I’ve been tackling my far too big email inbox during the lockdown. Buried in there has been some fab newsletters I’ve subscribed to and not found the time to read.
One of them had two quotes that made me stop and think. They are:
“The person who asks is a fool for five minutes, but the person who does not ask remains a fool forever.”
“To ask is a temporary shame, not to ask is life-long shame.”
Neither of these quotes are new to me, I’ve heard them several times before. Anyone who knows me knows that asking questions is something I do rather a lot. As an exploratory tester, general quality advocate, engineering manager and agile coach, asking questions is second nature! So, yes I agree that question asking is very important, but that’s not what made me stop and think.
Both these quotes assign negative and potentially damaging labels to the person asking the question – fool and shame.
All the definitions I looked up for both words were along the lines of:
- Fool = Someone who lacks good judgement and sense; a silly person
- Shame = an uncomfortable feeling that you get when you have done something wrong or embarrassing, or when someone close to you has.
I don’t like either of those labels being linked to asking questions.
Asking questions is a big part of how we learn, build expertise, improve ourselves, our work, our products and services. It is also how we avoid repeating the same mistakes over and over again. Imagine how ineffective post-mortem sessions after live incidents would be if people felt foolish or shamed when they ask questions. How successful would the outcome of a project be if team members weren’t willing to ask clarifying questions on what the vision or goal is? How is the quality of our software affected if testers feel unable to ask their fellow developers any questions they need to?
I’ve been lucky to work with very talented people both as an exploratory test engineer and as an engineering manager. There were many times when I felt hesitant about asking questions in both those forums. I thought “everyone else knows the answer” or “it’s probably a silly question”. My desire to understand, grow my skills and knowledge, and be able to help my teams would spur me on though.
The biggest influence though was culture.
I knew that my questions would be listened to and answered respectfully and kindly. Sometimes my question would be about some technology or term that to answer in depth would de-rail the meeting. My colleagues would give a short-version answer and offer to go more in-depth outside of the meeting. I’m very grateful to those people, and one in particular who had noticed my desire to learn and offered his time, after work, to have a one to one session about our platform infrastructure. Thank you, you know who you are!
It’s fairly well known now that psychological safety is the basis for high performing teams. People readily asking questions is one of the signs to look out for in your teams when you are trying to assess whether there is psychological safety, or not. If people don’t feel safe to ask questions within their own teams, let alone of the wider department, management and organisation, it’s going to be pretty hard to become high performing.
I believe asking questions should be encouraged and respected rather than being seen as foolish or shameful. Learning about and practising critical thinking can help us ask even better questions.
So, how can we foster a culture where asking questions is normal and expected? Here’s a few ideas for getting started:
1) Be a role model.
Ask the ‘silly’ question in meetings yourself, even if you know the answer. Others in the room often have the same question but don’t feel confident enough to ask it. Seeing others ask will encourage them to do so themselves in future. Even more so if you are a leader, manager or expert.
2) Understand your question asking culture
Find out why people aren’t asking questions, or when they do, it’s not a positive experience. How you move forward will depend on why people are holding back. Is it because
- They get ridiculed or made to feel small when they do?
- They don’t get the answers they need and, over time, give up?
- Are fearful of being blamed so keeping their heads down?
- Is there is a cultural aspect in play? For example, some cultures are more explicit or blunt in the way they ask questions which can cause offense when the other person is from a culture that is more indirect.
- Something else?
3) Be an effective facilitator
Ensure that all voices in meetings are heard, not just the louder or more confident ones. This is even more important in these days of mainly virtual meetings.
4) Don’t tolerate anyone being made to feel silly for asking questions
Well timed and delivered feedback is very effective here. Manager Tools has some good advice on giving feedback.
5) Allow for differing styles and needs
Introverts and extroverts experience meetings very differently. In general, introverts prefer to think about things before they speak up whilst extroverts are comfortable thinking out loud. After meetings, introverts may need a bit of time to re-charge (I know this one well!), while extroverts are energised by the meeting itself.
6) Work on that no blame culture
People will not speak up or ask questions in post incident reviews or retrospectives if they fear they will get blamed for what went wrong. The whole point of these kinds of sessions is to understand what went wrong and make changes to ensure it doesn’t happen again, or if it does, there is a better outcome. We want, and need, people to ask all sorts of questions in these sessions.
I hope that if you feel you aren’t able to ask the questions you want to ask in your environment, the next question you ask is “Why?” and “How do we change that?” Ok, that’s two questions, as you can see, question asking is catchy!
If you’d like help with fostering an empowered, question asking culture, get in touch!
Lastly, I’d like to thank Helen Lisowski, Tony Jones and my daughter Helena for reviewing this article for me!
