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Reconciling Differences: Bridge Inquiry Styles to Achieve Connection Quickly, with Angie McArthur, CEO, Professional Thinking Partners and Co-author, Reconcilable Differences
A lot of people ask us, “How do I achieve connection quickly?”, especially with someone that I don’t know that well. It could be someone senior to you, it could be a coworker, it could be a new mother-in-law that you’re going to meet.
In a circumstance like this, what we first ask you to do is know yourself–know what your own propensity is, know your own inquiry style. My natural inquiry style is to come from a place of innovation. I’ll always address something with a new idea: ”What if we went here?”, How could we do this”, “What’s possible if we do that?” So if I know that about myself, I can first recognize that.
The second piece is to know the other person, be aware of where they’re coming from. So if the other person says something like, “I’m really wanting to know the plan for tomorrow–I really need to know what time you’re going to be here,” I’m automatically registering that what’s important to them is procedural thinking. That’s what must be their inquiry style. So then what I do is I recognize that and bridge them to my style. So it would be like, “Oh, it’s really important for you to know the plan for tomorrow. I have a couple of ideas about that. If we commit to being on time, at this place, or this particular plan, would you be open to hearing some of my ideas about how we might do something differently or other things we might consider.” In that, I’m recognizing their need and also bringing them around to what I get excited about, which is the possibility of doing something different.
Let’s do a second example of what it might look like if someone’s inquiry stye is analytic, versus a person whose style is more relational. The person who’s analytic may come across as asking a lot of “why” questions: “What are we going downtown?”, “Why are we going to that department store?”, or, “Why are we going to have dinner at that time?” That may cause you to get more rigid, because what you’re really interested in is, “Who’s going to be there”, “What kind of feeling are we going to create at this dinner party”, or, “Is grandma going to be there?” Whatever it is, the relational aspects of that particular event. What you would do then is acknowledge that person: “I know understanding ‘why’ is important to you, but I’m curious if we can also talk about ‘who’, because it’s really important for me to know who’s going to be there in order for me to plan the actual event and what’s going to happen.“ So it’s actually the need for both.