Hello Friends!
Greetings from Barcelona☀️. Many thanks for your feedback on the last edition and for reaching out. A special shout out to the following people: Connie in Toronto, Viliana in Barcelona, Deepa on Bainbridge Island, Jen in Chicago, and Barry & Michaele in Bracebridge 🙌.
If you are joining The Quest for the first time, welcome to our weekly exploration of creativity, facilitation, and learning. You can catch up on past editions here.
What is at the heart of a good question?
How can we get better at asking powerful questions?
What are the important questions to ask ourselves?
Seasoned facilitators, teachers, coaches, creative problem solvers, and innovators all seem to have the answer to this question. So what is it?
That’s our Quest for this week.
Let’s go!
🤔Have you ever been asked a powerful question?
The kind that leads you to a new solution that you hadn’t even thought of?
Several years ago my husband and I decided it was time for a move. We had lived in London for many happy years.
But our life circumstances were changing. Our kids were finishing primary school. London was becoming more expensive. It was time for a change.
And so we started to look at options. We both had mobile jobs so our field of choices was pretty open. We started plotting a radius on a map of London. As we looked at the cost of housing, the radius started to expand.
Before we knew it, we were looking in an entirely different city called Bristol. The problem was that we couldn’t find a place to live. We felt stuck.
Our friend Aaron was visiting us. After explaining the situation to Aaron, he paused for a long moment and then asked,
“Why don’t you move to Bali?”.
At first, I thought he was joking. Then I realised he was helping us to reframe our question.
We had been asking ourselves: “how do we find a flat in Bristol?”. He was inviting us to consider a bigger question:
“what is our vision for our family and how could this move help us fulfil it?”.
Suddenly new ideas started flowing. We considered a bunch of cities that strangely all started with the letter “B”.
Barcelona emerged as the place that fulfilled that vision. In a matter of months, we packed our bags and moved to Spain. I am grateful to Aaron to this day.
Aaron is a serial social entrepreneur and founder of the Wellbeing Project. He has honed the skill of asking big questions.
I realised later that he had asked us a catalytic question. The kind of question that has a profound effect of opening whole new possibilities and breakthrough ideas.
What is a catalytic question? Let’s look at this in more detail…
💡Questions are the Answer
A book by MIT Professor Hal Gregersen’s that explores the power of the catalytic questions. He defines them as questions that helps us to dissolve barriers to thinking and limiting beliefs. They help us question our assumptions. And they help us to channel creative energy down more productive pathways. The result? Better answers.
Here are 3 takeaways from the book:
✅Getting the right question is key to getting the right answer.
✅Questions help us re-examine fundamental assumptions.
✅Questioning is a muscle that we can all strengthen with deliberate practice.
How can you become better at asking more powerful questions? Please read on…
❓The Art of Asking Questions
A TED Talk by author, teacher, and CEO of The City Club of Cleveland, Dan Moulthrop.
Moulthrop gives us 8 tips for becoming better at asking more powerful questions:
1) Don’t be afraid to ask. In general, people want to talk about their life experiences.
2) Be curious. Ask about peoples’ experiences and why things are the way they are.
3) Try the obvious question. Sometimes it is the most important question.
4) Words matter. The words you use when you ask questions matter a lot.
5) Strive for empathy. Open your heart to another’s experience.
6) Be informed. Know your subject to the extent that you can.
7) Be simple. Sometimes the best question is simply why?
8) Be gracious. Thank the person who shared their answer. It is a gift.
Moulthrop’s favourite question?
What’s that like for you?
See the whole talk here👇
What are the important questions to ask ourselves? This is where it gets interesting…
🤔Living by Questions
An article by award-winning poet, and essayist Jane Hirshfield on important questions to ask yourself.
The is the kind of article that you are going to want to spend some time reading, re-reading, and reading again to make sure you absorb every pearl of wisdom that Hirshfield offers.
Like this one:
“To ask a good question is a way to carabiner yourself to intimacy, a doorknob that turns only one direction, toward open.”
Photo by Oumaima Ben Chebtit
💭Quote of the week
“In the word question there is a beautiful word – quest. I love that word.”
Nobel Laureat, Elie Wiesel
Thanks for reading The Quest. I always love hearing your feedback and suggestions. Feel free to email me at gwyn@gwynwansbrough.com. Or leave a comment below. Visit my website for ways we can work together here.
If you are enjoying The Quest, I’d appreciate it if you shared it with anyone you think might like it.
Until next week!
Gwyn
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