Humility - The Sly Driver of Innovation

I love the notion of humble inquiry that Shein describes in

Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling. I love everything about it. I love envisioning myself doing it. I love experiencing it when afforded the opportunity. Is there more to it than deciding to tell less and inquire more? Oh. Yes. I see there is.

I'm interested in learning more about how to inquire and the types of inquiry that might most enable innovation and opportunity among those with whom I work. Understanding more about the role of Shein's concepts of humble inquiry vs diagnostic inquiry, for example, looks like it could bear fruit.

Humble Inquiry: Used to convey pure curiosity and interest. Exerts no influence on content or form with respect to the answer to come. "What brings you here?"

Diagnostic Inquiry: Influences the other person's mental processes or controls response focus. Used to build a case to inform future action, etc. "What happened?" "Why did that happen?" "What are you going to do next?"

I've had positions of authority for the last twenty years. From within those positions, I've done a lot more diagnostic inquiry than I should have - or that I've needed to do. The overuse of this type of inquiry has likely reinforced my role as a benevolent #decider or #validator or #inventor - which, come to find out, is not actually aligned with maximizing innovation within a system. Such a practice certainly has served to meet my own emotional needs, especially the ones I didn't know I had. There's such sweetness to be found in subtly taking control of an idea through inquiry, reframing it, then stealthily giving it back in a more polished form, dripping with possibility - especially when done unintentionally. I can almost hear my sons' heads nodding in the background - "stealthily" being a matter of opinion. As someone with an appreciation of innovation, I no longer want what I used to be or used to want.

The consequence of constant, and perhaps even intentional, overuse of diagnostic inquiry by those in power over teachers makes me cringe. Cue Henry Giroux's cautions against deskilling the American teaching force, reducing them to technicians. Cue a documentary on one of the major sources of Finland's success that remains unreachable for American culture. What possibilities might we uncover should we lead with curiosity as a norm rather than our problem solving chops? What if those in positions of power within the field of education readily asked teachers questions that were intentionally designed to draw them out, to gain answers to questions to which they did not already know the answer, and/or to build a relationship based on curiosity and interest in their thinking? What would need to happen for leaders to place the role of problem-solver among those closest to the kids?

"What are you thinking about these days as you consider your classroom?"

"What might you need to know more about as you consider a new approach?"

"What comes to mind for you as you consider the possibilities for this child?"

These inquiry questions sound so wonderful and elegant - yet they fail to direct change. They align more with the idea that we cannot develop another person; we can only support his or her self-development. This is what the Finns understand and embrace regarding their teaching force. I fall short of this ideal a lot. I am a huge fan of giving myself responsibility - or maybe opportunity. What new paths could I experience if I were more curious about others' vision of a way forward?

My use of diagnostic inquiry has likely most often been about gearing up for a well-meaning session of "informed telling". Despite dedicated practice, its darn hard to avoid telling people something they can't use, or will likely find boring. It gets harder every day to avoid giving advice to someone that they already know and/or have already thought of and dismissed as impractical. Unintentionally making people feel demeaned or unheard can't be leading to anything good - especially for our teaching force. Teachers make more and lead less.

What might motivate us to choose to employ a teaching force we feel we need to tell something to rather than elicit something from? Why are we looking to experts more often than we look to our teachers? Is it really because we don't think teachers are capable of finding a path forward, or are we caught in a vicious cycle? If we believe the research, the "telling" by those of us in power feeds the career and emotional goals of the "teller" at the expense of developing the self-efficacy of those closest to our kids. The real gem within the concept of humble inquiry is changing who's expected to ask the diagnostic questions, and who's trusted to answer and act upon them. What might we need to know to be brave enough to hire those people and to step aside? In what ways might that look different from what we've tried so far?