CHAPTER 12
The Bottom Line
Creativity is bound up in our ability to find new ways around old problems.
Sitting at my desk this afternoon, I leaned back in my chair and reflected on all we had accomplished at QTec in the recent past. In my right hand I held the rosewood paperweight Joseph had given me several years ago. Once again I read the words on its sterling silver plaque: Great results begin with great questions. Those words and everything I’d learned from Joseph had become my inner compass. Question Thinking had opened up a part of my mind I might never have otherwise discovered, guiding me safely through some pretty rough terrain.
My mind drifted back to that dark day when I drafted my resignation letter, certain I hadn’t lived up to Alexa’s expectations and believing that she wanted to let me go. I had prepared a careful statement, thanking her for the trust she’d placed in me and acknowledging I wasn’t the right person for the job. I just didn’t have the leadership skills she was looking for, and I didn’t know where to even start developing them. While mentally rehearsing how I would handle the actual meeting with her, Judger questions had filled my mind: What was wrong with me? What had made me think I could succeed as a leader? How could I tell Grace I had screwed up so badly?
As you already know, what happened in that meeting with Alexa was quite different from what I’d feared. To my surprise she’d refused to even read my resignation letter. Instead, she had referred me to Joseph for executive coaching. When she described what he did I was skeptical, but Alexa was so enthusiastic I couldn’t refuse. She handed me his business card and I instantly spotted that big question mark on it. It nearly leapt off the paper. I hope Alexa didn’t notice how I’d rolled my eyes. This guy obviously couldn’t be much help to me. I’d built my reputation on being the answer man, and Alexa was recommending somebody specializing in a method called “Question Thinking.” No way could that work.
I was in for a big surprise. When I put Joseph’s system to the test, it produced excellent results for me. And while it wasn’t easy to accept this fact, it soon became clear that that Judger mindset of mine had been jamming up the works for a very long time. The more Judger I was with my team, the more they seemed to resist everything I tried. I think it was soon after this realization that I began communicating with them on purpose from what Joseph calls Learner mindset. At the same time I started asking more and telling less. Rather quickly it became apparent that things were turning around for us and we were starting to see the collaborative spirit that characterizes our team today.
By cultivating my Learner mindset, the contentious, adversarial relationship I’d had with Charles changed dramatically. Thanks to the Choice Map and Q-Storming we rather easily navigated beyond the rough waters that had developed between us. And as Charles’s and my working relationship got smoother and smoother, the methods we were employing caught on with those around us. Early on I’d believed everyone on my team would have to change before things improved. It turned out that the only person I had to change was me! Charles and my relationship became one of the most productive and innovative collaborations I have ever experienced. One thing was certain, my leadership of our team, and getting our product to market before the competition, couldn’t have happened without Joseph’s coaching–and without those changes in me.
Some months after our product went to market, Joseph and I met for lunch, and he reminded me of that day I got stuck in traffic and called him up in frustration. He said he had something to share with me about that. He handed me an article on the neuroscience of stress and its implications for executive coaching. I didn’t know what this had to do with me, but I had learned that Joseph was full of surprises. The article told about the amygdalae, little almond-shaped masses of cells deep in our brains, one for the left hemisphere of the brain, the other for the right. I looked up at Joseph quizzically, wondering why I was supposed to read this. He said that the article might help me further appreciate the power of Question Thinking and the Choice Map and how they’d helped me make the progress I had.
Joseph sipped his coffee as I started reading the article. It told how, whenever we experience a threat that makes us fearful, anything from having a close call in traffic to the pressure of a tight deadline, the amygdala triggers the secretion of certain hormones that change our brain chemistry and spread throughout our bodies. This is the classic fight-or-flight response. I’d learned that much in high school biology but not the part about the amygdala. I still didn’t get how this applied to people in leadership.
Long ago, the article said, this tiny mass of cells was our best defense against saber-toothed tigers, warning us of danger. Today, these same primitive responses can be triggered by an upsetting call from the boss or our spouse. Suddenly we’re on high alert, ready to take on any comers—or run like crazy. And because we’re civilized people running or fighting usually aren’t great options. We’re stuck with all the chemicals the amygdala has sent out, we are still feeling the urge to run or fight, and the more those feelings take over the more uncomfortable we get. And sometimes those emotions make us freeze up and feel paralyzed.
Joseph remained quiet, giving me time to read the article. I told him, “It’s nice to know that my agitation and frustration in the car that day—to say nothing of my whole body tightening up—wasn’t just my imagination. It was all my amygdala’s fault!”
Joseph laughed.
“Still,” I continued, “you can’t deny that the whole thing was compounded by being late for that meeting with Charles, which I was really dreading.”
“What was it that changed what you were experiencing that day?” Joseph asked.
“It was those three Switching questions you gave me: What assumptions am I making? How else can I think about this? What is the other person thinking, feeling, and wanting? As soon as I began asking them, something shifted inside me. Those Switching questions helped me to get into my Learner mindset. I felt like I’d been released from the grip of all those Judger feelings.”
