the gentle art of asking instead of telling
Please read Edgar H. Schein’s book write a reflection about it.
Explain what your thought is, use “I” statement
minimum of 2 pages long
An Excerpt From
Humble Inquiry
The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling
by Edgar H. Schein
Published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers
More Praise for Humble Inquiry
“An invaluable guide for a consultant trying to understand and untan-
gle system and interpersonal knots. Written with a beguiling simplic-
ity and clarity, it is laden with wisdom and practicality.”
—Irvin Yalom, MD, Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry, Stanford
University
“The lessons contained in this deceptively simple book reach beyond
the author’s experience gained from a lifetime of consultation to or-
ganizations of all sizes and shapes. It provides life lessons for us all.
If, as a result of reading this book, you begin to practice the art of
humble asking, you will have taken an important step toward living
wisely.”
—Samuel Jay Keyser, Peter de Florez Professor Emeritus, MIT
“This book seriously challenges leaders to re-examine the emphasis
on task orientation and ‘telling’ subordinates how best to do their
jobs. Humble Inquiry increases organizational capacity to learn more
from cross-cultural teamwork, reduces stress, and increases organi-
zational engagement and productivity.”
—Jyotsna Sanzgiri, MBA, PhD, Professor, California School of
Professional Psychology, Alliant International University
“This book is particularly important for leaders who in these complex
times need advice and tools for building trust in their relationships
with subordinates individually or in teams.”
—Danica Purg, President, IEDC-Bled School of Management, Bled,
Slovenia
“This book is an exercise in inquiry by a recognized master of humble
insight.”
—Art Kleiner, Editor-in-Chief, Booz & Company/strategy+business
“Ed Schein has provided a new and thoughtful reframing of interper-
sonal dynamics through the notion of Humble Inquiry. This short
book is packed with insights as Schein rigorously explores the impact
of his ideas in his usually clear and readable style.”
—Michael Brimm, Professor of Organizational Behavior, INSEAD
Europe
“Humble Inquiry is an elegant treatment of how to go about building
and sustaining solid, trusting relationships in or out of the workplace.
A masterful take on a critical human skill too infrequently practiced.”
—John Van Maanen, Erwin Schell Professor of Management and
Professor of Organization Studies, MIT
“A fast read and full of insight! Considering the cultural, occupational,
generational, and gender communication barriers we face every day,
Humble Inquiry proposes a very practical, nonthreatening approach
to bridging those gaps and increasing the mutual understanding that
leads to operational excellence.”
—Rosa Antonia Carrillo, MSOD, safety leadership consultant
“A remarkably valuable guide for anyone interested in leading more
effectively and building strong relationships. Ed Schein presents vivid
examples grounded in a lifetime of experience as husband, father,
teacher, administrator, and consultant.”
—Robert B. McKersie, Professor Emeritus, Sloan School of
Management, MIT
“Ed Schein has an eye for bold yet subtle insights into the big picture
and a knack for writing about them clearly. Humble Inquiry—like his
previous book Helping—shows that he is equally talented at bringing
fresh thinking to well-trodden ground.”
—Grady McGonagill, EdD, Principal, McGonagill Consulting
“What did I gain from reading Humble Inquiry? I became more aware
of the subtle but powerful ways we affect each other as we talk and
how the right kind of questions can dramatically improve the qual-
ity and effi ciency of communication, with benefi ts that range from
increased patient safety and satisfaction to employee motivation and
morale to organizational performance. You can’t afford to not know
about this.”
—Anthony Suchman, MD, MA, University of Rochester School of
Medicine and Dentistry
“With the world as his classroom, Ed Schein continues to guide us
through modern day chaos with the powerful behaviors of
Helping
and Humble Inquiry. This is a must-read for anyone who truly wishes
to achieve important goals!”
—Marjorie M. Godfrey, Codirector, The Dartmouth Institute for Health
Policy & Clinical Practice Microsystem Academy
Humble Inquiry
Other Books by Edgar Schein
Organizational Culture and Leadership
Helping
The Corporate Culture Survival Guide
Organizational Psychology
Career Anchors
Process Consultation
DEC Is Dead, Long Live DEC
Humble Inquiry
The Gentle Art of Asking
Instead of Telling
E D G A R H . S C H E I N
Humble Inquiry
Copyright © 2013 by Edgar H. Schein
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distrib-
uted, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying,
recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior writ-
ten permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations
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designed by Susan Malikowski, Designleaf Studio.
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This book is dedicated to my
main teachers and mentors:
Gordon Allport, Richard Solomon,
David Rioch, Erving Goffman,
Douglas McGregor, and Richard Beckhard.
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Introduction: Creating Positive Relationships
and Effective Organizations 1
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21
3 Differentiating Humble Inquiry from Other
Kinds of Inquiry 39
53
69
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1
Introduction: Creating
Positive Relationships and
Effective Organizations
The motivation to write this book is personal and profes-
sional. On the personal level, I have never liked being told
things gratuitously, especially things I already know.
The other day I was admiring an unusual bunch of
mushrooms that had grown after a heav y rain when a
lady walking her dog chose to stop and tell me in a loud
voice, “Some of those are poisonous, you know.” I replied,
“I know,” to which she added, “Some of them can kill you,
you know.”
What struck me was how her need to tell not only
made it difficult to respond in a positive manner, but it
also offended me. I realized that her tone and her telling
approach prevented the building of a positive relationship
and made further communication awkward. Her motiva-
tion might have been to help me, yet I found it unhelpful
and wished that she had asked me a question, either at the
beginning or after I said “I know,” instead of trying to tell me
something more.
Why is it so important to learn to ask better ques-
tions that help to build positive relationships? Because in
an increasingly complex, interdependent, and culturally
diverse world, we cannot hope to understand and work
2 Introduction
with people from different occupational, professional, and
national cultures if we do not know how to ask questions
and build relationships that are based on mutual respect
and the recognition that others know things that we may
need to know in order to get a job done.
But not all questions are equivalent. I have come to
believe that we need to learn a particular form of question-
ing that I first called “Humble Inquiry” in my book on Helping
(2009), and that can be defined as follows:
Humble Inquiry is the fine art of drawing someone
out, of asking questions to which you do not already
know the answer, of building a relationship based on
curiosity and interest in the other person.
The professional motivation to explore Humble
Inquiry more extensively comes from the insights I have
gained over the past fifty years of consulting with vari-
ous kinds of organizations. Especially in the high hazard
industries in which the problems of safety are paramount,
I have learned that good relations and reliable communica-
tion across hierarchic boundaries are crucial. In airplane
crashes and chemical industry accidents, in the infrequent
but serious nuclear plant accidents, in the NASA Challenger
and Columbia disasters, and in the British Petroleum gulf
spill, a common finding is that lower-ranking employees
had information that would have prevented or lessened the
consequences of the accident, but either it was not passed
up to higher levels, or it was ignored, or it was overridden.
When I talk to senior managers, they always assure me that
they are open, that they want to hear from their subordi-
nates, and that they take the information seriously. However,
when I talk to the subordinates in those same organizations,
they tell me either they do not feel safe bringing bad news to
Introduction 3
their bosses or they’ve tried but never got any response or
even acknowledgment, so they concluded that their input
wasn’t welcome and gave up. Shockingly often, they settled
for risky alternatives rather than upset their bosses with
potentially bad news.
When I look at what goes on in hospitals, in operating
rooms, and in the health care system generally, I find the
same problems of communication exist and that patients
frequently pay the price. Nurses and technicians do not feel
safe bringing negative information to doctors or correcting
a doctor who is about to make a mistake. Doctors will argue
that if the others were “professionals” they would speak up,
but in many a hospital the nurses will tell you that doctors
feel free to yell at nurses in a punishing way, which creates
a climate where nurses will certainly not speak up. Doctors
engage patients in one-way conversations in which they ask
only enough questions to make a diagnosis and sometimes
make misdiagnoses because they don’t ask enough ques-
tions before they begin to tell patients what they should do.
It struck me that what is missing in all of these situa-
tions is a climate in which lower-level employees feel safe
to bring up issues that need to be addressed, information
that would reduce the likelihood of accidents, and, in health
care, mistakes that harm patients. How does one produce a
climate in which people will speak up, bring up information
that is safety related, and even correct superiors or those of
higher status when they are about to make a mistake?
