Monday, January 28, 2013

The art of asking questions







In our world we value answers, when we really should value questions and those who ask. As children we ask questions after another and that's how we create picture of our world. It's a real shame, that too many times the curiosity is killed and we forget the art of wondering and asking questions. But we can relearn and develop ourselves to be artists in asking questions.

How do you do it? First you must not fear to ask questions. Don't expect, that you get perfect answer to your every question. And understand, that people don't have to answer every time. Great thing about asking questions is, that you can practice it where ever you are.

How to do excellent questions? First you have to learn to listen. More so you need to have true intention of understanding the person/s you listen. The best questions born from listening and from dialogue. Then you should learn to do such questions, which invite people to think and tell, what they are thinking. Questions to which others can answer only yes or no are way to use power. And that's why people sometimes feel like they are interrogated. When you master that skill of open and inviting questions, then should evaluate are your questions such, that they have some positive effect.

The art of asking questions is bit similar than driving a car. The more you practice the more the skill becomes automatic. First it might be wise to have a pen and paper and to write down the questions, so you can concentrate to listening. But with a practice you probably don't need paper in the end.

With every question you can make your world more interesting and colourful. You have a chance of understanding better people around you and you might learn something new every day.

The true power is in the questions.

Thursday, January 24, 2013

Change = learning - learning = change ?







As I was walking in a lovely winter weather, two thoughts started to circle in my mind. First one is about management. We are trying to manage change, creativity and conflicts. If you made a search in google, you wound probably find infinite number of blogs and articles about those. But are we trying to manage wrong things? What if we tried to manage learning? What if we'll try to manage learning mindset? What if we'll try to support curiosity and try to inspire people to challenge themselves?

The second thought was, that maybe we really can't manage change, creativity, conflicts or learning. Maybe we should try to lead people to learn? We should create such environments, where we lead people to learn with our own example. What would it take to create such space?

What do you think?