Dan Erwin

What Makes a Question a Good Question?

Not all questions are created equal. Some questions are a lot more useful than others. So, what’s the difference?

The least used and one of the most productive tools for 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 ought to be obvious, few actually get questioning. Neither yesterday’s traditionalist nor today’s knowledge worker understands that questioning is a linguistic device that can make great contributions to the organization—and grant profound influence and power to the individual.

All questions are speech actions that affect the way individuals and teams organize their thinking about people, problems, and processes. The better questions can often positively impact personal influence, relationships, team focus, team organization, 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 those issues require more complex thinking and very thoughtful formatting, let’s begin with the basics...

How High Is Your Listening Quotient?

Listening is one of those behaviors that most people take for granted. Until, that is, they miss something very important that impacts their job and career. So when interviewing for a developmental client, I inevitably ask about my client's listening skills. Nearly always the first response is that the client is a "good listener." Then I start chunking the listening competency, ultimately revealing the client's listening failures.

The chunks start with a question about "parroting," then to paraphrase, summary, and on to implication questions including the client's competency and effective use of questions surrounding the messages from senders. Smart interviewees understand that...

"What Am I Missing?"

The key question about big data, economists reveal, is not “What did I measure?” but “What did I miss?”  However, the question has a lot more value than merely its role in big data. Indeed, when well-placed in a problem-solving conversation, there are few questions more important.

Why is “what am I missing?” so rarely used? It’s not because people are ignorant of its words and syntax, because it’s off the radar screen, or even because some of its values are misunderstood and out-of-awareness. It’s about the question’s underlying psychology...

How to Take Advantage of Personal Vulnerability

You blush. Confused and discombobulated. Embarrassed. You’re found out.

You know the rule in business: don’t let anyone know what you don’t know. Keep up a good front. Don’t trap yourself and have to admit ignorance. Never, never open up and admit to personal vulnerability on any business subject. 

For nearly all of us, vulnerability is a very helpless feeling. Our guard is down and we believe we’re open to emotional attack and censure. Why is that? Surprisingly, the answer is...

Do Employees Want their Employer to Tell Them How to Vote?

With all that's going on about the 2016 presidential candidates, I thought it was time to visit an important issue about company support of candidates. Back in 2012, the HBR (Harvard Business Review) blog had a lead posting by Gregory Casey, arguing that employees want their bosses to talk politics—ostensibly so they can make “better decisions.” So what do you think about that?

My first response was total skepticism, leading to questions about the writer’s person and actual agenda. This is how he was identified on HBR: President & CEO of the Business Industry Political Action Committee (BIPAC), Gregory S. Casey has a...

Why Should You Keep Your Friends Close and Your Enemies Closer?

It wasn’t the Godfather’s Michael Corleone who first uttered this well-known dictum. Actually, it came from Machiavelli in "The Prince," the definitive primer for how to be a dictator. You’d think that with my easy-going optimism, I’d never write a blog on this subject.  But, au contraire!

As a manager or leader it is inevitable that we’ll want to add to our knowledge base, try to sell ideas, get people on board and even change the direction of our organization. One of the involved persons just might be your enemy. That’s my basic rationale for acting on Machiavelli’s instinct.

In the business setting, I refer to “enemy” as a person you have to interact with, someone who’s competing for your resources, who doesn’t follow through on his commitments, whom you don’t trust, with whom the “chemistry” isn’t there, or who disagrees with your perspective from the ground up. These are also people whom you’ll need in order to...

Gen-Y, Gen-Why?, and Gen-WTF?!

As a result of interacting with a number of Gen-yers over the past few years, I’ve developed a sense of when their input can be trusted and when it can’t. MIT’s Josh Hartshorne and Harvard’s Laura Germine recently validated my hunches, providing a great deal of clarity. Two areas are very significant, one of little surprise but the second confirming a number of questions and doubts about Gen-Y expertise.

Older Really Can Mean Wiser
The research by Hartshorne and Germine reveals that knowledge is a developing category. Knowledge takes time to build largely because it’s as much a matter of experience as intelligence. Furthermore, I’d argue that a significant knowledge base requires regular interaction with intelligent, capable peers.  Knowledge doesn’t grow in an intellectual vacuum. So it's folly to think that Gen-yers, because of their extensive exposure to the digital, walk in with...

Five Keys to Interpersonal Sensitivity

In a fascinating study, Rod Hart and Don Burks studied the relationship between “expressive” communication and “instrumental” or “rhetorical communication.” Expressive communication is very attractive in business because it involves frankness, honesty, openheartedness and non-manipulative intentions. As attractive as it is, it rarely provides people with effective means for creating and managing relationships—very important tools for people in today’s flattened business environment.

The research surfaced three communication tendencies for interpersonal communication. The first, which you see often in business, is the noble selves tendency: the notion that people should not adapt to other people or to situations in any way that violates their beliefs, attitudes or values. Sometimes this is a commitment of the individual, but more often it’s a practice growing out of lack of tools to make adaptations. The second, which can be seen as “sucking up,” is what...

When the Best is Actually the Least Worst

Sometimes there are no good options. An executive looks around and sees three managers who are no more than ordinary. But he has a high profile project. And so he selects the least worst employee for the project. It happens in business, in non-profits, in communities, in churches and in government far more than most want to admit. Why does this happen? And how can it be a good thing?

Before I answer the question, think about this situation reported in The Economist.

The least awful
The country of Nigeria goes to the polls on February 14^th to elect their next president. He will face problems that could break the country apart: rampant corruption, a jihadist insurgency...

Making Mistakes with Mark Zuckerberg

In an aside, Mark Zuckerberg takes the issue of mistakes head-on in his second town hall meeting with the public. To a surprising degree he challenges conventional wisdom, demonstrating that he’s done some serious thinking and conversing with his team. In a single nut, he lays out a philosophy of mistakes that’s extremely accurate and pragmatic—and will withstand the scrutiny of research.  

Although he puts his philosophy of mistakes in the context of Facebook, his ideas will travel well. Very well, indeed.

Successful people spend most of their time making mistakes. Consciously or not, this is the kind of statement—and mindset--that dilutes the fear of making mistakes. That fear may be one of the most difficult fears to dislodge in most people...

Thinking Ain't Everything

“Many people would sooner die than think. In fact they do.”
                --Bertrand Russell

“Why is talent getting harder to find?” Just a few months ago, one of my long term clients, a managing architect, asked that very question. He’d been through the experience over the past two years of hiring 3 new architects, only to gradually let them go because of their ineptitude. But architecture has no unique grip on the problem.

The evidence for failure for newly appointed and promoted executives in both the corporate and non-profit sectors is alarming: Harvard Business School reported ...