236 How to Use Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas with the Author of A More Beautiful Question & The Book of Beautiful Questions with Warren Berger | Partnering Leadership Global Thought Leader

***DISCLAIMER: Please note that the following AI-generated transcript may not be 100% accurate and could contain misspellings or errors.***

[00:00:00] Mahan Tavakoli: Welcome to Partnering Leadership. I'm really excited this week to be welcoming my favorite ologist Warren Berger. Warren is an innovation expert and he has studied hundreds of the world's foremost innovators, entrepreneurs, and thinkers to learn how they asked questions, generate original ideas, and solve problem.

He's the author or co-author of more than 12 books on innovation, including the bestseller. A more beautiful question, the Power of Inquiry to Spark breakthrough Ideas. I really enjoyed the conversation with Warren, as I have learned so much from him on the power of questioning and how to do it well, and I'm sure you.

Both enjoy the conversation and understand not only the importance of more effective questioning, but how to do it, which is essential as we look to lead our teams and organizations through ever greater uncertainty. I also love hearing from you. Keep your comments coming. mahan.com. There's a microphone icon on partnering leadership.com.

You can leave voice messages for me there. Now here is my conversation with Warren Burger.

 Warren Berger, welcome to Partnering Leadership. I am thrilled to have you in this conversation with me.

[00:01:29] Warren Berger: Thanks. It's great to be with you today.

[00:01:31] Mahan Tavakoli: Warren, I am so excited. I have learned so much from you on questioning, which I think is truly a meta skill as we go into a more complex world. Whether it's your book, a More Beautiful Question, or the Book of Beautiful Questions, which I know are only a couple of the books that you have written. And can't wait to talk about questioning.

But before we get to that, would love to know whereabouts you grew up and how your upbringing impacted the kind of person you've become born.

[00:02:03] Warren Berger: I grew up in New York just outside Manhattan, in Queens. I actually grew. in between two bridges, the Whitestone Bridge and the Throgs Neck bridge. I lived right smack in between them. Underneath them. So I looked up at two big bridges all the time and grew up in a big family with seven kids, I was the youngest.

And I don't know, maybe my questioning habit came out of being the, you. In a family and having lots of older siblings that I could bother with questions , ask them, what about this? Or how do you do that? I was, fairly as a youngster. And I got into journalism at an early age.

I was working on school publications, so then I was, a questioner in that regard too. I was asking questions. Of other students or other people. And it just became a lifelong habit that then led to this field of study that I have created for myself called ology, which is just the study of the art and science of questioning.

And that's now my main focus of my work.

[00:03:15] Mahan Tavakoli: I love that field because as I mentioned, I think it's critical. Skill for us to have. Now I wonder, you say you don't learn unless you question, which is so true. And when we are young, we keep asking questions about everything. That's one of the fun things when you also have children of your own. I remember my girls would ask questions about things that I had never thought about.

So why is it that we lose that ability to question as we grow up?

[00:03:48] Warren Berger: I don't think we ever lose the ability, but what happens is it becomes I would say suppressed. So there is this natural. Questioning ability we have as a young child. And that comes partly out of our curiosity. The relationship between curiosity and questioning is an interesting one.

The way to think about it is one is a state of being that's curiosity. And the other is the action that you take in that state of being, and that's questioning. So you could think of it as curiosity is the itch we have and questioning is how we scratch the itch. So I don't think it goes away. The curiosity certainly doesn't go away.

What may happen is we suppress the questions sometimes because we begin to feel that we will be judge. Perhaps by our peers. As we're going through school, we wanna seem smart. We don't wanna seem like someone who's doesn't know something. So we associate questions with revealing a weakness about ourselves and we become more reluctant to ask questions.

And then at the same time that is happening, there are these external factors like, In school, you get rewarded for having the answers, not for asking good questions. No one ever scores any points on a test for asking a good question. So that's something that, young people absorb. They quickly figure out where the reward is, , and so that's gonna shape their behavior.

And so questioning gets, pushed down a little bit. Then that continues even in the workplace. The same thing is true in the workplace where people may have curiosity and they may be inclined to ask something, but there are too many, forces of, bosses that say, oh, we don't have time for these questions.

