Humble Inquiry Quotes

“If you are trying to develop a good relationship and feel the conversation starting to go in the wrong direction, you can humbly ask some version of “Are we OK?” “Is this working?” or “What is happening here?” to explore what might be going wrong and how it might be improved.”
― Edgar H. Schein, Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling

“What you just said, that you didn’t do anything, made me realize that we don’t need an outside assessment. We just need to begin to act on those behaviors that we observe that no longer make any sense. We have allowed and maybe even encouraged some of the old rituals that we are now calling stodgy. We now need to change our own behavior to signal that many of the old ways of doing things will no longer work. So, with Ed’s help, let’s figure out when we personally have condoned what we don’t like, and in what way we could behave differently in the future.”
― Edgar H. Schein, Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling

“By asking a diagnostic question instead of continuing to encourage the unfolding of the client’s story, you are taking charge of the direction of the conversation and should, therefore, consider whether or not this is desirable. The main issue is whether this steering is in the interest of actual problem-solving and helping, or simply indulging your curiosity in a way that may not be helpful.”
― Edgar H. Schein, Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling

“We see Humble Inquiry as primarily about reducing one’s ignorance, making sense of complicated situations, and in that process, deepening relationships. In contrast, the primary role of helping inquiry is to influence—to teach, coach, counsel, and heal.”
― Edgar H. Schein, Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling

“Humble Inquiry has the potential to humanize relationships across hierarchical and geographical boundaries, especially when people reveal aspects of themselves that are relatable. Of course each person’s experiences are unique. Yet the events of any story we tell reveal how we perceive things, feel about them, and act on them, which sooner or later provides opportunities for empathizing. Ideally, inquirers remember something similar from their own experiences and can identify with the storyteller. When we share our stories, we provide each other opportunities to discover important similarities in our experiences and our reactions, even as we know that experiences still differ in many ways. We have to listen and understand—this allows us to identify with the storyteller, which in turn prompts us to inquire further.”
― Edgar H. Schein, Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling

“Humble Inquiry is therefore most relevant when you find yourself in a conversation that is initially just transactional but develops into something more personal because one or both of you want it.”
― Edgar H. Schein, Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling

“of something, seduce, or give advice. Your sense of purpose defines your attitude, and knowing why you are in a conversation helps you to clear your head of distractions and irrelevant feelings.”
― Edgar H. Schein, Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling

“another person in that moment. My Here-and-now Humility can by itself trigger a very positive and genuine curiosity and interest in you. You will feel acknowledged, and it is precisely my temporary “subordination” that can create psychological safety for you, which can increase the chances that you will reveal what I need to know to get a task completed and begin to build our relationship constructively.”
― Edgar H. Schein, Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling

“Humble Inquiry goes beyond mere questioning and displays an attitude of interest and curiosity that hopefully engenders a similar reciprocal demeanor of curiosity in the other person in the conversation. You can open the door to a relationship through your own Humble Inquiry, yet a relationship only flourishes if that attitude is reciprocated.”
― Edgar H. Schein, Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling

“Successful conversations that lead to productive Level 2 relationships typically start with the assumptions of sociological equity and balance.”
― Edgar H. Schein, Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling

“Learn to see, feel, and curb the impulses to lash out; (2) Learn to make a habit of listening and figuring out what is going on before taking action; and (3) Try harder to hear, to understand, and acknowledge what others are trying to express to you.”
― Edgar H. Schein, Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling

“The key to Humble Inquiry is to recognize when you need to know why something is happening instead of giving in to a knee-jerk impulse that not only keeps you ignorant but also creates an avoidable disconnect.”
― Edgar H. Schein, Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling

“Humble Inquiry works only if the attitude behind it includes the desire to really hear what the other person says, to develop an appropriate level of empathy, and to choose a response that shows interest and curiosity.”
― Edgar H. Schein, Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling

“building relationships between humans is an intricate adaptive process because it requires us to deal simultaneously with our biologically encoded impulses to both compete and cooperate in a cultural context that tends to favor one over the other. In our U.S. culture, it can be especially difficult to build enough trust to feel comfortable asking for help.”
― Edgar H. Schein, Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling

“The paradox is that the main inhibitor of useful telling is often our own failure to inquire in a way that makes it safe for others to tell us the truth, or at least to share all of what they know.”
― Edgar H. Schein, Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling

“The Humble Inquiry attitude does not require that humility be a major personality trait of a good inquirer. But even the most confident or arrogant among us will find ourselves humbled by the reality of being dependent on others, and by the sheer complexity of trying to figure out what is important and what is not. We can think of this as Here-and-now Humility, accepting our dependence on each for information sharing and task completion.”
― Edgar H. Schein, Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling

“When a team is trying to solve a tricky problem of what to do next and is stuck among several alternatives, Humble Inquiry means asking, “What else do we need to know?” or “How did we/you arrive at this point?” This is particularly true when others propose something that we oppose or don’t understand.”
― Edgar H. Schein, Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling

“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 another person.”
― Edgar H. Schein, Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling

“people in leadership roles particularly need to hone these skills because this art of inquiry becomes more challenging as power and status increase. Our culture emphasizes that leaders set direction and articulate values, all of which predisposes them to tell rather than ask. Yet it is such leaders who may need Humble Inquiry most because intricate interdependent tasks require building positive, open, and trusting relationships above, below, and around them, in order to facilitate safer and more effective task performance and innovation in the face of a perpetually changing context.”
― Edgar H. Schein, Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling

“Certainty is the belief and adherence to a point of view, often accompanied by vehement argument. Clarity is being able to see and learn more of what is really going on, the full spectrum of dimensions that emerge as critically important as events unfold.1 We add that seeing with more clarity and abandoning certainty are benefits of a Humble Inquiry attitude.”
― Edgar H. Schein, Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling

“Keeping up with the content of accelerating change is really hard. Naturally we all share the inclination to focus on what we know, on our industry, or on our area of expertise, where we can be comfortable keeping up with what is changing. Yet trying to keep up with the content of accelerating change may actually be less important than keeping up with the context of accelerating change. There is a real difference between the content question “What changed?” and the context question “What is going on?” or “Why is this happening?”
― Edgar H. Schein, Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling

“(1) Learn to see, feel, and curb the impulses to lash out; (2) Learn to make a habit of listening and figuring out what is going on before taking action; and (3) Try harder to hear, to understand, and acknowledge what others are trying to express to you.”
― Edgar H. Schein, Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling

“Nothing is more stultifying than running a meeting by Robert’s Rules of Order and to impose the political process of majority rule on small working groups where total commitment is needed.”
― Edgar H. Schein, Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling

“The culture of Do and Tell does not teach us how to change pace, decelerate, take stock of what we are doing, observe ourselves and others, try new behaviors, build new relationships.”
― Edgar H. Schein, Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling

“paradoxically, we often end up acting most on our feelings when we are least aware of them, all the while deluding ourselves that we are carefully acting only on judgments. And we are often quite oblivious to the influences that our feelings have on our judgments.”
― Edgar H. Schein, Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling

“we value task accomplishment over relationship building and either are not aware of this cultural bias or, worse, don’t care and don’t want to be bothered with it. We do not like or trust groups. We believe that committees and meetings are a waste of time and that group decisions diffuse accountability. We only spend money and time on team building when it appears to be pragmatically necessary to get the job done. We tout and admire teamwork and the winning team (espoused values), but we don’t for a minute believe that the team could have done it without the individual star, who usually receives much greater pay (tacit assumption). We”
― Edgar H. Schein, Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling

“and Tell” and argue that not only do we value telling more than”
― Edgar H. Schein, Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling

“Things we conceal from others are insecurities that we are ashamed to admit, feelings and impulses we consider to be anti-social or inconsistent with our self-image, memories of events where we failed or performed badly against our own standards, and, most important, reactions to other people that we judge would be impolite or hurtful to reveal to their face.”
― Edgar H. Schein, Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling

“The world is becoming more technologically complex, interdependent, and culturally diverse, which makes the building of relationships more and more necessary to get things accomplished and, at the same time, more difficult. Relationships are the key to good communication; good communication is the key to successful task accomplishment; and Humble Inquiry, based on Here-and-now Humility, is the key to good relationships. Increasingly,”
― Edgar H. Schein, Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling

“Checklists and other formal processes of coordination are not enough because they cannot deal with unanticipated situations. Through Humble Inquiry teams can build the initial relationships that enable them to learn together. As they build higher levels of trust through joint learning, they become more open in their communication, which, in turn, enables them to deal with the inevitable surprises that arise in complex interdependent situations.7”
― Edgar H. Schein, Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling