❓ From Self-Doubt to Super-ability: The Art of Asking Questions
I posted this thought on my LinkedIn this week and felt it might be worth exploring in a longer-form reflection.
What we may have come to see as a weakness in ourselves - reinforced over time by the feedback we perceive from our surroundings - might, beneath the story we've told ourselves, reveal itself as our greatest strength.
As individuals, we adapt to our environment; we learn how to operate in order to get our needs met, and make progress in a world not always set up for us…
This can simply be by learning to to ask questions. I know this in my case. At first uncomfortable. Unsafe.
But it’s that practice - repeated and honed like any skill - of getting our own needs met by asking questions, serves to forge what is actually our unique super-ability we bring to a team.
For me, with that self-knowledge about how I learn I have developed a skill in discovering the right questions to ask; Itself a deep process of learning, and being courageous enough to ask.
The best Product teams; optimised for learning, humility and testing assumptions, will be yielding to our individual missteps, even encouraging, recognising the value this discussion, and asking new, challenging questions brings.
I have found few more powerful methods for uncovering blind spots and unfounded assumptions than this technique; and is one way in which safety is so core to a high performing team.
This sends a strong signal to our teams that we are a culture that supports curiosity and learning, because it is the primary means we evolve as a team.
We might ask:
If we can’t do X because of Y, what if we resolved Y.
Why don’t we pursue Y?
or
In this plan, where is our feedback loop?
How can we get that sooner?
Others might even be inspired; grateful of our asking novel questions of our assumptions; about the Product, Users or even the technical choices we’ve adopted and not revisited.
So often, process or practices have been in place, and it’s only on daring to approach our reasons again, we discover actually, we don’t know. Suddenly we can imagine a different way of working entirely, optimised for our current constraints and the current user problems.
Because we discovered a skill in asking questions.
Now not only for our own learning, but uncovering new possibilities for the team
Self-awareness; knowing our own drivers and drains, is one of our most powerful levers in our career…
So, if we can reflect often - build our self-knowledge - we might find our ‘weaknesses’ hold within them what we’re uniquely great at and what energises us, and we can give to our Product team.
See also:
A real nice and insightful discussion on this idea at the end of the latest Lenny’s Podcast from Bob Moesta 💪🏼 - Author of Career Change
Peter Drucker on the importance of discovering how we learn in his timeless HBR paper Managing Oneself. Well worth a read too!
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