 Or, why are you asking questions? Or, there's some negative behavior that goes on in the workplace that says to people. We don't really want you to ask questions. We don't really have time for that. We just want you to do your job, and know what your job is and that's what we expect from you.

So that signal in the workplace will tend to discourage people from asking questions.

[00:06:11] Mahan Tavakoli: For those that understand the importance of Ed Warren, I worked with a lot of CEOs and I was having a conversation around this with A C E O who felt that the team and the organization was looking. To her more than they should for the answers. So are there there reasons why We tend to want leaders to have answers, and if someone has an answer we say, oh, they have great leadership qualities. If someone seems uncertain and asks questions, we then attribute that to not having great leadership Qualit.

[00:06:50] Warren Berger: Yeah, it has to do with the way we traditionally looked at leaders and we traditionally looked at them as the people who had the answers and would tell you what to do. That goes back to the old industrial model, so in the industrial model, everyone is just a worker doing their tasks and the manager or the boss is the person who, tells you what to do.

The problem is that model doesn't work very well. As you get into a more complex world or more complicated kinds of businesses, or in places where you want and expect your people to be more or more independent minded, you really don't want to have a system where everyone has to go to somebody and say, what do I do now?

And and get the answer. It's bad for everyone. It's bad for the leaders because they don't want to. Be answering those kind of mundane questions all day long. And it's bad for the people working there because it takes away their motivation. It takes away their spirit, it takes away their sense of independence and creative thinking.

So what has to happen, is that we have to evolve to this other kind of leadership that is much more humble if you will. Where the leader is thinking of themselves as a person who is there not just to give everyone the answers, but to.

Guide them with the right questions. Help them answer their own questions, help them figure stuff out for themselves. Give them the freedom to figure things out, give them the freedom to be creative. So in that kind of a role, there's a much bigger role for questions to play when you're that kind of a leader, when you're this kind of a humble, curious, learning servant leader.

When you're that kind of a leader, then questions become really important because that's how you're going to, figure out what people really need. It's how you're gonna give them the kind of Gentle guidance they need as opposed to, telling them what to do. Giving them a sense of direction, giving them a sense of purpose so questions can help you with all of that stuff.

That's why it's a big transition. It's a transition the business world is going through now, and it's not easy because again, we have to get away from something we were trained to think for many years, which is to think of the leader as the autocratic boss who knows everything and tells you what to do.

As I like to say, nowadays, if you have a leader who acts as if he knows everything, watch out , because that means. That leader's gonna lead you off a cliff because there's no one who can know everything. In this environment we're in now, this world we're in now where complexity is so great So everybody now, even people who think of themselves as the smartest person in the room or an expert in their field, even if you think of yourself that way, you have to be very humble about the fact that you've gotta be learning every day.

You've gotta be asking questions every day, and you've gotta encourage that in your people as well.

[00:10:03] Mahan Tavakoli: Now,

Warren, how do you. Leaders and the people that do this best approach it. When I think about the leaders I interact with, the more experience they have. While they try to maintain a sense of humility, they feel like they have already been there, seen some of these experiences, some of the challenges.

So they tend to question a lot less as an analogy, it's a little bit like when I. To downtown DC and come back. I don't necessarily ask questions about the environment that I'm driving in because I feel like I've been there. I'm very familiar, very comfortable, very few things that I need to.

Pay attention to. So how can we keep ourselves curious so we don't fall into the trap that with more experience comes fewer and fewer questions and less curiosity.

[00:11:04] Warren Berger: Yeah, it is a trap for everyone and the only way I think of that you can overcome it is to be conscious of it and to try to force yourself to look at the world around you in a different way. That's not easy to do,

because we get into the habit of looking at things a certain way. We get into the habit of. Commuting and not paying attention as we commute, because we've been there before. We get into the habit of doing our job a certain way. If we've been doing that job for 10, 15, 20 years, we very much get into habits,

so what we're talking about is the ability to look beyond your own habitual thinking, there was this zen practice that's known as beginner's mind, which is all about just forcing yourself to step back and look at things as if you're seeing them fresh, as if you're seeing them for the first time.

