Many organizations would be better places to work, and probably be more effective too, if their leaders would practice Humble Inquiry. That is my conclusion from Humble Inquiry, the bestselling book by professor Edgar H. Schein and his son Peter A. Schein. They define Humble Inquiry as the gentle art of asking questions to which we don’t already know the answer. It is an attitude, they write, characterized by listening deeply to how others respond, responding appropriately yourself, and revealing more of ourselves in the relationship building process. You make clear that you are prepared to listen to the other and that you are making yourself vulnerable. Both parties invest and both receive value. One party can open the door, yet a relationship only flourishes if that attitude is reciprocated.
Edgar Schein is chairman and cofounder of the Organizational Culture and Leadership Institute and a Society of Sloan Fellows Professor of Management Emeritus at the MIT Sloan School of Management. His son is the cofounder and COO of the Organizational Culture and Leadership Institute.
Humble Inquiry increases knowledge, reduces ignorance, makes sense of complicated and complex situations, and in that process, deepens relationships, the authors claim. It makes it safe for others to tell the truth. It assumes that other values may be different but are no worse and no better than our own and that we may need to know what others know in order to solve our own problems.
I think that Humble Inquire doesn’t come easy in a world in which many people express their opinions about everything everywhere and always. Being opiniated is valued more than being curious. Exactly for this reason it is more necessary than ever to exercise this attitude and use these skills.
Lacking to inquire with humility is a pitfall for leaders. If they lack genuine curiosity, they won’t hear the truth, but more often what employees think they want to hear. If they are not open, they create work climates that are pschologically unsafe.
We know that we work better on complex, interdependent tasks with someone we know and trust, yet we are often not prepared to spend the effort and time to build the relationship. Especially in US culture, individualism is preferred over relationships, the authors write. I would add that this is also the case in many European corporate cultures. Freedom is considered important, and rightly so, but the downside is that freedom breeds competitiveness, caution and mistrust. A transactional bias might emerge of getting things done and getting ahead, and a zero-sum mindset: if you are not winning, you are losing.
Humble Inquiry fits into a stream of books about the importance of humility, listening, dialogue, openness, vulnerability, and more, for leaders. Leaders should ask much more than they tell. Its basic message deserves a deep understanding. The book offers the outline of this attitude and also a practical guide for how to exercise it.
Edgar H. Schein, Peter A. Schein. Humble Inquiry. The gentle art of asking instead of telling. 2021, Berrett-Koehler