by Craig Weber
Testing is the triumph of learning and humility over ignorance and arrogance.
With an effective test you’re not just sitting back passively hoping other people will provide a contrasting perspective; you’re inviting and encouraging them to do so. You do this by showing people you’re holding your position and the thinking that informs it hypothetically. Rather than holding your view close to your chest like a poker player with a good hand or holding it over your head like a Kendo stick with which to whack opposing perspectives, you hold it up like a notional view of “reality” so others can see it and provide feedback. “Here is how I’ve made sense of this situation,” you’re saying, “and I’d like you to help me improve it. What am I missing? What have I got wrong? What are you seeing that I’m not?”
Why does this help? It is far easier for people who see things differently to engage with you when other people see you’re holding your views skeptically, as something you’re trying to vet and improve rather than something you’re trying to sell or defend. A good test, therefore, encourages people to climb over their minimizing hurdle and into the conversation with you. Better still, when done well, it dramatically lowers or even removes the hurdle. In this way, by testing your own views and pulling more ideas and information into the conversation, you can increase the intelligence of the entire conversation or meeting, even when others in the conversation are unfamiliar with the skills.
What the Skill Is Not
Let me also emphasize what the skill is not. It’s not a gimmick—a superficial invitation to push back the unsupported by genuine curiosity. It’s also not a trick designed to lure people into the open so you can take a cleaner shot. And it’s not based in weakness and insecurity; it’s grounded in strength and confidence. It’s not that you’re unsure of yourself or afraid to formulate a thought; it’s that you’re conscious of your mind’s limitations and you’re acting accordingly. Few things signal strength and confidence more than being in command of your behavior and using that discipline in the pursuit of rigorous thinking and smart choices.
Sample Tests
I shared a range of tests in my first book Conversational Capacity. Here are a few more to add to your repertoire. (Many of these came from clients or from participants in my workshops):
• I have strong feelings about this issue, so I really need to hear from people who see it differently. I don’t want my preconceived notions to get in the way of making the best decision.
• What might be two or three unintended consequences of this decision?
• My thinking has betrayed me so many times in the past. Does anyone see how it might be trying to fool me again this time?
• Help me find the flaws in how I’m looking at this situation.
• This is an important decision and I want to explore it from all angles. So, I’m not ending this meeting until we’ve heard at least three concerns about what I just proposed.
• I want to make sure my idea holds water. So, let’s try and shoot a few holes in it.
• I’ve been here for twenty years and I have strong opinions about how things are supposed to look and run around here. So, I’d like to hear from some of the newer people on the team. You’re no doubt looking at this decision with fresher eyes than I am.
• To help me think through this decision in a careful way, let’s identify all the reasons we shouldn’t do it.
• I don’t want my presence to get in the way of your ability to tell me what I need to hear. So, I’m going to leave the room for thirty minutes. When I come back in half an hour, I’d like to see at least three concerns about what I’m suggesting up on a flip chart and we’ll work through them together.
• I’m the finance person, so I tend to see everything through a finance lens. I’d like to hear from someone with a different functional perspective.
• I know I’ve got a strong “win” tendency and I’ve never made it easy for you to challenge me publicly before, but this is way too important and I need your input. So, let’s do this: Break into pairs for fifteen minutes and come up with two things you like about what I’m suggesting, and then, more important, two things you don’t. Then we’ll go around and hear what each pair comes up with.
Here’s a particularly strong one: Executives at a major international bank see conversational capacity as a key part of their “risk management culture.” As one executive put it: “If we don’t have people willing to raise their hands when we’re about to make a really stupid decision, we’re going to make a lot of really stupid decisions.” Taking a cue from Edward De Bono’s Six Thinking Hats, we developed a pair of powerful tests they employ with big decisions:4
• Test 1. The “Black Hat” test:
• Let’s take thirty minutes to find everything wrong with this decision. What are the risks? Why shouldn’t we do this? Why would our competitors laugh in our faces if we made this choice?
• Test 2. The “Yellow Hat” test:
• Now that we’ve kicked the daylight out of the idea, let’s look at it again through a different lens: What do we like about the decision? What are the risks of not doing it? Why would our competitors laugh in our faces if they saw us letting this opportunity slip by?
“If we don’t have people willing to raise their hands when we’re about to make a really stupid decision, we’re going to make a lot of really stupid decisions.”
We’ve found that even the biggest minimizer in the room has little problem raising a concern or a criticism during the first test, because that’s the objective. This flips the minimizer’s dilemma on its head: he’s now uncomfortable not raising a concern because he’s supposed to be raising concerns.