 Anyone can do that. If they're willing to try, a lot of people are not willing to try, they just say, I don't have time for that. That sounds like a bunch of, crazy new age stuff. I'm not gonna do that. But the reality is this is what you have to do to get outside of.

Habitual thinking and thinking that is based on routine and habit. You have to do that. You have to get outside that kind of thinking because it's only when you get outside that kind of thinking that you begin to notice things that maybe going on that you weren't paying attention to, or you begin to think of ideas.

That, might have been right under your nose the whole time, but somehow you weren't receptive to them. So that's why having that kind of a mindset that is much more open looking at things as much as we can in a fresh way. And trying to notice things, little things, familiar things that maybe we've been missing.

That's what this kind of thinking is all about, and that's how we begin to train ourselves. To be like the inquisitive four year old, five-year-old child. That's what they're doing all the time. They're seeing the world for the first time. They're noticing things, they're curious, they're asking, and as they do that, they're learning we can do that as adults, we do it in a different way than kids do. We're not gonna be asking the same kinds of questions that a five-year-old is asking, but there's a lot of what that five-year-old is doing. That we need to do , we need to do it as an adult and in a may be different way, but we need to do it.

We need to look at the world with that fresh eye. We need to be willing to ask very fundamental, basic questions without worrying about how it's gonna make us look. We need to share questions with other people. So all those things that the kids do apply to. Being a successful adult and being a good leader.

[00:14:03] Mahan Tavakoli: They. Important for us. And as you say, it's also important to know the questions we should be asking ourselves and the questions we shouldn't be asking ourselves. In the book, you refer to the beautiful question. You say, beautiful question is an ambitious, yet actionable question that can begin to shift the way we perceive or think about something, and that might serve as a catalyst.

To bring about change. Google cannot easily anticipate or properly answer these questions for you, so there is a way for us to approach questioning so it can. Shift our way of thinking. Now, I wonder, Warren, how can leaders of teams and organizations create a more curious culture so their team members are more willing to be questioning?

[00:15:01] Warren Berger: I think it's all about the signals you send out with a culture. That's what it's always about. It's about what are you signaling to the people within that culture about what are we about as a culture? What do we value, what do we care about? What are we trying to do? So if you want a questioning culture, if you want a culture of inquiry, you need to figure out all the ways we can signal that to people.

And it's very similar to a classroom situation I do a lot of work with companies, but I also do a lot of work with schools and I work with teachers and, in a classroom, if you want students to ask more questions, you need to. Let them know that their questions are valued that their questions are going to have an impact.

People are gonna pay attention to them, that there aren't ever gonna be any penalties for asking a question. And maybe you even try to make it fun in some way. You make it rewarding in some way. So that's what you do and. A lot of ways to do it, it could be something like we're gonna start all our meetings with questions of the week, what are the best questions you came upon or what is the big question you have now?

Or it could be about rewarding someone who comes up with a great question. The way you might reward someone who came up with a great idea for your company. It can be all kinds of things like that. And then it also has to be modeled from the top. In the same way that, again, returning to the classroom analogy, if a teacher wants students to ask questions, then the teacher should model that behavior by.

Asking questions about the work that, we're studying. I find this really interesting and when I look at this subject, one of the things I wonder is, why this, why that? So in doing that, the teacher or the leader in an organization is modeling the behavior of a questionnaire.

So I would like to see leaders get in front of their people and talk about the questions they're pondering, the questions they're working on as a leader, the questions they'd like to see the company. Take on, I talk a lot to companies about mission questions. I say, forget about your mission statement, what's your mission question?

And share that with your people, so it's not just like a mission statement oh, we are the company that tries to make the world a better place through robotics. You should be asking the question, how might we make the world a better place through robotics? And then you share that question with your people and it becomes a group, challenge a group mission to answer that question.

So there's a lot of things you can do to make questioning, central to the culture. If you do that, then people will respond and you will begin to see people being more curious. You'll see them asking more questions and then of course that means you will have to decide what are we gonna do with those questions, , once people ask them, if you ignore their questions, if you encourage people to be more curious and ask more questions.