The answer runs counter to some important aspects
of U.S. culture—we must become better at asking and do less
telling in a culture that overvalues telling. It has always both-
ered me how even ordinary conversations tend to be defined
by what we tell rather than by what we ask. Questions are
taken for granted rather than given a starring role in the
4 Introduction
human drama. Yet all my teaching and consulting experi-
ence has taught me that what builds a relationship, what
solves problems, what moves things forward is asking the
right questions. In particular, it is the higher-ranking leaders
who must learn the art of Humble Inquiry as a first step in
creating a climate of openness.
I learned early in my consulting that getting question-
ing right was more important than giving recommenda-
tions or advice and wrote about that in my books on Process
Consultation.1 I then realized that giving and receiving help
also worked best when the helper asked some questions
before giving advice or jumping in with solutions. So I wrote
about the importance of asking in my book Helping.2
I now realize that the issue of asking versus telling is
really a fundamental issue in human relations, and that it
applies to all of us all the time. What we choose to ask, when
we ask, what our underlying attitude is as we ask—all are
key to relationship building, to communication, and to task
performance.
Building relationships between humans is a complex
process. The mistakes we make in conversations and the
things we think we should have said after the conversation
is over all reflect our own confusion about the balancing of
asking and telling, and our automatic bias toward telling.
The missing ingredients in most conversations are curiosity
and willingness to ask questions to which we do not already
know the answer.
It is time to take a look at this form of questioning and
examine its role in a wide variety of situations, from ordi-
nary conversations to complex-task performances, such as
a surgical team performing an open-heart operation. In a
complex and interdependent world, more and more tasks
are like a seesaw or a relay race. We tout teamwork and use
Introduction 5
lots of different athletic analogies, but I chose the seesaw
and the relay race to make the point that often it is necessary
for everyone to do their part. For everyone to do their part
appropriately requires good communication; good commu-
nication requires building a trusting relationship; and build-
ing a trusting relationship requires Humble Inquiry.
This book is for the general reader, but it has special
significance for people in leadership roles because the art of
questioning becomes more difficult as status increases. Our
culture emphasizes that leaders must be wiser, set direc-
tion, and articulate values, all of which predisposes them to
tell rather than ask. Yet it is leaders who will need Humble
Inquiry most because complex interdependent tasks will
require building positive, trusting relationships with sub-
ordinates to facilitate good upward communication. And
without good upward communication, organizations can
be neither effective nor safe.
About this book
In this book I will first define and explain what I mean by
Humble Inquiry in Chapter 1. To fully understand humility,
it is helpful to differentiate three kinds of humility: 1) the
humility that we feel around elders and dignitaries; 2) the
humility that we feel in the presence of those who awe us
with their achievements; and 3) Here-and-now Humility,
which results from our being dependent from time to time
on someone else in order to accomplish a task that we are
committed to. This will strike some readers as academic
hairsplitting, but it is the recognition of this third type of
humility that is the key to Humble Inquiry and to the build-
ing of positive relationships.
To fully explain Humble Inquiry, Chapter 2 will pro-
6 Introduction
vide a number of short case examples, and Chapter 3 will
discuss how this form of questioning is different from other
kinds of questions that one may ask.
Chapter 4 will discuss why it is difficult to engage in
Humble Inquiry in the kind of task-oriented culture we live
in. I label this a “Culture of Do and Tell” and argue that not
only do we value telling more than asking, but we also value
doing more than relating and thereby reduce our capac-
ity and desire to form relationships. Chapter 5 argues that
the higher we are in status, the more difficult it becomes
to engage in Humble Inquiry while, at the same time, it
becomes more important for leaders to learn how to be
humble from time to time. Not only do norms and assump-
tions in our culture make Humble Inquiry difficult, but the
complexity of our human brain and the complexity of social
relationships also create some constraints and difficulties,
which I discuss in Chapter 6.
Finally, in Chapter 7, I provide some suggestions for
how we can increase our ability and desire to engage in
more Humble Inquiry.
