Team coaches must enquire in order to be practitioners of transformative enquiry, suggests Allard de Jong, Georgina Woudstra’s guest writer this issue
Please allow me to suggest another way of speaking about what we do as team coaches. Not because I’m naïve enough to think that I will change the way a billion dollar industry talks about itself, but simply because words matter: the words we use to describe our work will influence how we do that work.
I’ve never felt comfortable with the terms ‘coach’ or ‘coaching’. I know, it’s irrational but I’ve simply never identified with them. In my work with teams (and in life in general) I’d rather think of myself as a ‘truth seeker’.
And what better way to reveal the truth that exists below a team’s surface and to create an opening for change than to enquire?
Yes, I enquire. And why do I enquire? To transform. To transform the way the team sees itself, the way it operates, the way it thinks and so forth. In short, I’m a practitioner of transformative enquiry. Now these are words that resonate deeply with me. But what do they mean?
‘Transformation’ refers to a marked change. Solve et coagula said the medieval alchemists. ‘Dissolve and coagulate’, two words that speak of the dissolution of the ‘old team’ that must give way to the birth of a ‘new team’ – more effective and integrated.
Analogous to demolishing an old degraded building and rebuilding something new and better using its own rubble – a simple application of architect Lavoisier’s statement that “Nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed.”
‘Enquiry’ denotes the act of questioning (note that I use ‘enquiry’ and not ‘inquiry’ as the latter tends to be used to denote a formal inquest). But not just any line of questioning. Transformative questions are, above all, disruptive. To disrupt is to cause disorder or turmoil, to interrupt, the status quo.
Janet Sernack speaks of “disruptive provocateurs” who “courageously question everything; often with an uncommon intensity and with great frequency.” (ICF website, 07/2015). To disrupt, think descriptive questions, especially the type of ‘why’ questions many of us were taught to avoid: ‘Why do we do it that way?’ or ‘Why is it so important to you to solve this problem?’
To courageously question everything, I also suggest a methodology developed by leadership guru, Hal Gregersen. He suggests brainstorming questions (not answers, but questions) related to our challenge for four minutes. In this timeframe the team should be able to generate 15 to 20 questions.
Brainstorming questions
The three-step process is as follows:
- Set the stage
Select a challenge you care deeply about. Invite a few people to help you consider that challenge from fresh angles. Ideally, choose people who have no direct experience with the problem and whose world view is starkly different from yours. In two minutes or less, share your problem with your partners.
- Brainstorm the questions
Set a timer and spend the next four minutes collectively generating as many questions as possible about the challenge. Follow two key rules: Don’t answer any of the questions and don’t explain why you’re asking the questions. Go for at least 15 to 20 questions in four fast minutes. Write all the questions down verbatim, word for word as you hear them.
- Identify a quest
Commit to it. Study the questions and select a few ‘catalytic’ questions from the list, ones that hold the most potential for disrupting the status quo. Then get to work and find some better answers (http://bit.ly/2DZVI8s).
Enquire deeper
To enquire also means to use our imagination. “Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality,” said French philosopher Jules de Gaultier. Think descriptive speculative questions such as ‘what if’ questions: ‘What if we were to think differently about that?’, ‘What are our unshakable beliefs about what our customers want? What if the opposite were true?’
One more technique that will make our enquiries more transformative is the use of divergent thinking techniques (for example, making random associations or taking on an alternative persona) that help formulate new questions and, hence, new answers.
Divergent thinking encourages seeking and considering new and different methods, new and different opportunities, new and different ideas and/or new and different solutions. And don’t be afraid to be ‘silly’:
- It’s 2020 and we’re the best team to work for in the world: what two things did we do to earn this award?
- You’ve just written a tell-all book about this team: what secrets does it reveal?
- If we could hire X more people, what superpowers would they have and why?
Divergent thinking helps us steer clear of detective Sherlock Holmes style convergent thinking. Gathering various tidbits of facts and data he was able to put the pieces of a puzzle together and come up with a logical answer to the question: Who did it? But we are not there to be the team’s problem solvers!
Words create worlds, and I hope that by taking a team through ‘transformative enquiry’, you’ll help them have more effective conversations while avoiding many of the traps we’re likely to fall into as team coaches: consulting, diagnosing, rescuing or problem solving.
- Allard de Jong has spent the past 20 years solving organisations’ ‘people problems’ and increasing senior executives’ contribution value by accelerating their leadership development. He coaches and trains globally. He is a faculty member of Executive Coach Studio www.executivecoachstudio.com