Chapter 9
Fast-Track to Expertise
In Rain Man, Raymond Babbit (Dustin Hoffman) amazes his brother Charlie (Tom Cruise) by memorizing the alphanumeric designations of all the songs on a table-top diner jukebox in minutes. Charlie reads the name of the song; Raymond shoots back “G4,” “Ml,” and so on. What’s Raymond’s strategy for convincing his brother that he’s an expert? None. He doesn’t even know what an expert is.
—Gregory Hartley, How to Become an Expert on Anything in 2 Hours
Expertise reflects a deliberate effort by someone to project knowledge. For example, Maryann grew up in a town where Bethlehem Steel Corporation had an important presence. She had a lot of anecdotal information about plant operations, executive decisions, and financial problems, but mere exposure to information does not make one an expert in a subject—otherwise almost everyone would be an expert on sex and food. It wasn’t until Maryann researched Bethlehem Steel for an in-depth piece about the causes of the company’s bankruptcy that she approached having any expertise about the company or its industry. She made a concerted effort to learn, applied her background to analyzing the information, and created a package of lessons about the company’s failure for the benefit of other business executives.
Expertise is also defined by the listener. For example, I know a lot about how to build a racing car and could pour facts into your ear for a few hours, but if you don’t see how that information applies to your life then I did not demonstrate expertise. All I did was demonstrate an encyclopedic knowledge of engines, aerodynamics, and other subjects related to fast cars—but you could have gotten the same information from Wikipedia. Does that make Wikipedia an expert?
VETTING THE SOURCE
Whom do you think of as an expert? Why do you think that person is an expert? When Maryann and I were composing the chapter on questioning in professions, we looked to people who are in the professions of education, medicine, emergency response, law, and customer service, and we cited a source that had actually conducted a successful business negotiation. Having such credentialed experts in those areas contribute thoughts to the book ensured that our guidance on questioning was grounded in reality. I have a lot of experience using questions in interrogations and sales situations, but I wanted to know how an actual M.D. asked questions, and why he or she did it that way. My theoretical knowledge of how to question in a clinical environment lacks gravitas. And in the chapter on “questioning in your personal life,” we had profiles in mind of people who would be good sources of guidance on using questions, specifically a doctor of education who is also a parent, and an author/speaker who is well-known for her expertise in social networking.
The process of selecting a qualified human source is relatively simple. The process of determining how much of an expert the source is can be complicated:
Find a source associated with the subject. People who know me and Greg Hartley from the interrogation arena might assume that I have the same level of expertise that he does in reading and using body language, but I don’t. If you want to know something about body language, go to him, not to me—although, if you do come to me, my expertise at that moment is in directing you to the person you ought to be talking to. Therefore, sometimes this step has to be repeated, as in:
“What do you know about body language, Jim?”
“I know enough to know I’m not an expert. But my friend Greg is.”
“How do I find him?”
Make sure the source is accessible. If you want investment advice, if would be great if you could pick up the phone and call Warren Buffet. If you want insights on playing the cello, you could try to make an appointment with Yo Yo Ma. Good luck on both counts. The source is no good if you can’t pose the questions to him.
Cross-check the source if there is any hint of doubt about the quality of answers you received. For example, Maryann wanted to make a passing reference to a phenomenon in physics, but wasn’t quite sure how to do an efficient online search for the information, so she called an old friend who had studied physics in college. “Hey, David,” she asked, “what’s that term in physics that describes the phenomenon that occurs when two people are holding hands and bouncing on a trampoline, hitting and peaking at the same time, but then they break their grasp and starting hitting at different times so they wind up with completely opposite rhythm?” I’m not going to comment on the structure of her question, but it did get an answer that she was able to search online. He said, “I studied physics in college and I’ve been a CPA ever since, so check me on this, but I think you’re talking about amplitude oscillations.”
If you query a search engine rather than a person about a subject, you input keywords and don’t bother with non-searchable words like “the” or “and.” In asking a person who has information, and possibly expertise, about a subject it’s important to keep that model in mind. You wouldn’t ask a search engine, “Do you think a sharknado could ever really happen?” if you wanted to know whether or not it’s possible that a storm could flood Los Angeles with shark-infested water. You would input something like “real life sharknado.” So if your source were a meteorologist, you would begin with that core phrase and ask, “What are the conditions that might cause a real-life sharknado?” Remember to start with what you know, determine what you don’t know, and then shape your questions accordingly.