7
?1 Humble Inquiry
When conversations go wrong, when our best
advice is ignored, when we get upset with the advice that
others give us, when our subordinates fail to tell us things
that would improve matters or avoid pitfalls, when discus-
sions turn into arguments that end in stalemates and hurt
feelings—what went wrong and what could have been done
to get better outcomes?
A vivid example came from one of my executive stu-
dents in the MIT Sloan Program who was studying for his
important finance exam in his basement study. He had
explicitly instructed his six-year-old daughter not to inter-
rupt him. He was deep into his work when a knock on the
door announced the arrival of his daughter. He said sharply,
“I thought I told you not to interrupt me.” The little girl burst
into tears and ran off. The next morning his wife berated
him for upsetting the daughter. He defended himself vigor-
ously until his wife interrupted and said, “I sent her down
to you to say goodnight and ask you if you wanted a cup of
coffee to help with your studying. Why did you yell at her
instead of asking her why she was there?”
How can we do better? The answer is simple, but its
implementation is not. We would have to do three things:
1) do less telling; 2) learn to do more asking in the particular
form of Humble Inquiry; and 3) do a better job of listening
8 Humble Inquiry
and acknowledging. Talking and listening have received
enormous attention via hundreds of books on commu-
nication. But the social art of asking a question has been
strangely neglected.
Yet what we ask and the particular form in which we
ask it—what I describe as Humble Inquiry—is ultimately the
basis for building trusting relationships, which facilitates
better communication and, thereby, ensures collaboration
where it is needed to get the job done.
Some tasks can be accomplished by each person doing
his or her own thing. If that is the case, building relation-
ships and improving communication may not matter. In the
team sports of basketball, soccer, and hockey, teamwork is
desirable but not essential. But when all the parties have to
do the right thing—when there is complete, simultaneous
interdependence, as in a seesaw or a relay race—then good
relationships and open communication become essential.
How Does Asking Build Relationships?
We all live in a culture of Tell and find it difficult to ask, espe-
cially to ask in a humble way. What is so wrong with tell-
ing? The short answer is a sociological one. Telling puts the
other person down. It implies that the other person does not
already know what I am telling and that the other person
ought to know it. Often when I am told something that I did
not ask about, I find that I already know that and wonder
why the person assumes that I don’t. When I am told things
that I already know or have thought of, at the minimum I get
impatient, and at the maximum I get offended. The fact that
the other person says, “But I was only trying to help—you
might not have thought of it,” does not end up being helpful
or reassuring.
Humble Inquiry 9
On the other hand, asking temporarily empowers the
other person in the conversation and temporarily makes me
vulnerable. It implies that the other person knows some-
thing that I need to or want to know. It draws the other per-
son into the situation and into the driver’s seat; it enables the
other person to help or hurt me and, thereby, opens the door
to building a relationship. If I don’t care about communicat-
ing or building a relationship with the other person, then
telling is fine. But if part of the goal of the conversation is to
improve communication and build a relationship, then tell-
ing is more risky than asking.
A conversation that leads to a relationship has to be
sociologically equitable and balanced. If I want to build a
relationship, I have to begin by investing something in it.
Humble Inquiry is investing by spending some of my atten-
tion up front. My question is conveying to the other per-
son, “I am prepared to listen to you and am making myself
vulnerable to you.” I will get a return on my investment if
what the other person tells me is something that I did not
know before and needed to know. I will then appreciate
being told something new, and a relationship can begin to
develop through successive cycles of being told something
in response to asking.
Trust builds on my end because I have made myself
vulnerable, and the other person has not taken advantage
of me nor ignored me. Trust builds on the other person’s
end because I have shown an interest in and paid attention
to what I have been told. A conversation that builds a trust-
ing relationship is, therefore, an interactive process in which
each party invests and gets something of value in return.
All of this occurs within the cultural boundaries of
what is considered appropriate good manners and civility.
The participants exchange information and attention in suc-
10 Humble Inquiry
cessive cycles guided by each of their perceptions of the cul-
tural boundaries of what is appropriate to ask and tell about
in the given situation.
