Ask What or When Instead of Why

In the last two weeks, I had two totally divergent adventures with some converging insights you might find useful.  One was GenCon and the other was the Global Leadership Summit.

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GenCon 2019

GenCon invades Indianapolis every year with 70,000 people who crowd into the convention center, the football stadium, and into five hotels because of one reason:  They all love games.  Not things like Monopoly or chess, but super-complicated European boardgames, role-playing games, strategy games, deck-building games, and so on.  Over the four days of the convention, there are over 1500 different events ranging from tournaments, film festivals (about games), dances, concerts, auctions, costume parties, virtual reality dungeon crawls, and lots of long lines. 
 
It was my first time, and it's a people watching spectacle.  I had tons of questions for people, such as 1) Why do you come here for 4 days and only play one game over and over, 2) Why did you get married here? and 3) Why are you dressed up like a hawk?  I realized that when I asked these "Why?" questions, people would often give me short, unthinking answers.  
 
My big breakthrough was when I asked the same questions without using "why":  1) What is it about this game that makes it so addictive, 2) When was it you decided to get married here? or 3) What were some other costumes you were thinking about, and how did you narrow your costume down to a hawk?  At this point people really opened up, and our conversations were a lot more interesting and fun.
 
One Take-away: Rephrase Why questions into What or When questions. 

​Why:  I don’t know, but it seems to work
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Global Leadership Summit 2019

​The Global Leadership Summit is held in Chicago about the same time as GenCon every summer.  But it's also  simulcast to 400 locations and over 405,000 people.  You also don’t have to dress up like a hawk to go there.  For two days you hear great business speakers.  (You can download the notes from the speakers below at the link at the bottom).
 
One speaker was a hostage negotiator with the FBI for many years, and he had tons of great insights:
 
●  Mirroring - Repeat the last words that they just said. It lets them know you are listening. With upper inflection, it is an invitation to expand on what they just said. 
●  "You’re right" is what we say to people who we have to maintain relationship with and you just want to shut up.  It's better to say "That's right."  It's what husbands always say.
●  Effective pauses - give people the chance to talk. 2/3 people are not comfortable with silence. 
●  Don't say "I understand." That's what people say when they want you to be quiet so they can talk. 
 
But one thing he said really caught my still sensitive GenCon ear.  He said, “People get threatened and defensive when they hear the word ‘Why?’  It reminds them of having to explain why they did something wrong as a child, or it reminds them of when they have had to justify a less-than-intelligent decision as an adult.”

Instead he said that using other words – like when, what, or how – causes a person to think more and to think more collaboratively:
         
         • What happened that led you so see things that way?
         • Where have you seen this before?
         • How are we going to [go to Disneyland if your grades don’t improve]?
 
This whole cast of speakers was great.  The conference sent around bullet points from all of the speakers, and you can download them below.  Definitely worth downloading and either reading now or copying over to your notes app to read later.  No Darth Vader costume required.
 
One Take-away: Rephrase Why questions into What or When questions. 
Why:  It makes people less defensive and more collaborative
 

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Notes from the Global Leadership Summit 2019
File Size:	611 kb
File Type:	pdf

Download File

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