by Peter Block
Without strong questions, we collude with people who might attend a gathering and choose not to join in cocreating the value of the event. The point is that the nature of the questions we ask either keeps the existing system in place or brings an alternative future into the room. So I want to distinguish in more detail between questions that have little power and those that have great power.
A reminder: Questions alone are not enough. Context matters. The mind-set that people bring to the room matters. How people came to be in the room matters. The room itself matters. The social structure of how people talk to each other matters. The action of the leader/convener matters. But for this moment, let us stay with the questions.
Questions are fateful. They determine destinations. They are the chamber through which destiny calls.
Godwin Hlatshwayo
Questions with Little Power
The existing narrative is organized around a set of traditional questions that have little power to create an alternative future. These are the questions the world is constantly asking. It is understandable that we ask them, but they carry no power; and in the asking, each of these questions is an obstacle to addressing what has given rise to the question in the first place:
How do we get people to be more committed?
How do we get others to be more responsible?
How do we get people to come on board and to do the right thing?
How do we hold those people accountable?
How do we get others to buy in to our vision?
How do we get those people to change?
How much will it cost, and where do we get the money?
How do we negotiate for something better?
What new policy or legislation will move our interests forward?
Where is it working? Who has solved this elsewhere, and how do we import that knowledge?
How do we find and develop better leaders?
Why aren’t those people in the room?
If we answer these questions directly, from the context from which they are asked, we are supporting the mind-set that an alternative future can be negotiated, mandated, engineered, and controlled into existence. They call us to try harder at what we have been doing. They also keep us apart and deepen our isolation.
The hidden agenda in these questions is to maintain dominance and to be right. They urge us to raise standards, measure more closely, and return to basics, purportedly to create accountability. They are not really about returning to basics; they are about returning to what got us here. These questions have no power; they only carry force.
All these questions preserve innocence for the one asking. They imply that the one asking knows and that other people are a problem to be solved. These are each an expression of reliance on the use of force to make a difference in the world. They occur when we lose faith in our own power and the power of our community.
Questions that are designed to change other people are the wrong questions. Wrong, not because they don’t matter or are based on ill intent, but because they reinforce the problem-solving model. They are questions that are the cause of the very thing we are trying to shift: the fragmented and retributive nature of our communities. The conversations about standards, measures, and the change needed in others destroy relatedness, and it is in this way that they work against belonging and community.
These questions are also a response to the wish to create a predictable future. We want desperately to take uncertainty out of the future. But when we take uncertainty out, it is no longer the future. It is the present projected forward. Nothing new can come from the desire for a predictable tomorrow. The only way to make tomorrow predictable is to make it just like today. In fact, what distinguishes the future is its unpredictability and mystery.
Questions with Great Power
Achieving accountability and commitment entails the use of questions through which, in the act of answering them, we become cocreators of the world. Our answers to the questions do not matter. The questions have an impact even if the response is to refuse to answer them.
To state this more dramatically: powerful questions are the ones that cause you to become an actor as soon as you answer them or even reflect on them. You no longer have the luxury of being a spectator of whatever it is you are concerned about. Regardless of how you answer these questions, you are guilty. Guilty of being an actor and participant in this world. Not a pleasant thought, but the moment we accept the idea that we have created the world, we have the power to change it.
Powerful questions also express the reality that change, like life, is difficult and unpredictable. They open up the conversation—in contrast to questions that are, in a sense, answers in disguise. Answers in disguise narrow and control the dialogue, and thereby the future.
We can generalize what qualities define great questions, and this gives us the capacity not just to remember a list but also to create powerful questions of our own.
A great question has three qualities:
It is ambiguous. There is no attempt to try to precisely define what is meant by the question. This requires each person to bring their own, individual meaning into the room.
It is personal. All passion, commitment, and connection grow out of what is most personal. We need to create space for the personal.
It evokes anxiety. All that matters makes us anxious. It is our wish to escape from anxiety that steals our aliveness. If there is no edge to the question, there is no power.
Questions themselves are an art form worthy of a lifetime of study. They are what transform the hour. Here are some questions that have the capacity to open the space for a different future:
What is the commitment you hold that brought you into this room?
Why was it important for you to show up today?
What is the price you or others pay for being here today?
How valuable do you plan for this effort to be?
What is the crossroads you face at this stage of the game?
What is the story you keep telling about the problems of this community?