Why does this not occur routinely? Don’t we all know
how to ask questions? Of course we think we know how
to ask, but we fail to notice how often even our questions
are just another form of telling—rhetorical or just testing
whether what we think is right. We are biased toward telling
instead of asking because we live in a pragmatic, problem-
solving culture in which knowing things and telling others
what we know is valued. We also live in a structured society
in which building relationships is not as important as task
accomplishment, in which it is appropriate and expected
that the subordinate does more asking than telling, while
the boss does more telling that asking. Having to ask is a sign
of weakness or ignorance, so we avoid it as much as possible.
Yet there is growing evidence that many tasks get
accomplished better and more safely if team members and
especially bosses learn to build relationships through the
art of Humble Inquiry. This form of asking shows inter-
est in the other person, signals a willingness to listen, and,
thereby, temporarily empowers the other person. It implies
a temporary state of dependence on another and, therefore,
implies a kind of Here-and-now Humility, which must be dis-
tinguished from two other forms of humility.
Three Kinds of Humility
Humility, in the most general sense, refers to granting some-
one else a higher status than one claims for oneself. To be
humiliated means to be publicly deprived of one’s claimed
status, to lose face. It is unacceptable in all cultures to
humiliate another person, but the rules for what constitutes
Humble Inquiry 11
humiliation vary among cultures due to differences in how
status is granted. Therefore, to understand Humble Inquiry,
we need to distinguish three kinds of humility based on
three kinds of status:
1) Basic humility—In traditional societies where sta-
tus is ascribed by birth or social position, humility is not a
choice but a condition. One can accept it or resent it, but
one cannot arbitrarily change it. In most cultures the “upper
class” is granted an intrinsic respect based on the status one
is born into. In Western democracies such as the United
States, we are in conflict about how humble to be in front
of someone who has been born into it rather than having
achieved it. But all cultures dictate the minimum amount of
respect required, or the expected politeness and acknowl-
edgment that adults owe each other. We all acknowledge
that as human beings we owe each other some basic respect
and should act with some measure of civility.
2) Optional humility—In societies where status is
achieved through one’s accomplishments, we tend to feel
humble in the presence of people who have clearly achieved
more than we have, and we either admire or env y them.
This is optional because we have the choice whether or not
to put ourselves in the presence of others who would hum-
ble us with their achievements. We can avoid such feelings
of humility by the company we choose and who we choose
to compare ourselves to, our reference groups. When in the
presence of someone whose achievements we respect, we
generally know what the expected rules of deference and
demeanor are, but these can vary by occupational culture.
How to properly show respect for the Nobel Prize–winning
physicist or the Olympic Gold Medal–winner may require
some coaching by occupational insiders.
3) Here-and-now Humility—There is a third kind of
12 Humble Inquiry
humility that is crucial for the understanding of Humble
Inquiry. Here-and-now Humility is how I feel when I am
dependent on you. My status is inferior to yours at this
moment because you know something or can do something
that I need in order to accomplish some task or goal that I
have chosen. You have the power to help or hinder me in the
achievement of goals that I have chosen and have committed
to. I have to be humble because I am temporarily dependent
on you. Here I also have a choice. I can either not commit to
tasks that make me dependent on others, or I can deny the
dependency, avoid feeling humble, fail to get what I need,
and, thereby, fail to accomplish the task or unwittingly sabo-
tage it. Unfortunately people often would rather fail than to
admit their dependency on someone else.
This kind of humility is easy to see and feel when you
are the subordinate, the student, or the patient/client because
the situation you are in defines relative status. It is less vis-
ible in a team among peers, and it is often totally invisible to
the boss who may assume that the formal power granted by
the position itself will guarantee the performance of the sub-
ordinate. The boss may not perceive his or her dependency
on the subordinate, either because of incorrect assump-
tions about the nature of the task that is being performed or
because of incorrect assumptions about a subordinate’s level
of commitment to the particular job. The boss may assume
that if something is in the subordinate’s job description, it
will be done, and not notice the many ways in which subor-
dinates will withhold information or drift off what they have
been trained for. But, if I am a boss on a seesaw or in a relay
race in which everyone’s performance matters to getting the
job done at all, I am de facto dependent on the subordinate
whether I recognize it or not. Getting the seesaw to move
and passing the baton will work only if all the participants,
Humble Inquiry 13
regardless of formal status, recognize their dependence on
each other. It is in that situation where Humble Inquiry by all
the parties becomes most relevant, where the humility is not
based on a priori status gaps or differences in prior achieve-
ment, but on recognized here-and-now interdependence.