“Where did your focus go at that point?”
“It shifted to Charles, but I was asking very different questions than I had before. I wasn’t in Judger about him. Instead, I was consciously asking Learner questions about my own assumptions. And I was feeling much calmer, no longer stuck in that rut about Charles being my nemesis.”
“Had anything changed outside you? Had the traffic changed? Had the problems you’ve been facing changed? Had Charles changed?”
“No, nothing outside me had changed. Traffic still wasn’t moving. But those questions of yours changed how I was relating to the whole thing. By the time I got to my meeting I was feeling fairly confident that I could have a more productive conversation with Charles. And as you already know, that is exactly what happened. That meeting with him turned out to be a real breakthrough.”
Joseph was looking as pleased as I felt.
“When I was beginning this work,” he said, “I was particularly interested in how far off the mark our responses can get when we let those primal reactions of the amygdala pull our strings. I guess you could say it’s my passion to create tools and methods that give us the capacity of choice with our reactions to the amygdala—though I didn’t think of it in those terms at the time. I was thinking mostly in terms of self-management.
“What today I call Question Thinking goes hand in hand with good leadership, fostering environments that are constructive, collaborative, and creative. Through the years one of my greatest rewards has been to witness how these tools and strategies help leaders to develop.”
“I can see why you couldn’t do all that with the amygdala pulling your strings,” I reflected, thinking about what QT had done for me so far, both at work and with Grace.
I glanced at the article Joseph had given me. One line jumped out: “Each time we are hijacked by the amygdala, we end up wasting time and energy that could have gone toward constructive and satisfying solutions.” Wasn’t this the essence of what Joseph called a Judger hijack? I wondered if Joseph was a friend of the author’s. Maybe Joseph himself was the author of the article, writing under a pseudonym.
I looked up from my reading. Joseph took another sip from his cup, set it back on its saucer, and looked across the table at me expectantly.
“I’m beginning to put it together,” I said. “Could it be that this work of yours is rewiring my brain? That’s the way it feels sometimes.” Though I was making a joke, I have to admit that his work really had given me a very different way of thinking. My brain was making vast new connections.
Joseph nodded slowly and smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling the way they always do when he is pleased. “When I began this work,” he said, “I was interested in what it would take for people to get better at managing their inner states. I knew that at the root of our Judger reactions we usually find some kind of fear, even if it doesn’t look that way. Fear naturally pushes us toward Judger. It’s a facet of our survival instincts to create worst case scenarios so we feel ready for whatever life throws at us.”
“That’s why you say we’re all recovering Judgers,” I interjected.
“Yes, yes! That’s exactly right. The bottom line is that leaders need to be self-possessed—to have the awareness and skills for self-management regardless of what’s going on around them. They need to be able to lead themselves before they can be truly effective at leading others. That’s a good description of the process you went through in the car after we spoke that day. You literally changed your internal state, and from there your perceptions and options broadened considerably.
“It’s very clear that if leaders allow circumstances and feelings to take them over, they lose their ability to be proactive and strategic. They run the risk of leading with ‘ready-fire-aim’ behaviors instead of ‘ready-aim-fire’ ones. They eventually lose the confidence and trust of those around them. . .”
“Which is why asking Switching questions and getting back to Learner mindset is so important,” I mused, thinking that this is important for everybody, not just leaders. “Isn’t that the real bottom line?”
I guess I drifted off for a second, remembering what Switching questions and the Learner mindset had done for my relationship with Grace. I wanted to share this with Joseph, but he was glancing at his watch and telling me about an appointment he had to keep. He stood up, reached across the table, and shook hands with me, his grip firm and warm.
There was something in that moment of contact that made me realize how much working with him had changed my life. . . and how I’d nearly passed up that opportunity when Alexa first told me about him. I felt embarrassed as I remembered how I’d scoffed at that big question mark on Joseph’s card. My whole identity had been tied up with being the Answer Man! Today a question mark means something very different for me: it’s a symbol that has become filled with possibilities. . .
With a number of successes behind me, I believed I had made my mark at QTec. But I was also aware of new challenges on the horizon. Alexa was developing plans for QTec’s further expansion, which was making me nervous. I was happy in my present position and was gaining confidence in my leadership skills. With everything going so well, I didn’t want things to change. But every day I heard rumors about Alexa’s restructuring of the company. This wasn’t news to me, of course. But whenever I’d heard about a company restructuring it usually meant downsizing and people losing their once safe jobs.
Alexa hadn’t talked to me about specific roles I might play in the plans that were underway. Would she include me in a larger leadership position? Or had my failures before Joseph’s coaching given her second thoughts about me? My shoulders tensed up whenever these questions popped into my mind, signaling me that I was slipping into Judger. I tried to at least stay neutral until I could be surer of the facts.
