You know how a conversation with smart people can spark all kinds of ideas? That’s what happened when I interviewed Jackie Stavros and Cheri Torres for episode 24. So here’s an explanation and ‘how-to’ for one of the most important concepts they talked about – generative questions.
Here’s some of the useful information you’ll get when you listen (or read):
- We hear a lot about generative questions in Appreciative Inquiry – what does that actually mean?
- The attitude you need to have to ask successful generative questions
- Four kinds of generative question – with examples – and what each one does
- The other thing that generative questions do, that’s even more important than the answers they elicit
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Transcript
In the previous Positive Change Methods Podcast interview (episode 24) with Jackie Stavros and Cheri Torres, they mentioned some ideas and concepts that I found fascinating. Hence this article expanding a bit on one of the ideas – generative questions.
What Do We Mean by ‘Generative Questions’?
The organisational learning theorist Donald Schön describes ‘generativity’ as “how we come to see things in new ways”. Gervase Bushe defines it as the creation of new images, metaphors, etc, that change how people think so they have new options, and that are compelling enough that people want to act on them.
Bushe gives the example of the concept of “sustainable development”. Before this emerged around 1987, business and the environment were seen as opposing forces – what was good for one would inevitably have a detrimental effect on the other. Since then, some business leaders have been dialogue with environmentalists, leading to thousands of innovations that are still continuing.
Generativity can come from changes that are dramatic enough to get new information through the barriers of confirmation bias, technological advances or scientific discoveries that open up new possibilities, or coming into contact with people from different cultures or who start from different assumptions. It can also be stimulated by certain types of questions.
How to Be a Generative Questioner
The essential quality you need is curiosity. Crucially, this includes curiosity about the gaps in your own knowledge. Mostly, especially in business, we approach communication with the purpose of getting the other person to fall in line with our own desired outcomes or our own way of seeing the world – whether it’s persuading them to take a particular course of action, changing their beliefs, selling them something, or even getting them to see things “as they really are” (i.e., the way we see them). This is communication as ‘advocacy’, stemming from the belief, perhaps unconsciously held, that reality, and what we believe about it, are one and the same – what psychologists call “naive realism“.
There is another mode of communication – communication for learning. This recognises that we don’t, in fact, see reality exactly as it is; a point that becomes obvious when we notice that everyone sees the world slightly differently. The chances that you should happen to be the one whose viewpoint is the correct one are infinitesimal.
Instead, when we realise that we don’t know everything, and maybe even don’t always make the best decisions even based on the information that we do have, we can approach conversations with the hope that both we and the other person can learn from each other, deepening and enriching our ‘maps of the world‘ through communication. Even if our primary concern is not increasing our own learning (as, for example, when we’re coaching another person), generative questions are still an effective way of stimulating new thinking and choices.
Four Types of Generative Question
1. Making Beliefs and Assumptions Visible
Perhaps the most important question here is one to ask yourself: “What don’t I know?” In the last episode, Cheri Torres mentions that this question, and others like “Why am I triggered?” if we have a negative emotional response to something the other person says, can surface our own assumptions, which of course are notoriously difficult for us to spot (while, usually, being visible to other people).
We can also uncover the beliefs and assumptions of the other person by asking questions like “What do you know that I don’t know?”, “What am I missing?”, and “What am I not aware of?”. Of course, these questions can also fill in gaps in our knowledge, and what’s presupposed in each of them is that we don’t know everything, and we are not in a superior position to the person we are asking the questions of, which tends to build trust.
2. Creating Shared Understanding
People make sense of situations in different ways, in terms of, for example, what they notice, how they categorise things, how they think the situation has come about, and what they believe are the intentions and motivations of other people. In order to work together to solve a problem, make something happen, or have any kind of productive conversation, it’s important to establish a shared understanding.
To do this we can ask open-ended questions like “How do you see the situation?”, “What do you think is going on?”, and “What’s your theory about what’s causing this?”. If we are curious about their motivations and intentions, you could ask “What do you want to happen?” or, as Cheri suggested, “Where would you like this conversation to end up? What are we aiming for?”
Another way of uncovering motivations is to ask “What’s important about this?” or “What’s the big picture here?”, which will surface some of their values. A useful side-effect here is that when we shift attention to the big picture, people become less attached to their preferred solution and become more open to other possible ways of fulfilling their motivating values. There’s more room for agreement when we focus on the big picture; conversely, the further down into details we get, the more there is to disagree about. So it’s important to find common ground and shared understanding before we get down to details.
