Once upon a time I was the C++ programming language guru in an organization of 200 software developers. People would come to me with all sorts of esoteric C++ problems, and I’d give them the answer. It often seemed—more often than mere coincidence can account for—that whatever problem someone was having, I’d had the same problem myself, and solved it, only the day before. So I was often able to give the answer off the top of my head, which gave me an aura of being smarter than I really was.

This encouraged people to come to me with even more problems. Eventually they posed problems—not only about programming but also about other sticky issues—that I couldn’t solve off the top of my head. In order to understand the problem better so that I could solve it, I’d ask questions to get more information. Simple questions such as What have you tried so far? and What happened? and What else did you try? I noticed that often as people were answering my questions they would suddenly say, “Ah, I’ve got it!” It turned out that I didn’t need even to understand the problem, much less to solve it.

I began to enjoy helping people with those problems most of all, the problems that I had no idea how to solve. I learned to notice what puzzled me and to ask questions about my puzzles. Not leading questions with embedded advice (”Have you tried regrafting the Johnson rods?”), but questions simply to help me understand more clearly what was happening. And in answering the questions, people became more clear themselves about what was happening. I was surprised and delighted to learn that as people understood their problems better, they were usually able to come up with great advice of their own, advice that was far more useful than anything I might have offered.

Over time I’ve added other questions to my repertoire, questions not only about understanding the problem per se, but about understanding how the person is going about trying to solve the problem. Those “meta-problem” questions, such as the ones I asked Paul, the dream-home builder, seem to have great power to help people create their own advice. And they help people learn to examine their own problem-solving process, to jiggle themselves loose when they’re stuck so they can better solve their own problems.

One day Sriram poked his head into my cube, raised a finger, and said, “Dale, I— No, I got it.” And off he went.

Later I asked him what that was all about. He said, “On my way to your office, I was asking myself, ‘What questions would Dale ask me?’ I answered those questions, and I came up with the answer myself!”

I’d helped Sriram without even being there! That’s the moment I knew I could be a great coach. If only I could find a way to get paid for stuff like that.

Three questions lie at the heart of effectiveness. The better you can answer these three key questions and act on the answers, the more effective you will be:

1. What results do I want?
2. How can I create the results I want?
3. What results am I creating?

In my coaching and consulting practice, I’ve notice that people often focus predominantly on question 2, on “what can I do.” In particular, when people are feeling stuck or ineffective, they’re likely focusing exclusively on what to do. Even more specifically, they’re likely focusing exclusively on how to carry out some previously chosen course of action.

One clue that people are overly attached to a course of action is the way they ask for help. When people ask “How can I …” or “What can I do to …” or “What’s the best way to …” in a way that suggests they have been struggling to answer the question themselves, I begin to suspect that they may be neglecting to ask the other questions: What results do I want? What results am I creating?

There’s something seductive about focusing on what to do. I’m certainly susceptible to the seduction. My story about finding the right word is an example of that. I’d been struggling to find just the right word for “the people you’re asking to change.” I’d somehow chosen finding just the right word as my goal, and didn’t know how to find just the right word. With the help of my writer friends I realized that my stuckness came largely from holding too tightly to that goal. When I changed my focus from “how can I” to “what do I want,” I quickly discovered that my deeper problem wasn’t how to find just the right word for “the people you’re asking to change,” but how to write in a gender-inclusive way. Once I understood my deeper problem, I quickly solved it.

What makes focusing on what to do so enticing? Perhaps it’s because it seems to lead directly to action, directly to resolution. And perhaps it’s because we know that we will achieve our goals only through action. And perhaps it’s because focusing on action usually works.

It’s only when focusing on action doesn’t work that people become stuck. And in those cases, focusing on what to do often leaves people even more stuck. But there’s something about being stuck that encourages people to strive even more intently to figure out what to do. A vicious circle.

And that’s when they ask me for help. So by the time people ask for help, they are often not only stuck, but also intent on figuring out how to carry out the course of action that got them stuck in the first place. I’ve learned, from my own experience and from observing other people, that if people are persisting in a course of action that isn’t working, it’s likely that either they are not staying mindful of what they want or they are not seeing clearly the results they’re creating.

This model of effectiveness is a centerpiece of my approach to coaching and consulting. One of the most helpful things I can do for clients is to ask the questions that they have been neglecting: What do you want? and What is happening?
Time after time, these questions have proven to be both simple and powerful.

