Of a thousand dreams

Citation

Bokeno, R.M. (2011), "Of a thousand dreams", Development and Learning in Organizations, Vol. 25 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/dlo.2011.08125aae.002

Of a thousand dreams

Article Type: Book review From: Development and Learning in Organizations, Volume 25, Issue 1

A review of The Art of the Question

At the heart of any developmental or learning enterprise, individual or organizational, is a communication process that must be generative. That is, it must be authentic and examine assumptions behind what people say in order to get beyond where people currently are. Central to this generative communication process, in turn, is the role of questions.

Oddly, questions are rarely asked about questions – their nature, function and developmental purpose. I have chosen for this review a book by Marilee C. Goldberg that perhaps should be on the bookshelf of anyone in the “learning” industry, as it speaks directly to those issues. Though the subtitle A Guide to Short-Term Question Centered Therapy as well as its psychotherapeutic context directs it to a readership of mental health professionals, its relevance is much wider and can pertain to anyone who seeks to facilitate the thinking of others.

Goldberg begins by considering the value and importance of questions in our lives, those that activate our everyday thinking and behavior. Amending Heidegger’s “Language is the house of Being,“ Goldberg begins with a big metaphysical issue and suggests that questions are in turn the shaping force of language-use itself. (Voila, questions are Being(?) … May or may not be true, I’ve never questioned it.) Nevertheless, three vital lessons emerge from Goldberg’s exposition of the role of questions.

First, questions are as foundational to human functioning as any other cognitive-linguistic process. “Because questions are intrinsically related to action, they spark and direct attention and perception, energy and effort, and so are at the heart of the evolving forms our lives assume.”

Second, questions are a kind of relational contract. One cannot not respond to a question. Consequently, they imply connection in ways that statements and other kinds of speech acts do not.

Third, and perhaps most thematically important to the book, one cannot really know the value of questions until they at least temporarily dispense with the “Answers” mindset. Perhaps from Plato, certainly from the Enlightenment, or both really, Western culture has been enamored with answers. After all, answers are what help us get things “right” and make “progress.” So much so, I think (this is me, not Goldberg), that our answer-driven scientistic ideology has become the hardware, the OS which drives all other learning endeavors. Thus questions and question-asking become anomalous, signs of weakness or vulnerability or subordination. (Stereotypically: men don’t ask for directions; women don’t ask for what they want.)

Moreover, our ideological favoritism for answers forms, for Goldberg, the basis of a “judging” self rather than a “learning” self. While both judging and learning are part of an integrated self, our inclination for answers also underwrites our propensity to interminably assess or evaluate the correctness or rightness of those answers; the nature and function of the questions is just parceled out of the mental apparatus altogether.

The middle section of the book is most easily consumed by those mental health professionals with a background in interviewing and therapeutic technique as well as systems-oriented therapies. Nevertheless, some lessons easily transfer – the interventional role of questions in therapy (read change) as well as fairly detailed sketches of judger and learner selves in cognitive, affective and behavioral terms, the nature of their questions and what they tend to ask themselves and others.

Finally, Goldberg circumscribes the entire questioning journey as a indeed the way we make our world, and considers the vital role of questions in organizational development. As an older book, Goldberg’s invocation of Senge’s organizational learning and the role of dialogue seems a natural extension. In 2010 it is well known by DLO readers that the heart of any learning process is a generative, dialogic interaction. Goldberg spells out the nature and function of questions at the heart of these organizational change and learning initiatives.

Compellingly, Goldberg concludes: “ Taking advantage of the question-driven nature of choice and responsibility, we can dedicate ourselves to speak, listen and act together in enlivening the spirit and expression of genuine community.” I agree. Over a decade after the publication of this book it remains the definitive source on my shelf for the relationship of questions, learning and development.

R. Michael BokenoProfessor of Organizational Communication and BB&T Fellow in the College of Business, Murray State University, Murray, Kentucky, USA.