QUESTIONING LIKE A SKEPTIC
If you believe everything you hear, then you won’t be an expert in anything but blind faith. Conspiracy theories provide the perfect occasion to test your questioning skills and how they support the development of expertise. With the four discovery areas in mind, put together a list of questions you would ask someone who told you the following story:
President Franklin Roosevelt provoked the Japanese attack on the U.S. naval base in Hawaii on December 7, 1941. He knew all about it in advance and covered up his failure to warn his fleet commanders. There’s evidence that he needed the attack to provoke Adolf Hitler into declaring war on the United States because the American people and Members of Congress were overwhelmingly against entering the war in Europe.
The United States received warnings from Britain, the Netherlands, Australia, Peru, Korea, and the Soviet Union that a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor was coming. In addition, the U.S. military had intercepted and broken all the important Japanese codes in the run-up to the attack, so Americans had the intelligence on the Japanese plan.
If I were putting questions together, I would start with information I have already learned about the attack. It’s my baseline; that is, my basis for evaluating other things I hear about the subject. I learned things in various schools, from elementary through military. Much of that material doesn’t really address the core premise of the conspiracy theory, though. Probably the most salient body of information I had exposure to was Roberta Wohlstetter’s 1962 book Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision. Wohlstetter, who was a preeminent historian of American military intelligence, determined that it wasn’t a failure of American intelligence that led to the attack, nor was it a disregard for the intelligence the United States had about Japan. She calls it a “failure of imagination”; the United States just didn’t believe Japan could or would bomb U.S. territory.
With Wohlstetter as my lead source, therefore, I would begin my questioning with, “Who is your source of the information?” The question, “What evidence does your source have?” would follow it. Keep in mind that with a conspiracy theory, the two people debating it are most likely not the people who have primary source material to support their points of view. The questions need to loop back to who the source is and what evidence the source has of the timeline, locations, key figures, and events related to the story.
QUESTIONING LIKE AN ANALYST
Practice is the best way to sharpen your evolving expertise as a questioner. One of my favorite expertise-sharpening exercises with students used to be “Interrogate the Newspaper.” I’ve updated my vocabulary in recent years and now it’s called “Interrogate the News Source,” as I’m one of many people who gets my news online.
Journalism is the embodiment of discovery questioning. Guided by who, what, when, where, and why, a professional conveying the news tries to put the most important information first, and pertinent supporting information immediately after that. Bringing to bear your new questioning skills, you can evaluate whether or not they succeed; you now have a better sense than before of what questions need to be asked based on the four discovery areas. You don’t have to depend on the accuracy of a slogan like “Fair and Balanced” or “All the news that’s fit to click.” You can decide for yourself.
To demonstrate how to apply your skills to interrogating a news source, I’m going to analyze a key news story from 2012. First of all, regardless of whether the story is in print or online, a grabber headline rivets the reader’s attention. The headline for the lead article in The Day of New London, Connecticut, for December 15, 2012, reads simply, “Unthinkable.” It covers the tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
Seeing just the headline, I begin my questioning and let the newspaper “answer” me:
Many questions would follow, of course, about what he used to shoot them, how many people were wounded, and so on. But if you reverse engineer this exercise, you can envision a reporter asking a law enforcement officer or other official on the scene these very questions to arrive at a lead paragraph such as the following:
At 9:00 on Friday, December 14, 20-year-old Adam Lanza opened fire at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, killing 20 schoolchildren and five adults on the scene before killing himself. He is the son of Nancy Lanza, found dead in her home, presumably also killed by her son. Lanza’s motive for the massacre is unknown.
In the confusion and trauma of a scene like this one, it would be easy for a journalist to hear the cries of “why?” and “how?” overwhelming the questions that must form the core of good reporting. It would also be tempting to draw from eyewitness accounts, which may actually reflect flawed memory and speculation, into the story and present them as fact. Anyone who doubts that reporting the news requires skill, focus, and judgment should consider how difficult it would be to accurately report the story of Sandy Hook immediately after it occurred.