What makes these questions so powerful? One key benefit of asking “what do we want” is that simply revisiting our goal often jiggles us into imagining other ways to achieve it, or at least into considering that there may be other ways to achieve it. My “just the right word” episode is an example of that.

A key benefit of asking “what is happening” is that it invites us to seek information, or to recognize that we already have information, that can help us evaluate adjust our course of action.

Here’s an example in which I persisted in a dysfunctional course of action in part because I had neglected this simple question. The story takes place one day in 1992. A group of coworkers and I had for months been gathering in the cafeteria for snacks and conversation every afternoon at around 3 o’clock. For at least two weeks I had been holding court, moaning about our ignorant manager, and his stupid manager, and his bonehead manager, all the way up to the company’s evil CEO and deranged President.

On this particular afternoon, as we finished our break and were headed back to work, my friend Jack said to me, “You really know how to bring a conversation down.”

Yikes! I immediately recognized the truth of what he’d said. And I immediately disliked that it was true. I had been so focused on complaining, on my dysfunctional course of action, that I was oblivious to the effect I was having on my friends. Jack’s comment answered a question that I had neglected to ask: What results am I creating with my complaining? I immediately vowed to stop moaning all over my friends, and I spent some time figuring out what I really wanted, and how better to achieve it.

What results do I want? How can I create the results I want? What results am I creating? I’ve used these questions countless times to improve my own performance, and to help my clients create the results they want.

One of the most important elements of a helping relationship is permission to help. This applies to all kinds of helping relationships: coaching, consulting, teaching, psychological counseling, medical practice. If you don’t give me permission to help you, it’s dangerous for me to imagine that we have a helping relationship at all.

I’ve learned that if I am to help someone, I must first secure the person’s permission to help. That’s easy when someone asks for help. But what about if someone simply describes a frustrating problem? Is that a request for help? I say no. I’ve learned that permission must be explicit, and must be continually renegotiated after it’s given, because:

• Your experiencing pain does not necessarily mean that you see the pain as a problem.
• Your having a problem does not necessarily mean that you want help.
• Your wanting help does not necessarily mean that you want my help.
• Your wanting my help does not necessarily mean that you want my help right now.
• Your wanting my help does not necessarily mean that you want the kind of help I’m offering.
• Your wanting my help right now does not necessarily mean that you will want my help tomorrow, or three minutes from now.

If I want to help, I must repeatedly make sure I have your permission at all of these levels.

Often when I write about resistance, I struggle to find the right word for the change agent’s action, the action people are resisting when they resist. Would-be change agents offer advice, requests, demands, mandates, proposals, and lots of other… what? What is the category that encompasses all of these offers?

I haven’t yet found that single category. Last night, after several hours of late-night etymological research, I arrived at two categories: proposals and requests. People can resist change agents’ proposals, and they can resist change agents’ requests.

The common element of proposals and requests is that each offers a course of action that the listener may take. The main distinction between the two is the intended beneficiary of the course of action. The intent of a proposal is to benefit the listener. Though the proposer may also intend the proposal to benefit the proposer and others, the defining characteristic of a proposal (a sincere proposal, at least) is that it is offered for the benefit of the listener. The intent of a request is to benefit the requester. Though the requester may also intend the request to benefit the listener and others, the defining characteristic of a request is that it is issued for the benefit of the requester.

I’d love to find a useful, single word that encompasses both requests and proposals. If there is such a word, the key is in what’s common between requests and proposals: each offers a course of action that the listener may take. Is there a good, evocative word for that?

The word offer is a step in the right direction. Dictionary.com defines offer as “to present for acceptance or rejection; proffer.” This definition is more general than I’m looking for — it doesn’t evoke the key idea of a course of action. What’s the word for “offer a course of action?”

I’m starting to think that the right word is proposal, and that a request is a kind of proposal. If that’s right, then the distinction that I drew above isn’t quite right. I may need to drop intended to benefit the listener as an essential characteristic of a proposal. A proposal is a proposal as long as it presents a course of action for acceptance or rejection, regardless of whose interests the proposer intends to serve.

Alas, I’m now mired in The Definition Game. Regardless of what words we use, the nature of our offers is important to our success as change agents. Whose interests are we serving by offering the courses of action we offer? What forms can our offers take? In what sort of relationship would each form be appropriate? What does the form of our offers imply about our view of our relationships with our listeners?