The Stronger, the Better
Here’s a basic rule for testing: the stronger, the better. Nick Hornby nails this point in his hilarious book A Long Way Down. After a life-shattering series of bad decisions that wrecked his marriage, ruined his career, and trashed his sense of self-worth, the main character, Martin Sharp, reflects on the limitations of his own thinking: “If thinking inside the box were an Olympic sport, I would have won more gold medals than Carl Lewis,” he says. He then continues with the following reflection:
Here’s the thing: The cause of my problems is located in my head, if my head is where my personality is located. . . . I had been given many opportunities in life, and I had thrown each of them away, one by one, through a series of catastrophically bad decisions, each one of which seemed like a good idea to me—to me and my head—at the time. And yet the only tool I had at my disposal to correct the disastrous course my life seemed to be taking was the very same head that had caused me to fuck up in the first place. What chance did I have?5
Recognizing that more than awareness is needed, Martin then contemplates what he needs if he is to improve his thinking. His initial insight is about awareness:
Quite clearly I needed two heads, two heads being better than one and all that. One would have to be the old one, just because the old one knows people’s names and phone numbers, and which breakfast cereal I prefer, and so on; the second one would be able to observe and interpret the behavior of the first, in the manner of a television wildlife expert.
I love the idea of having two minds: one making sense out of things and making choices about how to deal with it, and the other observing the first at work, like a “wildlife expert.” (He’s talking about cultivating his personal awareness by learning to direct his beam of attention internally.) Martin goes on to explain why this is important: “Asking the head I have now to explain its own thinking is as pointless as dialing your own telephone number on your own telephone: Either way, you get an engaged signal. Or your own answer message . . .”
Martin then wakes up to the idea that people who will challenge his thinking are the key to improving it: “It took me an embarrassing amount of time to realize that other people have heads,” he muses, before admitting that their heads do a far better job of detecting and correcting errors in his own views
of reality.
But Martin doesn’t stop there. Going deeper, he recognizes not all feedback is created equal. When you’re looking for a catalyst for profound learning, some sources are more powerful than others: “Friends and lovers might try to throw a kindly light on the episode, but because I had only ex-friends and ex-lovers, I was ideally placed. I only really knew people who would give it to me with both barrels.” He follows with this thought:
I knew where to start, too. Indeed, so successful was my first phone call that I didn’t really need to speak to anyone else. My ex-wife was perfect—direct, articulate, and clear-sighted—and I actually ended up feeling sorry for people with someone who loved them, when not living with someone who loathed you was so obviously the way to go. When you have a Cindy in your life, there aren’t any pleasantries to wade through: There are only unpleasantries, and unpleasantries are an essential part of the learning process.
Martin wraps up with the wry observation: “Ex-wives: Really, everybody should have at least one.”
Emphasize the Test
To prepare for his conversation with Phil, Steve and his learning partners spent a lot of time on exploring how to employ this skill. At first Steve was experimenting with the fairly “casual tests” I provide in my workshop handouts (a list very similar to the one in Conversational Capacity on pages 88–89), such as “What is your reaction to what I just said?” But in their role-playing it became obvious such casual tests were far too weak. Steve was hitting Phil with a very strong position, and a laid-back test didn’t provide sufficient balance. The position put forward by Steve is hard on Phil, after all, so the test should be just as hard, or harder, on Steve. After some trial-and-error practice, Steve and his colleagues came up with this much brawnier test: “This is really hard to come in here and say, and I’m sure it’s hard to hear. Push back on my point of view if you think I’m being unfair.”
This illustrates a good rule of thumb: At the very least, seek relative parity in the intensity of your position and the strength of your test. Even better, place an even stronger emphasis on the test.
Coda
Testing your view is a pivotal skill for three reasons:
• First, it’s rare. You aren’t taught to test your thinking this way in a conversation. (In school, for example, you’re rewarded for having the right answer, not for discovering you’re sporting a wrong one.)
• Second, it helps you counter your brain’s automatic and self-serving preference for information that supports your current position.
• Third, an effective test can prevent your candor from pushing people away from the table when your goal is to pull them toward it.
It’s not easy work, explains Cordelia Fine:
While the veil our brain stealthily drapes over reality can never be whipped away entirely, there are other reasons for us not to be completely disheartened. We can be encouraged by the fact that determined efforts on our part to see the world accurately can help counteract distortion. If precision is important enough to us, we are capable of greater conscientiousness in gathering and considering our evidence.6
Testing your perspective by subjecting it to public scrutiny is the strongest signal that you’re in your workshop focused on thinking clearly. It is so important, in fact, that your conversational capacity can be measured by your ability to hold your views hypothetically under pressure.
* If the story of the Human Flamethrower doesn’t ring a bell, revisit pages 46–48 and 104–105 in Conversational Capacity.
