells us in her book; Taming the Culture Tiger, "Profits, productivity and efficiency are all worthy goals, but businesses need to achieve these and, people cannot put forth their best efforts unless they feel integral to achieving these goals"1
The call to action for leaders? Without telling you what to do....! Consider shifting how you invite your team to work together in the high-performance zone. I am referring to transforming the practice of telling a team what to do, how to do it and who to do it with into a reflective process of asking questions to break through hierarchy and rank with the intent to listen, learn and better know and empower the team. Humble inquiry is an enabler skill for leaders to connect with their teams in new ways. The concept of humble inquiry is the topic of one of my favourite reads: Humble Inquiry, The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling by Edgar. H. Schein 2.
Leading with here-and-now humility is described by Schein as dependent on the person asking the questions. The person is receptive to someone having information required to complete the task. Here and now humility is a choice made willingly to be temporarily dependent on what someone else knows offers and only works when the leader recognizes the value of learning something new from the team and being open to what is learned. According to Shein, the art of humble inquiry is an ability to draw the other person out to know and understand them. The attitude of humble inquiry goes further by leaning into vulnerability and providing information about the person asking the questions.
The skill of asking questions lends itself to displaying authentic curiosity if done with a genuine interest to listen and learn from others in the team. It supports learning more as a team than they would by being told what to do. The use of humble inquiry focuses more on exploring varying levels of ambiguity, creative problem-solving, and critical thinking. The team has a degree of autonomy to select how they want to approach a task, solve problems, and create innovative methods to approach a complex task.
Humble inquiry is an attitude reflected in behaviours to develop sufficient levels of trust for the communication within teams to be open which achieves better understanding. Think of a time when someone of authority asked you questions; what empowered you to feel enough trust to answer? Now think of an alternative scenario where a person of authority asked you questions, what made you decide to remain silent? Who is in to enable the generation of employees in the workplace today to manage the workplace of tomorrow with higher collaboration, authenticity, and innovation?
References
- PRICE, DR. KATE. (2022). Taming The Culture Tiger: The Art and Science of Transforming Organizations and Accelerating Innovation. LIONCREST PUBLISHING
- 2. SCHEIN, E. H. (2021). Humble inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling. BERRETT-KOEHLER.
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