Whether you get your news from reading or listening, interrogate the source to sharpen your expertise as a questioner.
QUESTIONING LIKE AN INTELLIGENCE OFFICER
The fundamental skill is to maintain subject focus while developing leads to gain additional, relevant details.
I’ve always said, if I can see it, I can do it. I have to see it to mimic it before I can master it, and so for those of you who, like me, benefit from a map to stay on subject, I offer three ways to depict the flow of a conversation from point of inquiry to discovery. Learning to ask the next best question based on the response to the previous question sometimes involves seeing what questions take you off track.
The first representation is a typical maze. The following interchange could start with the original query and dead-end quickly by having the questioner follow up with either question 1 or question 2. However, if the questioner continues on a path of logical discovery, she finds herself at the other end of the maze.
Original query (a good question, properly framed):
QUESTION: Jim, I understand you are the inventor of the Electronic Language Simulator (ELS). What made you think of a device to assist Human Intelligence Collectors working with interpreters?
ANSWER: In business, making money is one of the first concerns.
Next question:
1. How much money? (not aligned with the initial question)
2. What is a good business model for training? (not aligned with the initial question)
3. What else besides money made you want to invent a device to assist training? (the best follow-up to the initial question)
ANSWER: The other key objective I can think of is supporting staffing requirements. In order to train anyone using an interpreter, you need not one but two individuals that speak a language uncommon to the primary questioner.
1. What languages are most popular to train with? (not aligned with the initial question)
2. What language does the questioner speak? (not aligned with the initial question)
3. Why do you need two individuals? (the best follow-up to the initial question)
ANSWER: You need one to play a role speaking only in the uncommon language and another who can speak as the interpreter in both the common (English in this case) and the uncommon language.
Next question:
1. How do you determine what is and what is not a common/uncommon language? (not aligned with the initial question and a poorly phrased compound question)
2. Can you tell me a little more about how the role-players are supposed to act? (not aligned with the initial question and a poorly phrased question)
3. How is “two individuals” a staffing problem? (the best follow-up to the initial question)
ANSWER: It is very difficult to find the required number of certified linguists at the same proficiency level.
The second representation is a flow chart. The interchange starts with the original query, with arrows indicating the best, next question to come to a point of discovery and pinpointing expertise:
Original query (a good question, properly framed): Jim, I understand you are the inventor of the Electronic Language Simulator (ELS). What made you think of a device to assist Human Intelligence Collectors (HIC) working with interpreters?
ANSWER: HIC students at our Alexandria Virginia Training Facility asked for more interpreter training. [“HIC students” should be noted for additional questioning in the “people” area; “Alexandria Training Center” should be noted for additional questioning in the “place” area.]
At this point, the flow goes directly to an explanation of how the ELS enabled the Alexandria Training Center to meet the students’ request in an affordable and effective way.
The third representation (shown on the following page) is a graphic created by Greg Hartley for How to Spot a Liar. This “questioning chart” focuses on following a source lead.
The response to a question provides either information or a lead. The lead meets a priority need or an information requirement, or it dead ends. Follow the lead; determine whether or not it yields something of higher importance than the initial question. If it yields lower-importance information, make a note, and go back to follow up on the original question. If higher, follow that line of questioning. At some point, you have followed up on all leads and information; terminate the questioning. If you haven’t fully exploited what the person knows, return to the beginning.1
MATCHING INTERESTS WITH KNOWLEDGE
The personal relevance of expertise is a game-changer in terms of how well people listen to you, what they do with the information you give them, and how the shared information affects their relationship with you. In teaching questioning skills to Special Forces and Navy SEALS, I saw they had passion for honing any skill set that would help them perform better. When I walked into the training, they had been told I could deliver, and their intent was to leave the training as good as I was or better. When the expert and the desire for his or her expertise converge in this manner, transformations occur in professional and personal lives. This is the foundation for the success of the truly knowledgeable and gifted self-help gurus.