* For a review of “Indianapolis moments” and “Indianapolis journaling,” revisit the concept in Chapter 10.
CURIOSITY SKILL #2
Inquiring into the Hypotheses of Others
There is no such thing as a weird human being. It’s just that some people require more understanding than others.
—TOM ROBBINS
With the first three skills, you’re putting your view into the conversation and testing it. But the beauty of this discipline is that there’s an additional tool in your mental workshop that helps you expand and improve your thinking by leveraging how other people are making sense of things: genuine inquiry into their views.
It’s one thing to test a view you’re holding, but inquiry—a word that stems from the old Latin inquīrere meaning “to seek to learn” or “to look into”1—helps you identify gaps in your thinking for which you didn’t even know to test. Inquiry in a tough conversation is like a flashlight in a dark cave—an essential tool that illuminates ideas and information that might not otherwise see any light.
Other people have views—all of them different from yours in either large or small ways—and in the spirit of learning, you’re working just as hard to pull them into the conversation as you’re at putting yours forward. With this skill, in other words, you’re inviting the perspectives of others into a conversation.
To inquire means to search and discover. Inquiry is the act of exploration, a questioning with an agenda to see new possibilities. [Inquiry] always begins with a question—an honest desire to learn about something—as its premise.2
—FRANK BARRETT AND RONALD FRY
What, for instance, can the way in which others are making sense of this issue teach you about a decision you’re facing? There is no way to know unless you encourage them to speak up, clearly and candidly. How do they view the world differently? Get curious and inquire. Do they have information you don’t have access to? Are they interpreting the information in a different and perhaps more useful way? Again, it’s simple: Ask and find out.
I stated in the Introduction that a key goal of this book is for you to be able to make every conversation or meeting smarter because you’re in the room. Genuine inquiry is a powerful yet underestimated way to achieve that goal. It provides another tool for turning the thinking of others into a profound source of learning. Here are a few key points about this deceptively complex skill.
Inquiry Is Different from Testing
Both testing and inquiry are curiosity skills, yes, but they each play a distinct role in a conversation: You test your hypotheses. You inquire into the hypotheses of others. Recognizing that no one has a perfect handle on the truth, you’re holding your views provisionally, but you’re also treating the views of others conditionally as well. You’re treating everyone’s perspective hypothetically, as another important but imperfect lens through which to look at an issue.
It’s a Process
It’s not as simple as just asking a simple question. You may need to ask a few questions to fully understand how someone else is making sense of an issue. As Edgar Schein says: “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.”3 Inquiry, that is to say, is the process of asking as many questions as necessary to explore and understand another’s position.
“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.”
You’re Not Seeking Agreement
Here’s another important distinction: You’re not inquiring into the views of others in the pursuit of agreement; you’re doing it in the pursuit of learning. After a conversation that never leaves the sweet spot you may still disagree with the person with whom you’re talking, but you’ve both probably learned something about the issue you’re exploring. You’re inquiring into the perspectives of others with the goal of getting smarter, not reaching consensus.
It Can Be Used in Multiple Ways
There are a range of ways that genuine inquiry can be employed to bring more depth and balance to a conversation:
When Someone Reacts to Your Point of View
You’re in a meeting, and you’ve put forward a suggestion, explained it, and tested it. Suddenly one of your colleagues blurts out: “There’s no way that’ll work.” At
this point you have three basic options:
1. Minimize and shut down.
2. Kick into “win” mode and argue.
3. Inquire into their reaction to find out where it’s coming from.
If you’re in your mental workshop and learning is your primary goal, option three is the obvious choice: “I appreciate your candid reaction. Tell me more. What specifically about my idea doesn’t work for you?” You don’t have to agree with their reaction, but you certainly want to understand it.
When Someone Reacts to Another Person’s Point of View
When someone reacts to a colleague’s comment in a conversation or meeting, you can help keep the conversation in the sweet spot with an inquiry. For example, “Take a minute and tell us more, Rupert. What leads you to think Kim’s idea is so risky?”
When Someone Is Not Participating in a Conversation
When colleagues have shared neither their view nor their thinking you can invite them to share their perspectives. If you’re in a meeting where a discussion about an important decision is taking place and you notice that Maria and Trey haven’t shared their observations, you can bring more balance to the conversation, and perhaps spark some useful insight, by asking them to share their points of view: “Maria, we’ve been bouncing this topic around for a while now. I’d love to get your take on the decision. What do you think about the issue?” or, “Trey, we’ve not heard from you yet. As you’ve listened to the conversation unfold, what are you thinking? I’d love to get your thoughts and reactions.”
