Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling by Edgar H. Schein

Author:Edgar H. Schein [Schein, Edgar H.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
Published: 2013-09-02T04:00:00+00:00

Why Is This Important Now?

The Changing Demands of Future Tasks

There is, of course, much more to U.S. culture than what I have described. And things are changing. The assumptions I described may be less relevant to the next couple of generations. The recognition of interdependency is growing with the growth of information technology. So why focus on these particular biases in our culture? Consider again the operating room of today in which the surgeon, the anesthesiologist, key nursing staff, and surgical technicians have to work in perfect harmony with each other in undertaking a complex operation. Consider that they not only have different professions and ranks, but they are likely to be of different generations and possibly different national cultures, which may have their own values and norms around relationships, authority, and trust. So let me restate the problem:

The world is becoming more technologically complex, interdependent, and culturally diverse, which makes the building of relationships more and more necessary to get things accomplished and, at the same time, more difficult. Relationships are the key to good communication; good communication is the key to successful task accomplishment; and Humble Inquiry, based on Here-and-now Humility, is the key to good relationships.

Increasingly, tasks resemble kids on a seesaw or a relay team. Coaches of American football often point out that every position has to do its job or the play fails. A chorus has to practice together so that every member will be able to deal with all the musical variations that different conductors may want from it. A surgical team requires perfect coordination from every member. Producing a successful web-cast requires perfect coordination among the senders and receivers. Flying an airliner safely requires perfect coordination from the entire crew, as do all kinds of processes in the chemical and nuclear industries. All of these group situations require the members of the group to build relationships with each other that go beyond just “professionals working with each other.” Checklists and other formal processes of coordination are not enough because they cannot deal with unanticipated situations. Through Humble Inquiry teams can build the initial relationships that enable them to learn together. As they build higher levels of trust through joint learning, they become more open in their communication, which, in turn, enables them to deal with the inevitable surprises that arise in complex interdependent situations.7

The irony is that when we see good task accomplishment that results from relationships and higher levels of trust, we admire it and almost treat it as a surprising anomaly, thereby admitting tacitly that it is culturally not normal. In the world of professional football, when a team acquires a player who knows either some of the present players or the coach from having been on another team together, the team as a whole may improve because there is already a clearly built relationship that enables them to play better with each other.

In other words, we know intuitively and from experience that we work better in a complex interdependent task

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