And then you ignore them that's gonna have a negative effect. They'll immediately stop questioning. So it's a big challenge. I don't take it lightly or say that it's something that companies can easily do. They need to think about it on the front end, which is encouraging questioning, and they need to think about it on the back end, which okay, what are we gonna do with all these questions?

And they need to develop systems and processes around that. It's not easy, but I think it's definitely a worthwhile pursuit because what it's going to do is it's gonna work for your organization on a couple of different levels. It's gonna bring more ideas and creative thinking to the surface. And that's really valuable, but it's also gonna make your people more engaged.

It's gonna make them feel like they have more of a stake in their jobs and in the organization because they're tapping into their own creative thinking, their own curiosity. And that's gonna make them feel as if they're not just doing a job.

They're part of the brain trust of this organization. And they're helping this organization to figure out. Big things and answer big questions.

[00:19:18] Mahan Tavakoli: There is definitely the value of people feeling that engagement and that connection in part because of being part of the conversation and answering the question, and there's also the value of the fact that. It as you refer to in a more complex environment, no one individual regardless of experience, intelligence, whatever attributes you want to give them will have the answers, so the questions can get the collaboration that is required to come up with better answers.

You mention, The mindset that I love that openness to questioning. One of the things I even heard a couple of weeks ago, Warren was a leader talking to the team and saying, I don't want people to bring me problems or issues without also having the solution to it.

And I was cringing because that's, A different version of I don't want the questions, I don't want the issues unless you already have the answer for it.

[00:20:24] Warren Berger: A big mistake.

[00:20:25] Mahan Tavakoli: Requires different mindset.

[00:20:27] Warren Berger: Yeah. Because if you say that what you're saying to people is, I expect you to figure out or solve any problem that may come up for our entire organization.

No matter how complex that problem is no matter how important that issue is you are gonna have to figure it out yourself. If you think about it, that's ridiculous because the most important things your organization is going to do are probably gonna be very difficult things that can't be done by one person.

So what you need, Is you need a starting point. And that's what the question is. The question is the starting point. So if someone gives you the starting point, they've given you something extremely valuable cuz they've given you something that you can now bring to the entire organization and say, Hey, we have a question here that's pretty amazing that has identified a problem or an opportunity.

that we weren't really thinking enough about, what are we gonna do about this? What can we do about it? How might we, as an entire organization answer this question? And when you do that's how you get to innovation. At least oftentimes that's the road to innovation. It starts with a simple question, so many stories in my book about breakthroughs or innovations, they start with this really.

Fundamental question of somebody looking at a problem and asking why is this going on? After all these years, why does this problem still exist? Our customers whenever they want to do this thing or that thing, they have so much trouble. Why hasn't someone figured out a way to help them do that better?

And someone will start with that basic kind of question. And then it may be that a lot of people have to go to work on that, there may be the beginnings of an idea there, but it's not anything. Fully formed. So then, the whole company has to essentially answer that question.

And if they are able to answer that question, what they will have is a breakthrough. They'll have an innovation, they'll have a new way of doing something that can set them apart from the competition. Now, of course, in today's world, once you do that, it's great for about six months, and then. Everybody else has copied what you've done and and then you better have people asking the next beautiful question that takes you to the next iteration of that or the next breakthrough or the next , because no longer in today's world.

Can you coast on one? Big idea or one way of doing things, you really have to adapt. Now you have to take that idea and adapt it in a million different ways and adapt it to new technology, adapt it to the changing lifestyles. You have to come up with additional ideas. You have to figure out offshoots that you can branch out into.

 In today's world, it feels like businesses just have to. A pretty steady flow of fresh thinking. And that all starts with questions, that all starts with the curious observation that leads to the question, which then drives the work to create something new.

[00:23:43] Mahan Tavakoli: You also mentioned that people think of questioning as simple, but it's very sophisticated, high level form of thinking. It's not necessarily something that.

At the deepest levels done well, comes naturally to us so we can keep improving at it. And I love how I had read quite a bit about Edwin Landon Polaroid. I love the way you use that example in. Talking through some of the why, what if, and how that organizations can use in thinking through innovation and innovative practices.

