Change Your Questions, Change Your Life: 10 Powerful Tools for Life and Work

Life Changing Questions

Voltaire once said, "Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers." I suspect that we all underestimate the importance of asking the right questions at the right time. Change Your Questions Change Your Life will give you a new and much better perspective on asking questions. The book starts with a story about Ben, the answer man. He has just been hired into a management position largely on his previous history of having all the right answers. But his tendency to try and have all the answers actually works against him in his new leadership position. Fortunately his boss has the knowledge and experience to recognize that he needs to learn new skills and sets him up with a coach who teaches him to change his questions. The story is very interesting and easy to read. It really bring home the point that we ask internal and external questions and the quality of those questions in large part determines the quality of our lives. When you ask the wrong questions, you will get the wrong answers. Ben was exceptionally skilled at asking the wrong questions. But fortunately with the help of his coach he quickly learns to ask better questions. In the book Marilee Adams, the author, says we generally live in one of two modes - judger or learner. In the judger mode, we are judgmental - judging ourselves or others, asking what's wrong, who's to blame, how can I prove I'm right. In the learner mode we are curious asking questions - what do I want, what works, what are my choices? She says we are all recovering judgers. After Ben's story, the book gives us a section Ten Tools of Question Thinking. Here is a very powerful and easy to apply series of question tools for learning to ask better questions. One of my favorite tools is the switching questions. When we realize that we are in judger mode, asking switching questions can immediately switch from judger mode to learner mode. There is a handy and very helpful illustrated Choice Map in the book which shows the Learner Path...