But I still want a word. Is proposal the best word, or is there a better one?

Experiment: In what situations are requests appropriate? In what situations are proposals appropriate?

Experiment: What different kinds of proposals can you think of? What distinguishes each kind of proposal from the others? What would have to be true in a relationship in order for the listener deem each kind of proposal to be appropriate?

Experiment: What different kinds of requests can you think of? What distinguishes each kind of request from the others? What would have to be true in a relationship in order for the listener deem each kind of request to be appropriate?

A mailing list in which I participate is discussing empowerment. As usually happens in discussions of empowerment, several people claimed that it is impossible for one person to empower another, that all you can do is to disempower them, to prevent them from using the power they have.

I believe it is possible for one person to empower another. In my mind, to empower a person means to connect the person with a source of power.

What do I mean by power?
Power is the ability to create value. Yes, I know there are other kinds of power, such as the ability to destroy, whether intentionally or — as in the famous (and untrue) story of Mrs. O’Leary’s cow — inadvertently. But when we talk about empowerment, we are almost always talking about the power to do something positive.

Given those definitions, you can empower people by connecting them with sources of ability to create value.

For an example what I mean by empowerment, see this story about how I worked with Susan, the HR Director at a large company, to resolve resistance. I believe that I empowered Susan. I connected her with a source of power, with a source of ability to create value: her ability to listen with empathy. Now, Susan already had that ability, and plenty of it. But, for some reason, she had not been using her considerable ability. She had not yet recognized that listening with empathy could be a source of great power as she interacted with the “resisters.” I simply reminded her of the power that she already had. She knew what to do from there, and she succeeded spectacularly. My questions connected Susan to her own power. My questions empowered her.

Now, suppose that Susan, upon hearing my questions, had said, “Dale, that’s nuts,” and walked away. Would my questions still have been empowering? Is it empowering to offer a source of power, even if the person chooses not to use it? I don’t think so. That sets the bar too low. If Susan had chosen not to use her considerable empathy, or if she had listened with empathy, and yet had seen no valuable results, who’s to say that that “source of power” had any power in it at all? The true mark of empowerment is the value that people create with the sources of power they are offered.

Perhaps the people who claim that it is impossible for one person to empower another define empower differently than I do. According to the usage notes at dictionary.com, empower originally had a very restricted meaning: “to invest with authority, authorize.” That kind of empowerment connects people to sources of power that they previously were prevented from accessing. In other words, it simply reverses earlier disempowerment.

Empowerment seems to be a tricky subject. Conversations about empowerment (including this one?) often fizzle without creating much value for anyone. So most of the time, rather than talk about empowerment, I simply do what I can to connect people with sources of power. I especially enjoy interactions like the one with Susan, interactions in which I am able connect people with the abundant power that is already inside them.

Experiment: During the next week, make a list of every source of power that you use. This list is a source of power for you. In the future, when you become stuck, review the list, looking for sources of power that you may have forgotten were available.

Experiment: Review your sources of power. What kinds of sources are abundantly present in your list? What kinds are rare or missing from your list? How could you acquire those kinds of power?

Experiment: During the next week, notice every time that you connect another person to a source of power. What kinds of power do you typically offer? What kinds would you like to offer more often, if only people knew you had them to offer?

Last week at Consultants’ Camp, several friends reminded me that I have a reputation for asking good questions. One of my friends, James Bach, asked me, “How do you do that? How do you decide what questions to ask?”

Good question!

I didn’t know how to answer James’s question. I’m still thinking about it. And as I think about it, I’m starting to answer a related question: What makes a good question good? Here are some of my thoughts.

I don’t immediately know how to answer the question. When James asked how I decide what questions to ask, my first thought was, “Huh. How do I decide what questions to ask?” I have a hunch that I had a blank look on my face (one of the telltale signs of a good question).

The question asks me to think about things I haven’t thought about before. Though lots of people have told me that I ask good questions, I’ve never explored what makes a good question good. The moment James asked his question, it seemed like such an obviously good idea. How is it that I’ve never thought about that?

It’s okay that I don’t know how to answer the question. It’s easy ask embarrassing questions that point out people’s ignorance. I didn’t feel threatened or embarrassed by James’s question. Why not? Maybe I simply wasn’t embarrassed by my “ignorance” about how I ask my questions. Or maybe there was something about the way James phrased the question that made it non-threatening. Or maybe I’ve learned, in my long friendship with James, that he cares about me. Maybe all of those things. I’m often able to ask very challenging questions in a way that leaves people feeling safe. I’m not sure how I do that, but I think it’s important. I’ll want to explore that further.