[00:24:25] Warren Berger: Yeah. The Polaroid story's a classic story in a couple of ways. It's one that I go back to a lot because number one, it shows the amazing ability of children. And the power of the beginner's mind. I was talking earlier about the beginner's mind, the ability to see things in a fresh way, and then it also shows how you can take what starts as a innocent question a naive question by a child, and then you can develop that in a sophisticated way.

To get to innovation. So what happened in the Polaroid story is basically, the founder Edwin Land before the Polaroid Instant camera was ever created, he was in the business of doing optical lenses and things like that. His business was struggling. He went on vacation with his five-year-old daughter.

And at one point he took a picture of her. What would've been a standard camera at the time. This is in the 1940s. He took a picture of her, he finishes taking the picture. He puts the camera away and his five-year-old daughter wants to see the picture, and he says no, that's not the way it works with cameras.

We take the picture and then we have to send it out and it takes a while and maybe in a week or. You'll see the picture. And so the daughter asked him, why do we have to wait for the picture? Edwin Land said at the time, I didn't initially think much of the question, but then it stuck in my head and I started to ask that question, from an adult perspective and say, yeah, why do we have to wait for the picture?

Imagine. If we didn't have to wait for the picture, and let's look at the reasons why we have to wait, because the film has to be processed and all of that stuff. And let's think about, what if we could have all that stuff going on inside the camera? What if the development process could happen in the camera?

How would we make that work? Now, this is where he then takes this idea that's ruminating around in his. And he brings it to his company and they all go to work on it, so all he had at that point was a question, right? And that came from a five year old girl and he advanced the question a little bit.

He took it from why to what if, but he had to take it to his entire company to figure out the how. How are we gonna do this? How are we gonna actually make a camera with a dark room and a printer all inside of it. How are we gonna make that happen? How are we gonna make it affordable?

All of that stuff, all those practical questions. . So it's a great example to me and there's lots of examples of innovations that follow that same pattern. There's a why at the beginning, why does this problem exist? Then there's a what if, which is all about using your imagination, what if we tried this?

What if we tried that? And then eventually you cycle to. More practical questions. How do we do this? How do we do that? How much is it gonna cost? And that's what eventually gets you to the actual breakthrough or innovation. So what I say to people is, always think of questioning that way as a cycle.

You can treat it as a cyclical process where you could start with why, where you're trying to understand something. Then you can move to what if type questions, where now you're using your brainstorming, your imagination, and then ultimately you end up with how questions, where you're getting down to the nitty gritty of figuring out how to do stuff.

It's a really good little framework to have in your back pocket as a questioner.

[00:27:51] Mahan Tavakoli: It's a beautiful framework, Warren, and we can spend hours just talking about it. And the importance of it from my perspective is first of all, this is not just innovation, whether Edwin Land or Steve Jobs , they can go through this process. And that's a beautiful story. But part of that story, first of all is the response to the why is not just the typical answers. The why. Because we need to send this in because it's going to take two weeks, because people need to go in the dark room. . The why is a deeper level of why, and I have seen this kind of thinking impact organizations, whether it's with respect to how they process expense reports or when they want to innovate with the types of employees they're bringing in.

So this is not just innovation for the entire organization when the human resources team thinks about why is it that we are ending with. Type of candidate, less diverse pool of candidates and truly asks the why, a deeper level. Why not just coming up with excuses because not enough people apply or whatever else, A deeper level why than a genuine what if scenario and.

How we can make a difference. This process can really be used for innovation, whether it is for organizations or teams of any size within the organization.

[00:29:28] Warren Berger: Yeah. And the important thing to keep in mind about that process is . A lot of times people will stop at the Y stage because, as I think you were alluding to there, they'll come up with the reasons why it doesn't work, so someone will say, why don't we do X? And they'll say because it creates this problem and we don't have any enough resources for that.

And so it's very similar to what Edwin Land was doing when he initially responded to the five year old. Daughter, he was saying obviously the reasons why we can't have the picture now is because you have to develop the film and it takes time to do this. So the key to making all this work is when you ask the why question and you come up with the reasons why you don't stop there, you then use those reasons why to get to your next level of questions.

