# 197: Questions and Interventions
Story behind the Passage
Currently, I am dealing with Byron Katie’s “The Work” method again. It is a powerful method on how to get rid of negative self-images. I am not going to talk about her today, I might do it in some other post. The reason why I am mentioning her and the method is because I keep thinking about the power of questions. As I wrote many times before, questions do magic. When I started working as a coach, I had already internalized the question-based mindset of coaching, of course, but as is the case with so many things, only later do you realize the actual magnitude of something. And that something is so simple right? How can asking questions make such a huge difference?
Well, there are so many different ways of asking questions. You probably know them all without being aware of them or knowing that they are called exactly. The trick is, obviously, to use these questions consciously and based on your full presence. I mean, you cannot get it right if you are not fully focusing on the moment. I am not saying you should totally focus on the other person you are coaching, that is not it. You have to watch yourself, only then can you realize which question might come up and whether or not you really want to ask it.
The passage above from the book Managing by Values is not necessarily about coaching or asking questions. It is about the power of interventions in organizations. And that always implies that you are triggering changes in people. This is the magic. All of a sudden, you kick off a short shock moment. It takes this little disruption to start rethinking. If you keep scratching on the surface, you will not get anywhere. Or, you will get somewhere but not necessarily where the big changes can happen. At least, this is my experience.
“Big” and “small” changes are judgements, of course. Nobody has some “objective” measure for this. Even small changes are changes, right? When I speak of big changes, I mean fundamental ones that not only the person him-/herself notices but the entire environment as well (resonance). Usually, such a change is triggered by some self-revelation, some fundamental insight into how one has been acting and thinking and how others have experienced this. Again, there is no evaluation attached to this step as such. The effect can be anything — positive or negative, whatever you mean by it. The important thing is: There is usually a gap between what you think you are doing and/or saying and what others pick up. Hence, communication is a big issue in this.
My Learnings
“Once I got over the initial shock of learning that I was known throughout the company as Screamer, I began to realize that I was part of the problem around here, not the solution.” The first keyword in this sentence is learning, of course. Learning can be painful at times. More often than not, these are exactly the times when learning helps most. I am not only about personal growth learning. Think about studying hard for exams. Yes, sometimes it is just about learning for short-term memory but there are other tough exams that require tough learning over a longer period of time which really leads to substantial learning that will become part of your fundamental knowledge and skill set.
The manager in the story shares his experience with a team that is just implementing the value-based management method. Of course, as always in management studies, there needs to be some sexy title to a method that is really intuitive, i.e., using values as the primary compass. But I am not promoting he method here, I am just describing that, as in any other change process, there is an intervention involved that is really crucial for making the actors involved aware of the consequences of their actions. And someone who thinks he is really helpful but actually known as a “Screamer” can really make a difference to the entire process if he/she is confronted with this outside image and therefore able to stop the screaming.
My true motivation behind writing about this today is not even the story about the manager. It is the person, the facilitator or mediator, who kicks off the process. I cannot even remember if this mediator or “ombudsperson” for the alignment process is mentioned in other passages in the book as well. It really does not matter. The point is: It is a true blessing to be able to do this, to help people see themselves and the world around them from a different perspective. But it is also a huge responsibility. The “shock of learning” that is being described should not be too drastic. Otherwise, people just go into defense mode. And defense is not the same as “retreat.” It is interesting to note that, on the same page, the manager describes how he later went to a retreat and did a group interaction training to really process what he had learned. This is nice and needed because the simple intervention as such starts something that needs to be worked out and curated later.
It is really fulfilling to be this kind of “midwife” to insights. For a long time, I tried to neglect this, I actively denied it. I did not want to do it. Maybe I did not want to be “responsible.” But this role is really about taking responsibility for the outcome, of course. As a coach, you are responsible for the process, not the outcome as such. Still, you are responsible in the sense of working very closely with another human being. For people who have a passion and talent for doing these things, it is quite a waste of potential and purpose to not do this. But this is, as Byron Katie would say, just a thought. You can turn it around. And you can ask yourself, who would you be without this thought?
Reflection Questions
1) Did you ever experience a “waking up moment” when you learned that other people see you completely different than you saw yourself? How did you respond?
2) Do you sometimes act as a mediator at work? In which situations?
3) What are your personal management values?