What a first read for 2024! Not sure how I came across it, but Edgar Schein’s Humble Inquiry is both refreshing and challenging. And I read the first edition not realizing there is a second edition. Wonder what I missed?

We cannot hope to understand and work with people from different occupational, professional, and national cultures if we do not know how to ask questions and build relationships that are based on mutual respect and the recognition that others know things that we may need to know in order to get a job done.

Introduction: Creating Positive Relationships and Effective Organizations

Schein contributed over five decades to the field of organizational health, a good portion of that as a MIT professor. His work was/is countercultural to the mindset of Doing and Telling.

Humble Inquiry is the art of drawing someone out, of asking questions to which you do not already know the answer, of building a relationship based on curiosity and interest in the other person.

Introduction

Schein repeatedly describes relationships with these words: trust, interactive, conversational, building, investing, processing, shared value, and mutual. After chapter 1’s focus on defining humility, chapter 2 shares case examples to which Schein keeps referencing through the remaining chapters. These three statements display the chapter’s nuggets:

Don’t assume that the person with the question has asked the right question.

Accessing your ignorance, or allowing curiosity to lead you, is often the best guide to what to ask about.

Humble Inquiry is behavior that comes out of respect and the desire to improve the quality of the conversation by stimulating greater openness and the sharing of task-relevant information.

Chapter 2, Humble Inquiry in Practice-Case Examples

Chapter 4, “The Culture of Do and Tell,” gives the most countercultural challenge, at least to U.S. readers. He believes the main problem standing in the way of better relationships and conversations is our culture that values task accomplishment more than relationship building. A second problem is asking, in general, is less valued that telling. Schein suggests the key to overcome these problems is Here-and-now Humility, described in chapter 1 as admitting dependence on others.

Schein culminates his work well with the last chapter as a “how to.” He makes a helpful acknowledgement that a culture shift requires unlearning and new learning, which result in two types of anxiety he labels survival anxiety and learning anxiety. The courage to face anxiety can result in beautiful relationships that otherwise wouldn’t surface.

A well-timed Humble Inquiry that launches a conversation that leads to a relationship should be thought of as a thing of beauty. Innovations in how we conduct conversations should be treated as art.

Chapter 7, Developing the Attitude of Humble Inquiry

Anyone in leadership will grow personally and relationally by reading Humble Inquiry. I’d also encourage business/executive coaches to read Schein’s book to sharpen themselves and to resource their clients.