So all of those reasons why, A problem exists or a situation exists, all of those reasons can then be turned into what if questions where you say, okay, there's this reason, but what if we took that reason and we turned it upside down, or we tried a different way of doing it. That's the key thing that happens there, is you take those excuses or those reasons and you subject.

To questioning to wide open what if type questioning. That's how you begin to reinvent processes and how you begin to overcome habits and problems and things of that nature. Now, I don't want to make any of this seem like it's easy. Of course it's not, when we're talking about reinventing the way people do things or even reinventing our own processes within our organization.

That's hard stuff, it's not easy. We all have constraints and limits and things that make it hard to do that stuff. But you have to start with, at least being willing to question. Those limits and question those constraint.

[00:31:31] Mahan Tavakoli: That's part of having the kind of culture that is open to that and an ongoing development of the capabilities and the skills around these beautiful questions. Now, another one of the things I was wondering about, Warren is that I'm very involved in the community leadership Greater Washington, where we bring together business, nonprofit and political leaders, and even in a region like ours, the divisions and the gaps.

Between groups and people have been getting bigger for a whole host of reasons. So I wonder how, in your view, can questioning be used as a way to help bridge some of the gaps within us?

[00:32:22] Warren Berger: There's two ways to think about questioning, right? so far in our conversation we've been talking a lot about innovative questioning. There's all so many different types of questioning and there's so many powers that questioning has.

I like to think of these kinds of questions, like the Polaroid story and all that. I like to think of those as questions. asking yourself, or your organization is asking itself, that it's almost like a form of self-questioning. Gee, why is the world like this and what if I tried to do that, and what if we did this and how might we do that?

So it's a kind of, internalized. Questioning, that then you then try to act on. Now there's a whole other type of questioning, which is as a communication tool. So it's not really about innovation it's about, how do you use questions to relate to another person and to learn from that person?

And that's where. is just as valuable, if not more valuable as it is in the innovation, self-questioning kind of thing, because that communication stuff is just really important. And leaders especially, I think they have to be good at both kinds of questioning. They have to be really good at that self-questioning.

Whether they're asking, why is our company doing this or what? What's going on in our industry? Where is everything headed? They need to be asking those kinds of questions. But they also need to be really good at those. External communication questions where they're going out there to their people and asking questions of the people who work for them.

What are challenges you're facing now? What are we doing that you would like to see changed? What is it in your work that you're not quite? Satisfied with that. You want to get to a better place. Those kinds of communication questions are hugely important they're important in terms of building rapport with people around you.

They're important in terms of learning what's going on in your company that you might not be aware of. Lots and lots of things to keep in mind there. Now, as far as overcoming barriers, that tool of questioning as a communication tool it's been shown to be the best way to build rapport with someone to build trust.

And the reason is because when you're asking questions of someone, you're showing that you care. You're showing that you're interested. It's pretty basic. So if we wanna overcome barriers, That separate us from people questioning does two things that are really important. It builds rapport and trust, and it allows you to learn about the other person, learn about their field, learn about what they're doing, that you might not understand, learn about their world in a way that you might not understand.

So those two things are really important. The building rapport and then just learning. Just learning about people, and I mean in this world, I think what we need now is , as someone said this line, which I thought was really great, that in our world today, we need to try really hard to replace judgment with curiosity. What this woman was saying is that she sees she was a Pulitzer winning playwright. And she sees people being too quick to judge other people and to say, ah, I don't agree with that person, or That person's all about this, and not curious enough about why that person thinks the way they do.

What is the other side of this issue? What should I understand that I don't understand right now? What are my biases that I might not be aware of? So questioning in this way can help you to bridge that gap between people because you show you're willing to. Recognize someone, you're willing to listen to them.

You're willing to try to understand them. That doesn't mean by the way, you have to agree with them. But you have to at least start out trying to understand them. And it may be that once you've tried to understand them you say you know what? I think this person's completely wrong about stuff.

I've really thought hard about it, and I've looked at it. And they're off on something. That's fine. There are people that are doing something that we don't agree with and we don't have to agree with it, but we have to at least show some curiosity and try to get an understanding of it before we move to judging them.

