Nothing To Be Humble About

HOT READS FOR THE PRACTITIONER

Title: Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling

Competencies: listening, trust, communication skills, building strategic relationships, demonstrating respect, establishes rapport, interpersonal effectiveness, providing feedback, talent management, team building, two-way feedback, valuing others

Who benefits: everyone in the workforce (and most people inhabiting the planet)

Consultant Usage: can’t think of a field of consultancy where the practitioner wouldn’t benefit, even if it is a refresher

What’s it about? Sometimes it is good to get back to the basics. Today I would like to review a just published book about fundamental communication. By a great author – Edgar Schien. From a great school – MIT Sloan School of Management.  By a great publishing company – Jossey-Bass.

I would like to begin with a story. It has nothing to do with the book. But it illustrates how much I believe in Edgar Schien and his body of work. Many years ago in a faraway galaxy…no wait, that’s a different story. This story was many years ago in a California university … at an offsite location, I was pursuing a graduate degree in organizational development. We had Edgar Schien as a two-day lecturer/facilitator.

The morning of the first day I was walking to the very informal classroom. It had been raining. I slipped and fell. I heard but didn’t believe a cracking sound. A fellow student came along and helped me limp to the classroom. I took a front seat and someone provided me with a makeshift footstool. At 8:00 sharp Professor Schien entered, began talking and pacing. For most of 4 mesmerizing hours he traversed that room elegantly elaborating on the precourse readings. I broke my own record for note taking.

A noon we had a two hour break. A nurse who was taking the course came up and offered (strongly suggested) that she take me to the local hospital. I accepted. We did. X-rays confirmed a broken leg. A cast was added and miraculously we arrived back just before the resumption of class. I took my previous seat, and prepared to take more notes. At 2:00 sharp Professor Schien reentered and resumed pacing and lecturing. Sometime in the middle of the afternoon he stopped in front of me, took a look at my condition and asked “Did you have that cast on this morning?” “No,” I replied.

“What happened?” he asked.

“I slipped and fell on the way to class this morning.”

“Why on earth didn’t you immediately go to the hospital?” he replied with a quizzical look on his face.

I simply responded “I didn’t want to miss your lecture.”

Many years later a mutual friend paid a call on Professor Schien at his MIT office. In the course of the conversation, Dr. Schien recalled the story and the disbelief that his lecture was somehow more important than a broken leg.

There is a moral to this story. Well, in truth, it is also a fun story to tell. But back to moral. When Edgar Schien has something to say, pay attention. It is bound to be of high value.

And high value is what I would ascribe to his just released book Humble Inquiry. Professor Schien is a culture guru. He has spent his whole life studying different aspects of culture. And now he returns to his roots, to the basics, to the fundamentals because he is worried about the workforce environment.

Over and over again in his research he discovers that important organizational information just doesn’t get communicated. Bad management habits are one reason. Employee fears are another. He says that organizations foster the overvaluing of telling and undervalue the skill of asking.

He says that all of us, most of all those in leadership positions, must learn the art of asking the right questions. That is how you build relationships. That is how you solve problems. He goes so far as to say that asking versus telling is fundamental to human relations and it applies to all of us, all of the time.

There might be a tendency of those reading this post to say “I know that.” You probably do. But there is more to the story. Never, ever, pass up an opportunity to learn from Edgar Schien. As I learned many years ago “no pain, no gain” … okay, you can skip the pain, but don’t miss the gain.

Catch you later.

Bill Bradley

Bill Bradley (mostly) retired after 35 years in organizational consulting, training and management development. During those years he worked internally with seven organizations and trained and consulted externally with more than 90 large and small businesses, government agencies, hospitals and schools.