What are the gifts you hold that have not been brought fully into the world?
What is your contribution to the very thing you complain about?
What is it about you or your team, group, or neighborhood that no one knows?
These questions have the capacity to move something forward, and we will explore them—and others—in more depth in the coming chapters. By answering these kinds of questions, we become more accountable, more committed, more vulnerable; and when we voice our answers to one another, we grow more intimate and connected. What binds all of these questions is that in the asking they invite us to be personal, disclosing, and vulnerable. These are the adhesives of belonging. We are more connected, even if we choose not to answer the question.
The Setup Is Everything
Once we have a question, there is a way of setting up the conversation that makes a big difference. Context is decisive at every level. If the conversation is not set up clearly and intentionally, the old conversation will occur. To initiate a new conversation, we have to give a reason for it, and we have to warn people against bringing forth the limitations of the old conversation—in other words, we must guard against solution finding and advice giving.
The setup is as important as the question, for it provides the context. As a reminder: the context we are creating space for is relatedness, accountability, gifts, and generosity. Being precise about the setup is an essential task of leadership. Without a clear setup, citizens will revert each and every time to the default conversation. The setup inoculates us against the power and habit of speaking into scarcity and dependency. It is so seductive to start talking about the need for more funding, the wish for better leadership, the power of the media, and how others need to change.
There are four elements to the setup:
• Name the distinctions.
• Give permission for unpopular answers.
• Avoid a
dvice and replace it with curiosity.
• Ask lower-risk questions first.
Name Distinctions
Each question has a quality that distinguishes it from the default mind-set. Making this distinction clear is critical. For example, if we want to confront people’s willingness to join us as owners of this gathering, we ask, “How valuable an experience do you plan to have in this event?” This is distinguished from the question “How valuable an experience do you want to have?” or “How valuable an experience do you think this will be?” The distinction between “plan” and “want” or “think” is the difference between choice and wishful thinking or expectations. Wanting to have a good experience does not mean we choose it. We can make a prediction about how valuable the experience will be, but this puts us in the position of waiting to see what the world will provide us.
There is no power in wanting or predicting; the power is in deciding. Even if we say that we plan for this experience to be of no value, we have taken the stance of ownership. What is so difficult to communicate is that ownership is more important than results. If I say that I plan for something to not be valuable, I have shown up as an owner, and that is what brings an alternative future into being. The instant I show up as an owner, I have reclaimed my full membership in this community.
To ask what kind of experience we plan to have places the ownership of that experience clearly in our own hands. The language of what we plan requires us to be accountable.
Every community-building question is about creating a powerful distinction, as in the ownership example, and every time, the distinction needs to be named. In every conversation the issue is the same: moving toward choice and accountability for the well-being of the whole. In the case of ownership, the distinction is between planning and wanting/predicting. If we are not aware of the distinction that makes the question powerful, we shouldn’t use the question.
Give Permission for Unpopular Answers
When people are asked a question, they are conditioned to seek the right answer to feel good or to fit in for the sake of belonging. Encourage them to answer honestly, by naming possible unpopular answers and supporting their expression.
For example, on the ownership question, let them know that an answer that says they plan for this to be a very poor experience is a fine one. Literally say, “If you plan for this meeting to be a waste of time, give it a 1 on a 7-point scale, where 1 is yuck and 7 is wow. It is more important to declare where you are at this moment than for you to demonstrate optimism.” All we care about is that people own their experience, not that the experience be a good one.
Create an Advice-Free Zone
We need to tell people not to be helpful. Trying to be helpful and giving advice are really ways to control others. Advice is a conversation stopper. In community building, we want to substitute curiosity for advice. No call to action. No asking what they are going to do about it. Do not tell people how you handled the same concern in the past. Do not ask questions that have advice hidden in them, such as “Have you ever thought of talking to the person directly?”
One of the basic elements of the relationship between oppressor and oppressed is prescription. Every prescription represents the imposition of one individual’s choice upon another, transforming the consciousness of the person prescribed to into one that conforms with the prescriber’s consciousness.
Paolo Freire, The Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Often citizens will ask for advice. The request for advice is a way that people surrender their sovereignty. If we give in to this request, we have, in this small instance, affirmed their servitude, their belief that they do not have the capacity to create the world from their own resources; more important, we have supported their escape from their own freedom.
