Dan Erwin

7 Ways Great Questioning Can Lead to Personal Success

In the vast majority of cases, whether you’re selling ideas to colleagues or a boss—or a product or service to a client--success begins with the ability to ask good questions and then listen--really listen--to the answers.  Contrary to these two basic facts, for most business people there is an "80% Syndrome" at work: 80% of the time, the person selling or attempting to persuade is doing the talking, and 20% of the time the other is talking.  The 80/20 syndrome is extremely common and counterproductive for anyone selling ideas or products. 

In point of fact, if the “seller” would reverse the "80%" syndrome, they would be much more successful.  That means 20% of the time given over to questioning and statements by the “persuader,” and 80% of the time given over to information giving by the client.

I’ve Actually Been Paid to Teach People How to Do Small Talk

You’d think it was a waste of time and money if, that is, you didn’t know who paid me to learn how to do small talk. There were fifteen to twenty out of my nearly five-hundred one-on-one executive coaching contracts. Those who paid for my services were at least vice-president level in huge (multi-billion dollar) international companies. It was never an ordinary manager. In fact, several who contracted for my services were C-Suite executives.

So why were the small talk clients all C-Suite execs and vice-presidents? The answer was the same for every single one of these clients. They were high achievers. They really knew their business and they’d focused every working day on their business discipline and its demands.

But now they needed to know how to do small talk because of their role as company representatives to community and neighborhood charities as well as national and international charities. Since involvement was important to their firm, they were expected, as executives, to attend as company representatives. Most of them didn’t know how to talk about anything except their business, so they were tongue-tied in their new role. They were embarrassed to talk about their problem in the firm, so an external consultant was the way to go. And I just happened to be available—or one of their close friends recommended me.

How to Evaluate an Artificial Intelligence Tool

Anybody can do it. Here's the basic model, along with my reasoning for its value for every business person or professional in law, medicine and architecture.

Artificial Intelligence tool evaluation is an issue that just about every professional needs to start thinking about. More and more the corporate and professional worlds are being marketed  for AI tools, some worth purchasing and others a waste of money. Appropriately, these decisions should be made by people with a lot of relevant background.

But nearly every work person, business or professional should have a basic understanding of AI. Yet recent conversations with a number of colleagues reveal that AI is dark hole for the majority  of people. So in this blog, I want to offer the underlying thinking about AI from the standpoint of theory construction, and offer two straightforward suggestions.

My first suggestion starts at a different place than you might expect--with the actual background of AI thinking: argument theory. I’m quite certain that most in technology aren’t familiar with argument theory, but actually it’s the basic background of AI tools. In fact it’s the basic background of all human reasoning—sophisticated and unsophisticated.

Rumors of Conspiracy Are a Normal Part of History

Not just national or international history. Even my own history. As a twenty-year old rumors of conspiracy terrified me. No longer. History provides me with a healthy antidote: Richard Hofstadter.

I graduated from college in 1959, a few years before Richard Hofstadter's essay on The Paranoid Style in American Politics came out in Harper's. As an associate in a Pasadena (California) church, the conspiracy theories of the John Birch Society were driving me nuts. One of the promulgators of conspiracy, a retired naval officer and member of the "society" was teaching in adult classes. The senior minister, a swell guy, but utterly gutless, let it go on and on. I was a history major, so I was familiar with American conspiracy theories. I was amazed how many in that well-educated, upper-middle-class church were believers in the process. . .

So You're Actually a Research Expert. . . Who Gives a Damn?

Back in 2017, I wrote a blog on the loss of expertise, picking up on the expertise of Dunning-Kruger and the more recent response of Tom Nichols. Nichols warned that we are moving toward the collapse of any division between professionals and laypeople. Given my recent experience, we’re no longer “moving toward,” but we’ve arrived at that collapse.