When you are dependent on someone to get a task
accomplished, it is essential that you build a relationship
with that person that will lead to open task-related com-
munication. Consider two possibilities. You are the boss in
the relay race. Telling the person to put out her or his left
hand so that you, who are right-handed, can easily pass the
baton, may or may not lead to effective passing. However, if
you decide to engage in Humble Inquiry prior to the race,
you might ask your teammate’s preference for which hand to
use. You might then discover that the person has an injured
left hand that does not work as well, and it would be better
for you to pass with your left.
Shouldn’t the subordinate have mentioned that before
the race any way? Not if in that culture for one person to
speak up directly to a person of higher status is taboo. If
the baton pass is an instrument a nurse passes to the sur-
geon, isn’t it enough for the surgeon to tell the nurse what
she needs and expect a correct response? Ordinarily yes,
but what if the nurse is temporarily distracted by a beep
from monitoring equipment or confused because of a pos-
sible language problem or thinks it is the wrong instrument?
Should he not speak up and admit that he does not under-
stand, or are the cultural forces in the situation such that
he will guess and maybe make a costly mistake? If, in the
culture of that operating room, the doctors are gods and one
simply does not question or confront them, that nurse will
not speak up, even if there is potential harm to the patient.
My point is that in both of those examples, the boss and the
14 Humble Inquiry
doctor are de facto dependent on their subordinates and
must, therefore, recognize their Here-and-now Humility.
Failure to do so and failure to engage in Humble Inquiry to
build a relationship prior to the race or the operation itself
then leads to poor performance, potential harm, and feel-
ings of frustration all around.
When such situations occur within a given culture
where the rules of deference and demeanor are clear, there
is a chance that the parties will understand each other. But
when the team members in an interdependent task are more
multicultural, both the language and the set of behavioral
rules about how to deal with authority and trust may vary.
To make this clear, let’s look at a hypothetical multicultural
example from medicine, keeping in mind that the same
cultural forces would operate in a comparable example of
a task force in a business or in a curriculum committee in
a school.
T H R E E K I N D S O F H U M I L I T Y—
A S U R G I C A L T E A M E X A M P L E
Consider these three types of humility in the context of
a hypothetical British hospital operating room where a
complex operation is being performed. The surgeon is Dr.
Roderick Brown, the son of Lord Brown, who is a respected
senior surgeon and works with the Royal Family; the anes-
thesiologist is Dr. Yoshi Tanaka, recently arrived from Japan
on a residency fellowship; the surgical nurse is Amy Grant,
an American working in the United Kingdom because her
husband has a job there; and the surgical tech is Jack Swift,
who is from a lower-class section of London and has gone as
high as he is likely to go at the hospital.3
All the members of the team would feel some basic
humility with respect to the surgeon, Dr. Brown, except pos-
Humble Inquiry 15
sibly Amy, who does not particularly respect the British class
structure. Both Amy and Dr. Tanaka would feel optional
humility with respect to Dr. Brown because they can see how
talented Brown is with surgical tools. Jack is likely to feel
such optional humility with respect to all the others in the
room. What none of them may be sufficiently aware of is that
they are interdependent and will, therefore, have to experi-
ence Here-and-now Humility from time to time with respect
to each other.
Dr. Brown, the senior surgeon, may know implicitly,
but would not necessarily acknowledge openly, that he is
also dependent on the other three. A situation might well
arise where he needs information or something to be done
by the others in the room who have lower status than he.
In the context of the task to be done, situations will arise
where an occupationally higher-status person temporarily
has lower status by virtue of being dependent and, therefore,
should display Here-and-now Humility to ensure a better
performance and a safer outcome for the patient.