[00:36:46] Mahan Tavakoli: I love that, Warren. It's coming from a place of genuine curiosity, and as you had written in your book, You said, we face a certainty epidemic wherein many people overestimate their knowledge, put too much faith in their gut instinct and walk around convinced that they have more answers than they actually do.

And another outstanding book and interview that I had is with David McCraney. He has written books including How Minds Change.

[00:37:21] Warren Berger: Yeah.

[00:37:22] Mahan Tavakoli: and one of the key points that he makes in that book is that minds do change, but one part of that is the genuine curiosity to ask questions to understand why another person believes what they believe.

So this can be a great way to show respect to someone else. Curiously asking those questions and can help bridge some gaps. As you said, in some respects, we might not end up agreeing again. That's not the point. The point is to approach it with curiosity rather than ahead of time feeling like we already know better.

[00:38:03] Warren Berger: Yeah and one important tip I would add to that is it's really great to ask those kinds of questions of other people, but f focus on your tone and your attitude when you're doing it, because there are too many people that ask questions. and they've already got their mind made up, but they go through the process of asking questions you can tell from the tone of their questions that they're doing in a kind of a devil's advocate kind of way.

It's almost like they're saying, how on earth could you believe such a thing? Or would you think that way? So that when they do that, there's criticism. Embedded within the question. And so if you're going to do this kind of questioning, don't do that , because that doesn't do any good at all.

That's just another form of arguing. So you really have to make an effort. To bring that curiosity into your questions and to say to people, I'm really wondering about something I'm really interested in this and let them know the question is coming from a good place.

Because otherwise, people could they could think that you're challenging them or attacking them in some way by way of a question.

[00:39:11] Mahan Tavakoli: And that genuine curiosity shows, whether it's in the tonality of the question or the way we approach the other individual and having the humility to be genuinely curious by itself comes across and they sense it. So I wonder, Warren, you are a ologist, I am sure at all times you are asking yourself beautiful questions.

What is a question you. Struggling with now, what is one of the bigger questions that you have in your mind as you look at the world as it is operating now?

[00:39:49] Warren Berger: These days I'm a little bit focused on critical thinking. So one of the questions I'm wondering about is can critical thinking be taught? And if so, how does it get taught and at what point? Is it best to teach it in the stage of learning and development of young people?

And also how do you make it sexy? , because, critical thinking has a terrible reputation. It even, the name is awful.

[00:40:16] Mahan Tavakoli: The name makes it sound hard,

[00:40:18] Warren Berger: Yeah, it just sounds like a negative thing. And in fact it's just so critical to our survival not only as individuals, but as a functioning society.

And there really is a crisis of critical thinking right now. So what's going on is, know, people, they don't know what to believe and they don't know. They're being easily misled. And that's a failure of their own critical thinking of their own ability to ask the right questions with an open mind and be able to bring that questioning mindset to whatever new information they encounter or whatever's happening in the world, whatever challenges are going on.

The ability to do that is going to be critical. I hear people sometimes say, gee, if only we could. Get social media to censor itself we could somehow control all this bad information that's coming at people, all these, conspiracy theories or whatever.

If only there was some way we could control that flow of information, and I think that's never gonna happen. We can't. The genie is out of the bottle in terms of information flow, we can't control it now. It's gonna come at people from every possible direction and in every form. So the secret now, the key now is within ourselves.

It's our filter. It's our BS detector. And that's what critical thinking is. So that's one of the questions I'm focused on now is how do we get people to really understand what critical thinking is? Cuz there's also tremendous misunderstanding about it.

 You'll hear people on the internet say, oh, I'm a critical thinker. And then the next words out of their mouth will show that they're not a critical thinker. Because they'll say, I question, but then you've realized, oh, they're only questioning things from one side, from one point of.

And that's the opposite of critical thinking. So it's a very complex, interesting situation a challenge. And some of the questions I'm working on. Revolve around critical thinking. And I'll throw out one other thing, one other question I'm wondering about is questioning always good Because there can be times when we question things.

In a way that actually is counterproductive, and that's a really complicated issue. So how do you separate the good questioning from the questioning that is somebody trying to undermine. An argument or trying to be resistant to a solution that's, gonna serve everyone but someone is just questioning cuz they're just purely resistant to it.