Advice, even if people ask for it, also subverts relatedness. Urge citizens to ask one another instead, “Why does that mean so much to you?” When they answer, ask the same question again, “And why does that matter so much to you?” This question—“Why does that matter to you?”—is the kindest question you can ask. It means I am interested in you as a human being. This is how advice or help gets replaced with curiosity. The future hinges on this issue. Advice, recommendations, and obvious actions are exactly what increase the likelihood that tomorrow will be just like yesterday.
Ask Lower-Risk Questions First
Certain questions require a greater level of trust among citizens than others. A good design begins with less demanding questions and ends with the more difficult ones. The conversations of ownership, commitment, and gifts are high risk and require greater trust to have meaning. Discussions of crossroads, possibility, and dissent are easier and come earlier—this will become clearer in the coming chapters.
Example: Possibility over Problem Solving
As a foundation executive in Columbus, Ohio, Phil Cass was part of a group bringing many of the ideas in this book into the health care debate. Using a methodology developed in Europe called the Art of Hosting, the group created a series of community conversations involving a cross section of several hundred citizens in reimagining and ultimately reforming health care. Their understanding of the importance of the question and how the conversation is framed produced gatherings with profound results: the conversation has shifted from how to reform the existing health care system to how to create a system that nurtures the health and well-being of each citizen of that community. The cynic would say that this is just semantics; the activist who believes the future is waiting to be created would know that the transformation has begun.
SUMMING UP
Six Conversations
Before I make these ideas more concrete, here is a quick overview of the larger story we are creating:
Powerful questions give us the means to initiate a community where accountability and commitment are ingrained. They are a key to understanding the means and architecture for gathering people in a way that will build relatedness, which in turn creates communities in which citizens will choose accountability and commitment. This is what overcomes our fragmentation and reduces our tendency to demand change from people who are essentially strangers to us.
The thinking follows this logic: the strategy for an alternative future is to focus on ways to shift context, build relatedness, and create space for a more intentional possibility.
This strategy gives form to the idea that if you can change context and relatedness in this room, you have changed the context and relatedness in the world, at least for this moment.
The way we change the room is by changing the conversation. Not to just any new conversation, but to one that creates communal accountability and commitment. This new conversation is almost always initiated in the form of a question.
We are avoiding conversations that are just talk. Certain conversations are satisfying and true, yet they have no power and entail no accountability.
For example:
Telling the history of how we got here
Giving explanations and opinions
Blaming and complaining
Making reports and descriptions
Carefully defining terms and conditions
Retelling your story again and again
Seeking quick action
These are the conventional conversations and are often conducted through conferences, press releases, trainings, master plans, and the call for more studies and expertise. They are well intentioned and have face validity, but don’t change anything. Most of what we want to see changed has been explained, complained about, reported on, and defined for decades.
“Just-talk” conversations can help us get connected or increase our understanding of who we are, but we endure them mostly out of habit, for they are so ingrained in the social convention of our culture that if we didn’t have them, we would miss them. They do not, however, contribute to transformation. Here are the conversations that produce something more than just talk:
Invitation
Possibility
/> Ownership
Dissent
Commitment
Gifts
Each of these conversations leads to the others. Any one held wholeheartedly takes us to and resolves all the others. When any of them are absent, it is just talk, no matter how urgent the cause, how important the plan, how elegant the answer.
CHAPTER 11
Invitation
The first of the six conversations that create an accountable and hospitable community is invitation. Once the invitation conversation takes place, we follow with the conversations of possibility, ownership, dissent, commitment, and gifts.
Invitation is the means through which hospitality is created. Invitation counters the conventional belief that change requires mandate or persuasion. Invitation honors the importance of choice, the necessary condition for accountability. We begin with the question “Whom do we want in the room?” For starters, we want people who are not used to being together. Then we include the six elements of a powerful invitation: naming the possibility about which we are convening, being clear about whom we invite, emphasizing freedom of choice in showing up, specifying what is required of each should they choose to attend, making a clear request, and making the invitation as personal as possible.
• • •
As we enter the conversations for structuring belonging, a caveat: real life is circuitous; it does not develop the way the conversations appear on a page. Except for the invitation, deciding which conversations to have, in which order, will vary with the context of a gathering. Since all the conversations lead to each other, sequence is not critical. The conversations described here and in the next chapter, though, appear in the rough order that usually aligns with the logic of people’s experience.