The higher-status person often denies or glosses this
kind of dependency by rationalizing that “I am, after all,
working with professionals.” That implies that they are all
competent, are committed to the superordinate goals of
healing the patient, and accept their roles and relative sta-
tus in the room. It implies that they don’t feel humiliated
by having orders barked at them or having help demanded
of them. Their “professionalism” also t y pically assumes
that they w ill not humiliate the person w ith higher sta-
tus by offering criticism or help unless asked. The burden
then falls on the higher-status person to ask for help and
to create the climate that gives permission for the help to
be given.
16 Humble Inquiry
Situational Trouble or Surprise. If things work smoothly,
there may be no issues around status and open commu-
nication. But what if something goes wrong or something
unexpected occurs? For example, if Dr. Tanaka is about to
make a major mistake on the anesthetics, and the nurse,
Amy, notices it, what should she do? Should she speak up?
And what are the consequences of her speaking up about it?
Being American, she might just blurt it out and risk that Dr.
Tanaka would, in fact, be humiliated by being corrected by a
lower-status nurse, a woman, and an American.
If the corrective comment was made by Dr. Brown,
it might be embarrassing, but would have been accepted
because the senior person can legitimately correct the junior
person. Dr. Tanaka might actually appreciate it. Jack might
have seen the potential error but would not feel licensed to
speak up at all. If Amy or the tech made the mistake, they
might get yelled at and thrown off the team because from
the point of view of the senior doctor, they could easily be
replaced by someone more competent.
What if Dr. Brown was about to make a mistake, would
anyone tell him? Dr. Tanaka has learned in his culture that
one never corrects a superior. This might go so far as to cover
up for a surgeon’s mistake in order to protect the face of the
superior and the profession. Amy would experience conflict
and might or might not speak up depending on how psycho-
logically safe she felt in the situation. That might be based
on what kind of history of communication and relationship
she had with Dr. Brown and other male surgeons in her past
career. She might not know whether Dr. Brown would be
humiliated by having a nurse offer a corrective comment or
question. And humiliation must be avoided in most cultures,
so it would be difficult for her to speak up unless she and Dr.
Brown had built a relationship in which she felt safe to do so.
Humble Inquiry 17
Jack would certainly not speak up but might later tell
terrible stories about Dr. Brown to his tech colleagues if the
operation went badly and the patient was harmed or died
unnecessarily. If this incident later led to an official inquiry,
Jack and Dr. Tanaka might be called as witnesses. They
might be asked what they had observed and would either
have to lie or, if they admitted that they saw the mistake,
might be criticized for not having done anything at the time.
All this would result from Dr. Brown (the leader) being
insensitive to the cultural rules around speaking up across
status boundaries and not doing anything to change those
rules within his surgical team. What is missing in this sce-
nario, and it is often missing in all kinds of complex inter-
dependent tasks, is a social mechanism that overrides the
barriers to communication across status lines where humil-
iation is a cultural possibility. To build this social mecha-
nism—a relationship that facilitates relevant, task-oriented,
open communication across status boundaries—requires
that leaders learn the art of Humble Inquiry. The most dif-
ficult part of this learning is for persons in the higher-status
position to become Here-and-now Humble, to realize that in
many situations they are de facto dependent on subordinates
and other lower-status team members.
This kind of humility is difficult to learn because in
achievement-oriented cultures where knowledge and the
display of it are admired, being Here-and-now Humble
implies loss of status. Yet this is precisely the kind of humility
that will increasingly be needed by leaders, managers, and
professionals of all sorts because they will find themselves
more and more in tasks where mutual interdependency is
the basic condition. That might at times require leaders to
ask their team, “Am I doing this correctly? Tell me if I am
doing something wrong.” This is even harder to learn when
18 Humble Inquiry
some of the members of the team come from traditional cul-
tures in which arbitrary status lines must not be overridden
and where task failure is preferable to humiliation and loss
of face.
What would it take to get Dr. Tanaka, Amy, and even
Jack to confront Dr. Brown when he is about to make a mis-
take? Efforts to define common goals, require procedures
such as checklists, and standardize training are necessary
but not sufficient because, in a new and ambiguous situation,
team members will fall back on their own cultural rules and
do unpredictable things. A leader of any multicultural team
who really wanted to ensure open task-related communica-
tion would use Humble Inquiry to first build a relationship
with the others that would make them feel psychologically
safe and able to overcome the conflict they may experience
between their duties and their culturally and professionally
defined sense of deference.
