Questions can be a tool for organizing, creating and designing new futures.

As a coach, I’m always thinking about questions.

I’m listening deeply and asking questions to help you pause and notice your thought patterns and beliefs. And some of these questions might challenge your beliefs so that you can start building a new way of thinking about what is possible for you and your life.

But I haven’t always loved questions. In fact, when I first saw the famous Rainer Maria Rilke passage that is often quoted, I was confused and annoyed by it. 

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves . . .  Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them.  . . . Live the questions now. . . “ 

I didn’t understand how living the questions could help me when I so deeply wanted answers about how to move from where I was, to where I wanted to be. 

I recently finished reading Alicia Garza’s book, The Purpose of Power: How We Come Together When We Fall Apart. 

Garza, a long-time organizer and co-founder of Black Lives Matter, talks about her upbringing, the influence of her parents, how the conservative right came to power, and gives examples of what it’s like to be an organizer listening to people’s challenges, needs and visions, while finding ways to help bring about improvements in their lives. 

I was especially struck by how she talks about questions as a tool for bringing people together because it helps us to get under the assumptions that we hold about each other. 

She gives the example of how Black and Latino people can hold misconceptions of each other, and not be sure how to engage in a conversation that respectfully unearths the misconceptions.

Rather than tell folks they shouldn’t hold the attitudes they do, she encourages a process of conversing and listening – dialoguing – that is rooted in respect.

“Asking questions is one of the most important tools we as organizers have at our disposal. Asking questions is how we get to know what’s underneath and in between our experiences in communities.

Knowing why something is happening can change behavior, in that it develops a practice in a person of doing the same – Asking why they see what they see – what’s behind what they see, and most important, if they are motivated not to experience it anymore, [determining] what can be done about it.” p. 94

Questions help us pull apart old beliefs and form new stories so we can see each other differently and imagine new possibilities. 

Creativity strategist Natalie Nixon talk about how questions can be used within organizations to support the process of creating.

She defines creativity as “our ability to toggle between wonder and rigor to solve problems and produce novel value.” She points out that leaders have to be willing to be vulnerable because folks may be afraid of appearing foolish. She uses the term “question-shamed” to describe the sensation of having been made to feel foolish for asking questions. 

Leaders show that they’re wondering – that they don’t know all the answers – when they model the process of thinking and questioning out loud. 

Questions can be a powerful tool for organizing, creating and designing new futures. What else will I learn to love that once made me so uncomfortable? How about you? What makes you uncomfortable? What might it have to teach you?