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Reconciling Differences: Recognize the 4 Entry Points for Learning, with Angie McArthur, CEO, Professional Thinking Partners and Co-author, Reconcilable Differences
Inquiry styles are the different ways that we each ask questions in order to learn something. We each have our own personal bias toward which is the way, the entry point, in which we want to learn something. Without knowing this, we can be blocked by other people, especially when we’re trying to learn with another person.
The are four general ways in which we come to understand and learn something new. Analytic–you may have a person who’s very strong in asking those “why” questions. They almost can’t proceed forward until they’re grounded in the why of something, in understanding the data, the facts behind something. That’s just one of the perspectives that increases learning. Another one would be a procedural orientation, which means they’re always asking questions to learn about the timelines, the budgets, the actual sequence of events, the planning that goes into something. A third would be relational–they need to learn how it’s going to affect the people. They’re the voice that’s saying, “I need to learn how this is going to affect the culture of the company, my employees, my relationships with my boss.” So their orientation, in order to even address the challenge, is they need to understand how it’s going to feel to the people around them first–that’s paramount. A fourth would be the innovative way of looking at the world, which means their questions are going to come from everything that’s possible. They’re going to generate ideas, they’re going to be very focused on answering–and asking–questions about, “What about the future?”, “What about 2020?”, “What are we going to do next year?” You’ll see that they start to address every challenge through that perspective. Some of us have a way of asking questions from all four perspectives, some of us have a bias toward just one. What’s interesting is when you’re working with another person, if you can quickly identify where they’re coming from, first you can appreciate that and say, “Yes, that’s important.” It may not be your natural way of looking at the situation, but if you understand it’s theirs, then you can create a bridge to that and eventually bring them around to your perspective.
If we pay attention to how we’re communicating, not just what–and so many people focus on what I’m communicating, the actual content, and we forget this toolkit that we can expand and build our capacity in how we’re communicating. When you come across disagreements or mistrust, switching from just talking to writing, getting up and using flip charts, going for a walk. We forget to really, really pay attention to how we’re communicating. It’s just as important as what.