Hello and welcome to the 17th episode of the powerful questions podcast. My name is David Shaked. The question we're going to explore in this episode is simply ‘why?’ or in a more elaborate way: ‘tell me why...’
WHY is such a powerful question! And yet… I must confess I hesitated and reflected a lot on it, wondering if I should include or exclude it in MY collection of powerful questions.
In this podcast series, my intention is to focus on questions that are both powerful AND generative. Again, there is no doubt in my mind that the question ‘why?’ is very powerful indeed, but I very rarely use it because I personally don't consider it to be very generative. To me a question is generative when it also creates energy, an unexpected shift, an enhanced connection, or something else that is positive. When we all use a WHY question we very rarely use it with a strength-focus. In addition, the WHY question can often have an undesirable impact on the person we pose it to.
Many others might feel that, despite its potential negative impact, the question is still generative because it leads to greater clarity in relation to a situation or a topic.
The most innocent way this question is typically posed is by young children who seem to have endless curiosity about everything around them. It's very sweet to encounter their questions and thirst for learning because these questions are always posed with real wonder and curiosity. We can definitely learn from them to adopt the tone of curiosity they have. However, when they overuse the ‘Why?’ question it can test our patience!
Other than how children use this question, it seems like it is always used when something goes wrong or when someone didn't do what was expected. The most common way many of us encountered this question is when it is used to seek explanation or reasons as to why something that is unwanted happened or why someone is doing something they, or we, don't like. When you add to that the tone the question was posed with – which typically includes a hint of blame or disappointment even if it is veiled or self-imposed –you get quite a strong negative impact, even if that impact is unintended.
Using the ‘why’ question in this way drives people to close up, to become defensive and come up with excuses. It hardly ever allows any generative or creative thinking. Even when the question is posed with a genuinely curious tone, it can still cause an unwanted or unplanned negative impact. At best, it would establish a brain-to-brain connection. It is unlikely to open our emotional or other sources of wisdom.
I can imagine that, like me, you were asked this question a lot when you were young – by your parents, teachers and even friends, all seeking an explanation for something that went wrong, something you did which caused a problem or had a negative impact, or perhaps something you were supposed to do but didn’t. Our own experience on the receiving end can hardly make us feel warm and fuzzy about this question!
And still… I have used the question ‘Why?’ throughout my professional journey, always as a starting point in a quest to understand something better. It has often led to analytical thinking and an attempt to find the root causes to a problem. Some of you might even be familiar with an analytical tool called the ‘five why's’ – basically, the idea is that asking ‘why’ a problem or a challenge we face is happening and repeating this five times, each time focusing on the latest answer rather than the original problem, will help us get to the real root cause behind it. However, I now know that knowing why a problem happens, doesn't actually guarantee we will be able to eliminate it!
So, I think you can now see why I was hesitating about whether or not I should include the question in this podcast....
But what if we could find a more generative, truly life-giving versions or ways to use this question?
What possibilities might open up in that case?
That is exactly what I'd like to explore and share with you!
Firstly, let’s talk about what the question ‘why’ indicates. It shows the inquirer is curious about something another person has shared and feels drawn to go deeper and understand it better. The question of ‘why’ packs some power in it. Used well, it can unlock our curious mind, as Amanda Lang tells us in her book ‘The Power of Why’.
So if you would like to release the power of this question in a safer way, I would recommend you check in with yourself as an inquirer before posing the question to another person. What are you truly curious about?
What is driving you to ask that question?
What are you hoping to discover and to bring to light?
Are you trying to understand why something isn’t working well, why it has gone wrong, or why someone has done something you don’t appreciate? Or are you curious to find out what energy or intentions are driving someone’s actions, choices, or behaviours?
Are you willing to be surprised by what you find, or are you only trying to find whose fault something is, or to confirm something you already suspect? I say that because grounding yourself before you begin with openness and true curiosity will affect how the question is posed and maybe its impact as well.
Essentially, what I am telling you here is to ask yourself “why am I asking the WHY question?”
And always, ALWAYS remember to dial up the level of genuine curiosity in your tone before posing a why question. That’s simply because it might trigger something unwanted in the person you ask this question of.
Now that we’ve taken a moment to look at what drives us in asking a ‘why’ question and how to tune it better, we can look at other possible generative uses.
Let me start with Simon Sinek’s recommendation to “start with the Why”. Sinek encourages people and organisations to first clarify to themselves and others their unique “why”: the core reason behind their professional journey or, in the case of organisations, the products and services they provide. Your WHY is your purpose or as the French say, your raison d’être.
According to Sinek – and from personal experience – knowing your WHY, opens up many ways for you to innovate and get creative about WHAT you do and HOW you do it. For me, my WHY is to create positive shifts for people, teams, organisations, and communities. How I do it and what I actually do have changed over the years and continue to evolve.
So, you could reflect on your own WHY, or you could help others gain clarity on their whys. One way of doing it is to select a few different stops in your career journey to date and to identify what drove you to choose each one of them. What were you hoping to create or achieve in those roles? What did you consistently enjoy doing or experiencing? What unique aspects of you were you able to realise or express? Answering these questions for yourself or posing them to others can bring light to patterns that could inform your understanding of your own or others’ WHY. This can be a very generative discovery because it has the potential to help you reinvent what you do or how you do it, as long as you stick to your why.
Another generative way to use the question WHY is when someone shares with you something that is meaningful, important, or valuable to them. Asking why it is important or valuable can lead to useful insights. In this case, something is giving life to the significance of what is shared with you and you are tapping into the life force behind it – it is similar to the idea I covered in episode three, when I focused on the question ‘what gives life’.
And here is another, somewhat cheeky, suggestion for a way to use the question why in a generative way. Try asking “Why not?” when a new idea occurs to you or is brought up by someone else. Asking “why not”, sometimes repeatedly, actually raises the chances that you or others will say yes to that new idea because it helps you uncover and perhaps leave behind assumptions, excuses or other blocks you used to justify the initial ‘no’. In fact, when I was first considering whether I wanted to include this question in my podcast, I held many reasons in my mind why I shouldn’t include it, but then I started asking myself why not? Et voila, it helped me shift to a more positive regard for this question.
Finally, I’d like to offer you a couple of elegant and more generative alternatives to the question "Why":
To start with, let’s talk about those situations where you're trying to understand why someone is doing something (or perhaps you're trying to help them gain clarity about their own actions). In that case, you could ask "what are you doing this for?" or "for what purpose are you doing this?". It might seem like a small difference to you but it is actually a different question and it creates a different impact when asked.
The questions "What are you doing this for? "and "for what purpose are you doing this?" assume there is a positive intent or an aspirational goal behind doing what you do. These questions assume you did whatever you did because you wanted to achieve something. Asking the questions in that way helps bring the intention behind the action to light without a sense of blame wrapped in with it. Once we are aware of that intention, we can look for other ways to achieve it as well.
Another, even simpler way to discover this intention is by asking "What is (or what was) your intention behind taking that action?" or, even better: “What are you hoping to achieve by taking that action?”. By asking these alternative questions, we can glimpse what is driving the action being taken and knowing that allows an exploration of alternative ways to achieve an outcome that is the same or even better.
So, what do you now think about the question Why? I Hope this episode helps you see more clearly some generative ways and possibilities for using this question. How would you use it next? With whom?
Why will you use it? What are you hoping to tap into?
And… Why not start straight away?!?