Then one day, while I was immersed in some reports Charles and I had been working on, the phone rang, jolting me to attention. Alexa’s secretary was calling. Was I free to come down to a meeting with the boss in a half-hour or so? And would I please bring that green folder along. I’d know the one. Yes, I knew the one alright. It was the folder with that resignation I’d written. What did Alexa want with that? Hadn’t we gotten past that business?
I finished the task I was working on, grabbed the green folder from my desk drawer, and quickly glanced inside. My resignation letter stared back at me. Should I review what I’d written? No! I tucked the folder under my arm and marched down the hall, feeling my belly knotting up. As I stood outside the big double doors of Alexa’s office, I heard voices inside. That gave me another twinge of concern. Echoes of the amygdala! This time Joseph’s words came back to me: “You have choice.” Yes. I have choice. Time for my observer self to step up. I took a few deep breaths and steadied myself. “You can handle anything Alexa has in store for you if you stay in Learner,” I reminded myself. I raised my hand and tapped lightly on the door.
“Come on in,” Alexa called out cheerfully. She opened the door and stood just inside, greeting me with an open, friendly smile that lifted my spirits considerably. Joseph was sitting on one of the two overstuffed sofas separated by the wide coffee table in the meeting area. He stood up as I crossed the room. We exchanged greetings, and I sat down on the sofa across from him. For a second, my eyes were drawn to something on the coffee table. It appeared to be a framed picture turned face down.
“Did you bring the envelope?” Alexa asked, pointing at the green folder.
What envelope was she talking about? I lay the green folder on the coffee table and flipped it open. Only then did I remember the sealed envelope she’d handed me in that meeting when I tried to resign. It had been hidden under my resignation letter.
“This?” I asked, holding up the envelope.
Alexa nodded. “It’s time to open it.”
Joseph produced a small silver pen knife from his pocket, opened the blade, and held it out to me, handle first. “This must be done with appropriate decorum,” he said, in an exaggeratedly ceremonious voice. I could almost imagine drum rolls.
I sliced open the envelope and read Alexa’s distinctive handwriting on the note inside: “Ben in Joseph’s Hall of Fame.” What did this mean? And then Joseph was handing me that object I’d noticed on the coffee table moments before. I took it in my hands, admiring the beautifully finished mahogany frame as my eyes scanned the printed document under the glass. I thought it might be an article from Fortune or Forbes. But no, there was a photo of me at the top. Grace must have supplied that picture, since only she knew it was my favorite picture of me.
I looked up and caught Alexa’s eye. “When I hired you, Ben,” she said, “I knew it was a gamble since you’d never held that kind of leadership position. This was a big unknown. On the other hand, I’d also never seen you back away from a challenge, no matter how big.”
“Well, there’s always a first time,” I said. “Had you not referred me to Joseph, I might have vanished down the highway like the proverbial Road Runner in a whirlwind of dust!”
Alexa laughed. “I doubt that very much. That’s just not the way I think of you at all, Ben.”
“Nobody’s denying that you fumbled,” Joseph added. “What impressed me was how you picked yourself up, got your hands on the ball again, and made the run for the winning score.”
“Your recovery confirmed my instincts about you,” Alexa said. “You see, I subscribe to the belief that failure is often crucial for learning how to do something well. I was quite certain that with Joseph’s coaching, you would come out on top.”
Failure is often crucial for learning how to do something well.
She paused, giving me time to look over the document. It was like those other write-ups I’d seen in Joseph’s Question Thinking Hall of Fame, describing how different people had used QT to surmount difficult challenges. Mine described how I’d led my team to the breakthrough that helped turn QTec around. Reading it made it clearer to me how Question Thinking had helped me develop my own natural leadership abilities. Not to mention what it had done for my relationship with Grace, I thought with a smile.
As I became more confident with employing Question Thinking, I’d been pleasantly surprised to see how others around me picked up on it, almost as if by osmosis. Of course, Charles and I handed out Choice Maps to everyone on our team and posted others throughout our offices. People frequently asked questions about them. Charles and I were always glad to talk about the Choice Map. Even after our explanation a person would linger at the map tracing the paths with their finger, perhaps considering ways it might apply in their own life.
As our team put the lessons of the Choice Map into action, our work environment became increasingly relaxed and open. When one of us caught ourselves getting negative, we’d usually follow up with a spontaneous, “Sorry, I guess that was pretty Judger of me.” Smiles and laughter replaced the rather downcast atmosphere of earlier times. We shared what was on our minds with greater ease and were much more creative, which naturally made problem solving and collaboration successful.
We all began asking more questions—Learner questions. These days I smile as I observe people deep in thought, studying their Choice Maps as they work though problems or prepare for meetings. I often reflect on something Joseph once told me: “We live in the worlds our questions create.” How true that is! I have learned to listen in new ways—with my Learner ears, of course—and to stay on point even when conflicts threaten, which happens less and less frequently.
Today, my Question Thinking Hall of Fame document hangs proudly behind my desk. Another copy hangs in the Hall of Fame gallery in Joseph’s office. Seeing it each day reminds me of the power of Joseph’s teachings and how grateful I am for the huge difference they have made in my life.