The phenomenon can occur in some seemingly ordinary ways that are nonetheless important. Here is an example of a first encounter between Bob, a former Navy pilot and avid boater, and his daughter’s boyfriend, who is an accomplished skydiver. Bob doesn’t expect to find much in common with this daredevil and secretly wishes his daughter would have stuck with the dentist she had been dating. Bob is a lawyer, and a skilled questioner, so he defaults to a discovery posture. The boyfriend knows that Bob is a former pilot and enjoys motoring around the Chesapeake Bay in his boat. He knows if he doesn’t find some way to connect on those major interests, the girlfriend—despite the fact that she’s a grown woman—will have an uphill battle in getting her dad’s approval:
BOB: Do I understand correctly that you have five world records?
JIM: Yes. They are skydiving world records. Three for the largest skydiving formations ever built, and two for the largest jump with two distinct formations.
BOB: I don’t quite get it. What are the last two?
JIM: Two different, distinct formations. No group had even done them with that many people before.
BOB: Wow! So what’s a formation?
JIM: Skydiving formations are simply a group of skydivers that are arrayed in the air in freefall in a pre-determined pattern.
BOB: And how do you make that pattern?
JIM: It’s a matter of whatever design has been created by the people who are organizing the jump.
BOB: But how do you make the pattern?
JIM: On the ground, on paper, or in the air?
BOB: In the air!
JIM: In the air, it’s a matter of the skydivers all coming to a central point to their prescribed positions, maneuvering their bodies in freefall such that they join the formation where they’re supposed to.
BOB: How do you maneuver?
JIM: The human body has control services just like an aircraft—your arms, and your legs, and your torso—and there are various ways you can manipulate them to affect where you go.
BOB: Oh! So parts of your body become directional control surfaces like rudders.
JIM: Exactly. You can be precise in directing yourself to a location if you have the skill.
Bob is now engaged. This is more than a conversation to find out what his daughter’s boyfriend does. They are starting to speak the same language.
BOB: How do you attach yourself to the people you’re maneuvering toward?
JIM: You use the only thing you have available to you, which is your hands.
The conversation continued with a discussion of fall rate and other factors that really piqued Bob’s curiosity, such as planning a large-formation skydive. Bob’s points of reference were filing a flight plan, flying in a pattern, and making mechanical adjustments to compensate for cross-winds and other environmental factors. Most important in this social situation, the discussion helped him understand how his knowledge as a pilot, and to some extent, a boater, intersected with Jim’s expertise as a skydiver. When they got into a discussion of threatening situations, Bob asked:
BOB: What’s the most dangerous situation you’ve ever been in?
JIM: A near canopy collision a few times. Right after opening, I found myself heading toward someone else whose canopy had just opened.
BOB: How did you avert the danger?
JIM: There’s a standard response that we are trained to have. Both parties turn right. It’s a process that, if executed promptly, averts the problem.2
This is another point at which the skydiving expertise intersects with the interests and experience of people in boating and flying: averting danger by knowing what side you’re on or what to do if you’re coming at someone head-on is critical. When Bob’s daughter asked him what he thought of her new boyfriend, he said, “Jim and I have a lot in common.”
PREPARE FOR SURPRISES
Your enhanced questioning and listening skills will no doubt help you discover expertise in places you didn’t know it existed. It may not happen quickly, however, and it may not happen as predictably as you would like.
Two of the most useful pieces of advice I ever got about the patience, listening, and rapport-building that I would need with sources were from a mentor of mine in my early days as an interrogator. The first was “Watch Seinfeld.” The sitcom that aired from 1989 to 1998 was notoriously about “nothing.” My mentor said, “They talk a lot about nothing before they get to the good stuff.” The second piece of advice was, “Watch the food channel,” because, “No matter who the source is, if you can talk about food you have something in common.”
Eric Maddox’s dramatic story of the capture of Saddam Hussein involved a lot of moments that were not dramatic. In fact, there were a good many conversations with sources that seemed to be about nothing—and many of them involved food. Maddox rightly figured that if he could painstakingly find his way to the people and the fishing hole that enabled Saddam Hussein to have his favorite dish on a regular basis, he would find his target. He asked the questions that took him to the expert who prepared masgoof for the dictator.
Ask good questions and prepare for surprises.