I want to answer the question. If I knew what makes my questions so good, I might be able to ask even better ones, or to ask good questions more often. Or maybe I could learn additional ways to get the same good results that I now get only through questions.

The question gives hope. Though I didn’t know how to answer James’s question, I knew immediately that if I think about it, I’ll learn some very useful stuff. The question gave me hope that I didn’t know I needed.

The question shows compassion and respect. James asked his question because he wanted to learn how to do something that I do well. I suspect that every good question shows compassion and respect.

I still don’t know how I decide to ask the good questions I ask, but I’ll bet it starts with me feeling compassion and respect, and wanting to offer hope.

Experiment: For the next week, notice questions that you and others ask. Which questions did you think of as good questions? As great questions? Which questions seemed less than good? What is it about the great questions that makes them great? What makes a poor question poor?

A few weeks ago, Peter Lindberg wrote about maximizing learning on his Tesugen.com weblog:

Learning is important in software projects, so how do we maximize learning? In Tom and Mary Poppendieck’s Lean Development: An Agile Toolkit … they say something about the level of learning in scientific experiments — that it peaks when the success rate is about 50 percent. I don’t remember whether they quoted some study about this, but it sure feels right to me that a balance between success and failure would increase learning. You need some friction.

That caught my attention, because I’d read a related idea the night before, in a classic article that was reprinted in the January 2003 issue of Harvard Business Review. In that article, “Pygmalion in Management,” J. Sterling Livingston says that people’s motivation and productivity are highest when the boss’s expectations are both realistic and achievable. What does Livingston mean by “realistic and achievable?” This:

Research … has demonstrated that the relationship of motivation to expectancy varies in the form of a bell-shaped curve.

The degree of motivation and effort rises until the expectancy of success reaches 50%, then begins to fall even though the expectancy of success continues to increase. No motivation or response is aroused when the goal is perceived as being either virtually certain or virtually impossible to attain.

I’ve heard similar ideas in other places. For example, in
Becoming a Technical Leader
, Jerry Weinberg says:

In order to climb [in skill], you must leave the sure footing, letting go of what you already do well and possibly slipping downward into a ravine. If you never let go of what you already do well, you may continue to make steady progress, but you’ll never get off the plateau. (p 40)

A certain amount of failure, it seems, is necessary for learning, motivation, and productivity. So I’m wondering” In addition to motivation and learning, what other qualities might benefit from failure? What are the implications for us as individuals? As managers? As coaches? As leaders? As agents of change?

Experiment: Are there areas of your work or your life in which you almost always succeed? What do you learn from those successes? How motivated are you in those areas?

Experiment Are there areas in which you almost always fail? What do you learn from those failures? How motivated are you in those areas?

Experiment Are there areas in which you sometimes succeed and sometimes fail? What do you learn from those successes and failures? How motivated are you in those areas?

Often when people become stuck trying to solve a problem, they are stuck because they are trying to solve the problem in a specific way. They’ve framed the problem in a way that suggests a particular solution, and then taken that specific solution as their goal. The process of taking a specific solution as the goal — a process that my friend James Bach calls “goal displacement” — sometimes constrains the problem in a way that makes it difficult or impossible to solve. That’s when people get stuck.

One of the ways I help people solve problems is to ask a seemingly simple question: If you had that, what would that do for you?

I first learned about this question in Connirae and Tamara Andreas’s profound book Core Transformation: Reaching the Wellspring Within. The Andreases use the question to help individuals discover the positive purpose behind self-defeating behaviors.

I use the question to help people become unstuck in their problem solving. Because the question asks about the value that lies behind any goal or course of action, I call it The Value Question: If you had that, what would that do for you?

Answering The Value Question helps problem solvers become unstuck in two important ways. First, the answer reminds us of the problem we were originally trying to solve. Second, it relieves the constraints that we inadvertently placed on ourselves when we took a particular solution as the goal. When we relieve the constraints, and bring our attention back to the original problem, we often find that the original problem is easier to solve. Other times, we find that the “solution” upon which we’d been fixated would not solve the real problem after all. Though this can be painful, it’s less painful than implementing the “solution” only to find that the problem remains.