How do you separate the good questioning from the questioning that's problematic.

[00:42:44] Mahan Tavakoli: Wait to read your thoughts as you try to ask the questions around critical thinking, which I think Warren, as we end up having more technology in our lives. AI gets to know us better. We are going to develop some of our critical thinking capabilities to maintain our humanity. . Also on the questioning side, there is tremendous value to developing the capability to question.

It will be interesting to see your thoughts on whether, even when. Approached with genuine curiosity some forms of questioning can be counterproductive, so can't wait to see what you come up with there. Now, Warren, are there any leadership practices or resources that you recommend in addition to your own books as leaders are reflecting on wanting to.

More effective and better at asking beautiful questions and creating the kind of environment that we talked about, which is one of curiosity in their teams.

[00:44:01] Warren Berger: I always refer people to the work of some of the authors. I respect and admire . There's an author named Adam Grant, who does great work around the creative thinking open-mindedness. He wrote a book called Think Again, which is all. Having the ability to change your mind, similar to what you talked about with David McRaney, who is also a great resource.

I, I refer people to I would refer people to David MCC Rainey's podcast, which is just great. I'm blanking on the name of it now, but if you look it up, you can find it.

David McRaney. Do you know, do you know what?

[00:44:34] Mahan Tavakoli: You are not so smart. I've been listening to him for 10 plus years and I love it too.

[00:44:39] Warren Berger: Yeah, it's a great podcast. And then I really admire the work of writers like Daniel Pink who has talked about decision making.

I'm really interested in decision making also, and there are some great books on that. So what you wanna do is really get a better understanding of how your own mind works, and that is gonna help you to be a better think. As a leader and just to be more confident in your own decision making.

Because a lot of leaders historically, believed in this idea of the gut, , I have a great gut. I have great gut instincts. And, up to a point there can be some truth to the idea that you may have a good gut instinct. But, if you look at the science on that really people who think they have a great gut instinct it's just that they're on a hot streak, with a few good decisions they made, and then eventually their gut, fails them miserably usually.

What you begin to understand is that to be a better decision maker and a better leader, you really don't want to be relying too much on gut reactions and gut instincts. You wanna be thinking in a way that's very open-minded and considering as many viewpoints and options as possible. And then, Going with your instinct on which thing is best as opposed to starting off with your instinct, so I think I would recommend to leaders just, look at the books, look at the literature on open-mindedness, on thinking, on decision-making, on curiosity and, absorb that stuff so that you have a better understanding of how your own thinking and decision making process actually.

[00:46:13] Mahan Tavakoli: Those are outstanding recommendations. As I mentioned, David McCraney has had a huge influence on me. I followed his podcast and his work for 10 plus years and was thrilled to interview him for this podcast. Adam Grant's. Book Think Again is outstanding. So is Daniel Pink's work. So is your work Warren, which has been so impactful on my own thinking on questioning, so where can the audience find out more about you and your work?

[00:46:48] Warren Berger: The best place is My main website, which is called a more beautiful question.com. So just take those words and scrunch 'em all together a more beautiful question.com. That's where I pull together all my questioning articles and resources and it is a place where you can do a really deep.

On this subject of questioning and find out a lot of interesting stuff and take an inquiry quiz to find out what your inquiry quotient is and all kinds of stuff like that.

[00:47:19] Mahan Tavakoli: I love the resources you have on this site, and most especially Warren. I love the fact that you. Some of that same humility that you talk about in being curious about the world around you and the confidence it takes to share some of those insights through your books, through your website, with a much broader community.

I am so honored and thrilled we had a chance to have this conversation. Thank you so much for joining me, Warren.

[00:47:51] Warren Berger: It was a pleasure talking to you and you asked really great questions by the way.

[00:47:55] Mahan Tavakoli: Thank you. I have to tell you, talking to a ologist whose books I have read, whose work I've admired, it was a little nerve wracking, so I really appreciate it.

[00:48:06] Warren Berger: Great. Thanks. It was great to be with you.

[00:48:08] Mahan Tavakoli: Thank you so much, Warren.