As we ask these questions, with genuine curiosity, we open the possibility that learning about the other person’s perspective broadens and enriches our own mental map, and (we may hope) that sharing our perspective also enriches theirs, building a bridge of shared understanding between our starting points.
3. Generating New Knowledge
People have different skill sets, different experiences, and different histories. Consequently, we can learn from each other, with questions like “How did you do this at your last organisation before you came here?” (that’s another one of Cheri’s examples) or “What makes your best performing sales people successful?”
From a coaching point of view, questions like “How have you dealt with challenges like this before?” and “What was your best experience of effective teamwork? What conditions were in place that enabled that experience to happen?” can bring strategies and strengths that the coaching client has forgotten about (given that we usually give more weight to negatives than positives) back into ‘front of mind’, or give them a starting point to develop new ideas from.
4. Inspiring New Possibilities
The fourth type of generative question encourages ‘divergent’ rather than ‘convergent’ thinking. One precondition for success in this kind of questioning is to assume that the person will be able to think up new ideas, and that there’s pretty much an infinite supply available, rather than assuming that they might or might not be able to come up with new ideas.
The difference between these two assumptions shows up in the kind of questions you ask, specifically in the difference between open and closed questions:
Assuming they will have ideas will lead you to ask open questions like: “What ideas do you have?”, “What could you do?”, “OK, and what else could you do?” Leave as much silence afterwards as you need for the other person to answer, because they will come up with something, and sooner rather than later.
Assuming they might or might not have ideas leads to closed questions like: “Do you have any ideas?” or “Is there anything you could do?”. If the other person can’t think of something straight away, they will probably say “No, nothing’s occurring to me at the moment” and the idea generation process stalls.
Another precondition for success is to frame the process as: all ideas are good ideas, and we want to hear them whatever they are. Why? Because creativity works by association rather than logic, and an idea that might be judged as ‘stupid’ might lead to another idea that’s workable. So, we want as many ideas as possible, to choose from and to spark other ideas – which won’t happen if the person is subjecting each idea to internal quality control checks before they say it, for fear of judgement. That would act as a drag on the creative process, if not stopping it altogether.
So one way to phrase the question is “What could you do? What else could you do?” or “How might we do this?” – emphasising that they won’t have to commit to any of their ideas at this stage, or be called upon to defend them.
It’s Not Just About the Answers You Get
It is not so much, “is my question leading to right or wrong answers?” but rather “What effect is my question having on our lives together… Is it strengthening our relationships?” – David L Cooperrider and Diana Whitney, Appreciative Inquiry: A Positive Revolution in Change
Generative questions don’t just lead to new thinking and better ideas. They also strengthen relationships and trust between interviewer and interviewee. Looking at the presuppositions underlying each of the four types of question:
- Questions like “What do you know that I don’t know?” and “What am I missing?” make it clear that the questioner is not putting themselves on a superior level, and can even imply that the interviewee is the expert.
- People like it when you are genuinely interested in them. Being curious about how they see the world, and being willing to learn from it, makes them feel valued and builds their confidence and self-esteem. There’s also some evidence that reconnecting with our own deepest values strengthens resilience.
- They also like to be asked about their best experiences, things they’ve achieved that they’re proud of, and their aspirations. It usually results in them opening up to the interviewer, and (if receiving coaching) feeling more tuned in to and inspired by their coach.
- Being asked questions like “What ideas do you have?” (the wording of which assumes that they’re going to have some ideas) demonstrates a degree of faith in the capabilities of the interviewee, which is going to reinforce their faith in themselves, and again make them feel warmer towards the interviewer.
Generative questions of whatever variety tend to activate the Default Mode Network (or ’empathic mode’) in the brain of the interviewee, making them more focused on relationships rather than task, more able to see the big picture, more creative and empathetic, and more open to new ideas from others. And let’s not forget that the stronger the rapport between interviewer and interviewee, the more the interviewer will activate their own Default Mode Network. This emotional resonance is one reason why having team members conduct appreciative interviews (using generative questions) with each other is such an effective part of appreciative team development.
Why not experiment with using generative questions and let us know how you get on? Or if you’re using generative questions already, what do you use them for? Let us know in the comments below.
