Changing our Questions for Maximum Learning

The other day I was in the midst of a coaching session helping a client sort through a particularly difficult work relationship. She looked at me and asked me a question that kind of surprised me, because it was the kind of question that spoke volumes about her own belief system, her level of self confidence and her tendency to see things in a rather black or white… right or wrong kind of way.

Her question was “What if I don’t get it right?”

And so the coaching conversation took a bit of a turn and followed that question with another 20 minutes of exploration all about the word “right”.

I was curious about what ‘right’ conjured up for her. So we went there. In the exploratory process of digging around what the word ‘right’ means for her, she had one of those Aha moments. She realized that the very act of asking that question “what if I don’t get it right?” has its own limitations. And that by her very nature, she actually prefers some fluidity and flexibility rather than feeling compelled to be right.

The new question she landed on in that session was “What will I experience when I make the best choice available to me at the time?” This question felt more open and helpful to her than her original one that as she said “made me feel boxed in and limited”.

Sometimes just a slight shift or pivot to change the nature of the question we are asking ourselves, or others, can make a world of difference in the answers we find.