Once you know the question

Shall I go on? (Image by Jill Wellington)

A mentor I once worked with required her clients to come with questions.

She wasn't the person to go to when you needed to talk things out. She didn't want to hear the ideas, the works-in-progress, or the emotional processing, and she definitely didn't want to hear the whining.

Instead, you showed up with a distinct, discrete question. If you didn't offer a question and instead launched into a bunch of context and backstory, you would be politely interrupted and asked to formulate a question.

Since I like to process things verbally, this threw me. Wasn't I paying this person to listen to me and all of my problems? But I accepted the rules of the game and played it.

At first, I came up with crummy questions that were based on the assumptions I had made or the story I was telling myself, like, "Should I do X?" or "Do you think [long rambling proposal] sounds like an okay plan?"

But then, I began to look deeper. I thought about the subtext of the "Am I on the right track?"-type questions I was asking and realized that they were kind of a waste of time. I didn't need approval, permission, or confirmation from someone else. If anything, I needed new perspective, information, and ideas. Rather than offering confirmation or reassurance, the best questions would allow me to see something I hadn't seen before.

When I took the time to reflect, I would eventually emerge with a question. Most of the time, when I finally arrived at that question, I would be able to answer it myself. I didn't even need to ask it.

Because I had to ask a question instead of riffing on my situation, I was forced to think through problems all the way instead of trying to hand them off to someone else to solve for me. This skill of thinking through problems all the way has turned out to be one of the most valuable things my former mentor tricked me into learning.

Once I knew the question, the answer was self-evident.

Armed with this self-sufficiency, I found more questions, and these ones I did not have the answers to. These questions weren't so tactical. They were designed to uncover additional models and frameworks that could be used to learn still more. "What might I consider in deciding...?" "What questions could I be asking to determine...?"

Of course, these questions aren't necessarily questions to ask a specific person. We can ask ourselves these questions and turn up new answers every time. In fact, we can ask questions like these of everyone and collect interesting responses as we go. There aren't any right or wrong answers.

That’s not to say that I don’t find expert opinions to be valuable. I love hearing the advice of great thinkers and problem-solvers. It's not that I don't think they can help me. But through this work on questions, I've become better able to generalize the answers these experts give to the questions of others and apply them to my specific situation. I can hear my own question in someone else's question, and that allows me to collect wisdom from everywhere.

Though there are times when it's helpful to have someone listen and help you figure out what your question is, I'm grateful to my mentor for challenging me to do this work on my own. I am a better independent problem-solver, a clearer thinker, and a more effective question-asker — and answerer.