Kenneth, an executive responsible for a large project to create a software system to support four of his company’s internal business units, asked me to help his team assess the project’s risks. Before accepting the assignment, I wanted to know more about the background and motivation for the risk assessment. I asked, “If you had an assessment of the risks, what would that do for you?”

Kenneth thought for a moment, then said, “It would make Charlene calm down. Charlene is the director of one of the business units we’re supporting. All of the other directors are happy with what we’re doing, but Charlene is paranoid. She doesn’t trust us. She keeps seeing problems where there aren’t any problems. She’s threatening to bring in a dozen busybody consultants from Coopers & Lybrand to follow us around for six weeks. We can’t handle that kind of disruption. So I want you to do a risk assessment to get Charlene off my back!”

So Kenneth’s goal was not assessing risks. His goal was to “get Charlene to stop disrupting the project.” As Kenneth and I talked, it became clear that any risk assessment that I led, no matter how thorough, would be unlikely to persuade Charlene that the project was under control. Might it help the team control the risks? Maybe, but Kenneth was convinced that the risks were very small and controllable. In his mind, the problem was not risks, but Charlene’s paranoia.

So we abandoned the risk assessment, and talked about some ways that Kenneth might create a more effective relationship with Charlene.

Answering The Value Question helps you to focus on your real goal, and keeps you from wasting time on ineffective, expensive non-solutions.

Experiment: Think of a goal that you are having trouble achieving. Ask yourself The Value Question. “If I achieve __________, what will that do for me?”

Experiment: Think of a change that you are promoting, and that people are resisting. Ask yourself The Value Question. “If these people make this change, what will that do for me?”

Experiment: Notice that when you answer The Value Question about some goal, your answer is also a goal. Imagine that this goal is a solution to an even more important goal. Ask The Value Question again. “If I achieve __________ (this goal), what will that do for me that is even more important?” Notice that this answer is also a goal, and ask The Value Question again. Repeat as many times as you can answer.

One day, my friend Alison asked me to advise her about an important upcoming meeting with her manager and her company’s Human Resources director. As Alison described the purpose of the meeting, and her specific concerns about it, I realized that her situation was far outside of my experience. And the meeting would have significant consequences in Alison’s personal life and work life.

I said, “Alison, I don’t feel competent to advise you about this. The situation you’re describing is way beyond my expertise.”

“Oh, I knew that,” Alison said. “But when I ask for your advice, I’m not really looking for your advice. I’m looking for my advice.

Wow! I took a moment to let Alison’s powerful statement to sink in. Then for the next half hour, Alison and I talked about her situation, exploring possibilities, clarifying what she wanted and what boundaries she wanted to maintain for the meeting. Mostly I listened and asked questions to understand how she was thinking about the meeting. I offered a few bits of general advice, and worked with Alison to see how to apply them, and to test whether they fit for her.

At the end of the half hour, Alison was clearer about what she wanted from her upcoming meeting, and confident that she knew what to do to make the meeting successful.

Alison’s meeting went well. I learned a life lesson. I call it Alison’s Advice Advice:
When people ask for your advice, they are looking not for your advice, but for their own advice.

I apply Alison’s Advice Advice in two ways. First, as a reminder that when I’m consulting, my goal is ultimately to help people find their own advice, advice to which they can commit. If I have ideas, I can offer them, and we can explore whether the ideas make sense. And if I have little relevant experience, I may still be able to help. By listening fully, and by asking questions, I can guide people to discover or create their own advice. In fact, this second style—guiding people to advise themselves—is often more effective than offering my own ideas. No matter how expert I imagine myself to be, people commit more readily to their own ideas than to mine.

Second, I used to be frustrated when people would ask for my advice and then not take it. I couldn’t understand why they would do that. Now I understand. Alison’s Advice Advice reminds me that even when people ask me for advice, they are more likely seeking their own advice, and that sometimes my advice simply doesn’t fit for them at this time. I’m now less frustrated when people don’t take my advice. And when I’m less frustrated, I’m more flexible and better able to help.

I don’t know whether Alison remembers our meeting. I sure remember it. That meeting was a major turning point in my consulting career, and Alison’s Advice Advice is now a core element of my consulting approach.

Experiment: Notice how people react the next ten times you offer advice. Notice how you react, internally and externally, to their reactions.

Experiment: What would you do if you knew that the next person who sought your advice would take your advice without question?