A few weeks ago I was asked by a coffee crony, a professional in planning (not a classical research specialist) to look over a psychiatric study dating from 1970 on “Characterological Deterrents to Economic Progress in People of Appalachia.” Before I opened a page, I remembered my bias against much “psychiatric research," built on the fact that most of them are technically, merely medical professionals who work off models in their field. Diagnostic specialists, not research specialists. It was obvious from the get-go that the writer had no understanding of theory construction, had no competency in critical thinking, was unaware that by the time of his study the model had been discredited, was unaware that he was drawing suspect conclusions, had no understanding of his implicit assumption, an assumption that was identical to Adolf Hitler’s orientation to the Jews--the notion that certain people and races are inherently sub-human. BTW, the majority of PhD’s also lack significant background in theory construction. They just use the typical theory from their discipline for their own research.

Here’s where I got an ear-full. ..

How We Unknowingly Sabotage Our Own Conversation

    Now, mostly dead is slightly alive. From “The Princess Bride” by William Goldman.

More and more the role of conversation in business is beginning to get attention among businesspeople and the professions. There are a number of reasons for that. But the most important reason is that without effective, enlightening and articulate conversation skills, professionals get ignored. Including professionals with top competencies in their field.

Just a short time ago, I was in a group of professionals discussing the role of artificial intelligence. I noticed, much to my chagrin, one of the brightest guys was often ignored. So I turned on my rhetorical talk-ware to understand why.

In just a few minutes I figured out why: he was sabotaging his ideas with “hedging.” Amazing that hedging can result in power loss, but there it was, right in front of us. And I’m certain he was totally unaware of what his hedging was doing to him and his ideas.

Sometimes hedging is just a verbal tic. But a significant group of generally smart professionals periodically shoot themselves in the foot with its use. They can resolve a problem, break it down into bits and pieces for a solid resolution--and even explain their rationale. But along the way their input loses its credibility for a simple reason: hedging. They don’t understand that hedges limit their credibility.

It’s not just the overly-polite Upper Midwesterners who hedge, but New Yorkers, Virginians and even Californians. Furthermore, it’s not just women who do it: a surprising share of men do the same thing. This small behavior happens too frequently—and inevitably means...we miss out on great ideas and highly creative solutions. And the guy who hedges, gets ignored.

What’s hedging?
A hedge can take different forms. It can be in the shape of a clause, word, hesitation or tone--used to soften the impact of what’s being said. It may be an attempt to defer to the other person, to be polite or avoid bragging. The original motivation for hedging stems from caring about how one is perceived. Over the long term the hedge becomes habituated—and unconscious. And the hedge is habituated into the person’s speech and sound even when there is no concern about another’s perceptions. The response? A tune-out.

“This is kind of the way I think it is.”  The tone in the hedge is usually soft with a sense of questioning built into the sound. The hedge? “Kind of.”

“This is right?” The intonation on the last word is a question with built-in pleading for agreement and acceptance. It’s an unnecessary and destructive caveat.

The Greatest Business Value and Personal Power In Today’s Work World . . .

comes from high-powered questions.

The least used and one of the most productive tools for professional conversation is high-level questioning. But for a number of reasons, questioning has always gotten short shrift. Traditionally, asking questions is thought of as revealing your incompetence, which is then rewarded with a loss of influence. Even today, when the need for intelligent questions ought to be obvious, I meet very few who actually use questions strategically, much less effectively. Furthermore, even fewer professionals, including yesterday’s traditionalist or today’s knowledge worker, understand that questioning is a linguistic device that can make great contributions to the organization—and grant profound influence and power to the individual. In more than 20 years of consulting hundreds of high-powered executives, I have heard no one asking  or talking about questioning unless I initiated the subject.

All questions are speech actions that affect the way individuals and teams organize their thinking about people, problems, and processes. And in effective teams high-powered questions are a--and sometimes the--major element of the conversation. The better questions can often positively impact personal influence, relationships, team focus, team organization, problem solving, strategies, priorities, motivation, and decision making. In short, higher order questions can have a huge role in shaping both our thought and our behavior.

Not all questions are created equal. John Hagel has written that the greatest value and personal power in today’s environment comes from questions that no one had even thought to ask but that help to focus attention on promising but previously ignored areas. Although such questions often require more complex, critical thinking and very thoughtful formatting, let’s begin with the basics.

Soft on White Collar Crime?

One of my occasional experiences is listening to legislators, ordinary people and journalists talking and writing about what CEOs and senior executives should know about employees are doing five levels below them. Inevitably, a significant percentage go to the “lock-‘em-up” mentality. That’s nearly impossible in big companies, unless like Wells Fargo’s CEO, John Stumpf it’s a widespread criminal behavior that’s been going on for years. So I’m always watching for examples of business reality for my readers—reality, that is, that reflects my years of experience with top companies and my own philosophical orientation. All the better if that reality is supported by trustworthy research. A few years ago, the Economist dealt in superb fashion with the “lock-‘em-up” mentality for white collar crime.

But first, let’s be candid about business magazines and newspapers. All of my antennae are out when I’m reading local newspapers and  the Wall Street Journal and nearly all the American business magazines. The public sphere seems to be consumed by events that you could label ‘reaction chains.’ Reactions provoke reactions, which provoke further reactions and so on.

Last year’s Oscar’s ceremony is remembered for just such a reaction chain. When the host, Chris Rock, made a joke about Jada Pinkett Smith’s shaved head, her husband, Will Smith, strode up on the stage and slapped Rock in the face on live television. For a week afterward numerous commentators, celebrities and social media folk tried to distinguish themselves by their reactions to the “slap.” Inevitably, those reactions provoked more reactions. And that is

The Actual Statistics on Immigration Aren’t Scary

So what’s the beef? I find it intriguing, even nonsensical, that a lot of Americans do not want immigrants—and many are downright scared of them. That’s not historically unusual. Our fears about immigrants have come and go throughout the centuries of our existence. The latest Yosemite series—1923—has an episode where one of the Dutton Ranch members is off to jail for “miscegenation.” The Anglo cowboy has married a Chinese woman and has children with her.

Historically, the US government has attempted to ship Chinese, Japanese and Blacks back to the lands of their forebears. Abraham Lincoln, for one, was keen on getting Blacks out of the country. He entered into a contract with a plantation owner to buy a small island off Haiti and settle some enslaved Blacks. But 50 years before the Civil War both John Quincey Adams and Andrew Jackson thought the answer for the “problem” was to send free Black Americans to Africa through “colonization.” Starting in 1816, the American Colonization Society sought to create a colony in Africa for this purpose. This was 50 years before the U.S. would abolish slavery. Over the next three decades, the society secured land in West Africa and shipped people to the colony, which became the nation of Liberia in 1847.

By now you may know that the Canadians are welcoming immigrants with open arms. They have a plan to bring in 1.5 immigrants  by 2025. Just last year, Canada took in 405,000 permanent immigrant residents.

To the Givers Go the Riches: The Hidden Dimension of Work—and Life Relationships

Today’s political world would often have you believe that it’s the “getters” who have success—not the “getters.” But that’s a short term bias. And admittedly a few politicos seem to have success on that basis. But what you’re seeing is the gross exception not the everyday reality. The percentage of successful “getters” is very small, even though that few get a lot of attention. American writers love to call attention to the exceptions: it makes for great reading and sells a lot of copy. 

Just common sense
The people who look at the big picture recognize that a few of the getters succeed, but they know it’s a damned few. And that a terrific percentage of “getters” are very unhappy, frustrated people down deep. It’s just common sense that the givers make the great contributions to our communities—not the getters. The problem with that statement, however, is that common sense has become a rare ingredient in most cultures. And for a number of documentable reasons common sense has become a rare commodity in today’s world. It’s that loss, too, that drives all the craziness, fake facts and conspiracy thinking we stare at or listen to nearly every day.

The major reason common sense has gone the way of the dodo bird is the unique siloing of the universe since WWII. We’ve got academic silos, business silos, industry silos, religious silos, political silos, class silos, economic silos, race silos--and most people talking to themselves. No wonder the crazies are able to stir up manure by the ton load. If you know your history and literature, you know that silos have always been around, limiting and rejecting a common worldly sense.

The example that often comes to mind is