What Is Inquiry?
Having defined what humility means in this analysis of
Humble Inquiry, we need next to ask what inquiry means.
Inquiry is also a complex concept. Questioning is both a
science and an art. Professional question askers such as
pollsters have done decades of research on how to ask a
question to get the kind of information they want. Effective
therapists, counselors, and consultants have refined the
art of questioning to a high degree. But most of us have not
considered how questions should be asked in the context
of daily life, ordinary conversations, and, most importantly,
task performance. When we add the issue of asking ques-
tions across cultural and status boundaries, things become
very muddy indeed.
Humble Inquiry 19
What we ask, how we ask it, where we ask it, and when
we ask it all matter. But the essence of Humble Inquiry goes
beyond just overt questioning. The kind of inquiry I am talk-
ing about derives from an attitude of interest and curiosity. It
implies a desire to build a relationship that will lead to more
open communication. It also implies that one makes oneself
vulnerable and, thereby, arouses positive helping behavior
in the other person. Such an attitude is reflected in a variety
of behaviors other than just the specific questions we ask.
Sometimes we display through body language and silence a
curiosity and level of interest that gets the other person talk-
ing even when we have said nothing.
Feelings of Here-and-now Humility are, for the most
part, the basis of curiosity and interest. If I feel I have some-
thing to learn from you or want to hear from you some of
your experiences or feelings because I care for you, or need
something from you to accomplish a task, this makes me
temporarily dependent and vulnerable. It is precisely my
temporary subordination that creates psychological safety
for you and, therefore, increases the chances that you will
tell me what I need to know and help me get the job done. If
you exploit the situation and lie to me or take advantage of
me by selling me something I don’t need or giving me bad
advice, I will learn to avoid you in the future or punish you if
I am your boss. If you tell me what I need to know and help
me, we have begun to build a positive relationship.
Inquiry, in this context, does imply that you ask ques-
tions. But not any old question. The dilemma in U.S. culture
is that we don’t really distinguish what I am defining as
Humble Inquiry carefully enough from leading questions,
rhetorical questions, embarrassing questions, or statements
in the form of questions—such as journalists seem to love—
which are deliberately provocative and intended to put you
20 Humble Inquiry
down. If leaders, managers, and all kinds of professionals
are to learn Humble Inquiry, they will have to learn to dif-
ferentiate carefully among the possible questions to ask and
make choices that build the relationship. How this is done
will vary with the setting, the task, and the local circum-
stances, as we will see in later chapters.
In the next chapter, I want first to provide a wide range
of examples of Humble Inquiry to make clear what I mean by
it and to illustrate how varied the behavior can be depending
on the situation and the context.
Q U E S T I O N S F O R T H E R E A D E R
Think about various people whom you admire and
respect. What is the type of humility that you feel in
each case?
Think about tasks that require collaboration. In what way
are you dependent on another person? Try to reflect
on and recognize the temporary Here-and-now Humility
that is required of each of you as you help each other.
Do you think you can talk about this kind of humility with
each other when you next discuss your joint task? If not,
why not?
Now think about yourself in your daily life with friends and
family. Reflect on the kinds of questions you tend to ask
in ordinary conversation and in task situations. Are they
different? Why?
What is the one most important thing you have learned
about how to ask questions?
Now take a few minutes just to reflect quietly on what you
have learned in general so far.
This material has been excerpted from
Humble Inquiry
The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling
by Edgar H. Schein
Published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers
Copyright © 2013, All Rights Reserved.
For more information, or to purchase the book,
please visit our website
www.bkconnection.com
- Cover
- Introduction: Creating Positive Relationships and Effective Organizations
- 3 Differentiating Humble Inquiry from Other Kinds of Inquiry
Contents
1 Humble Inquiry
2 Humble Inquiry in Practice—Case Examples
4 The Culture of Do and Tell
5 Status, Rank, and Role Boundaries as Inhibitors
6 Forces Inside Us as Inhibitors
7 Developing the Attitude of Humble Inquiry
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
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