At home, Ada Yonath was always questioning.
"My mother said I was always asking, 'Why is that red?' and 'Why do we have winter?' and 'Why is this liquid more viscous?"
"Despite her parents’ lack of resources or formal education, they supported their daughter’s evident curiosity and, with the help of an encouraging kindergarten teacher, sent her to a prestigious grammar school."
As noted in these posts, her questions took Yonath to a Nobel Prize for Chemistry.
The examples here are closed-ended questions. Closed-ended questions, like open-ended questions, are driven by curiosity. What's different is open-ended questions solicit a point of view. Closed-ended questions have right and wrong answers. Red is the perception of light with a wavelength of approximately 650 nanometers. Light with a wavelength of 450 nanometers is blue, not red. What word we call light at those wavelengths is subject to a point of view: azul for blue; rojo for red, for example. Science is the work of finding right answers. Yonath explored 25,000 opinions for how to crystallize a ribosome. Only one was correct. She asked a lot of questions of a lot of people in order to get there, in addition to her own trial and error.
Learning from others Before we start gathering information from another, it’s important to be as clear as possible to ourselves why we want another’s view. When we solicit another’s view, there’s an implied agreement that we’re open to influence. We need to have our own agenda clear so we can keep our views separate from the views of others.
And in order to learn from another, it’s often useful to keep our views to ourselves – the most important is to keep open the possibility of having our own minds changed.
The art of exploring another’s view is sharply different from argument, persuasion, and interrogation. In argument, persuasion, and interrogation we are attempting to bring someone around to our view. We may very well use all the questioning strategies outlined listed below, but we are only opening up the other’s point of view for the purpose of correcting it or to use it as evidence against them.
Since the tactic is almost identical, it takes a high degree of sophistication to use properly. Most often, we think we’re exploring when, in fact, we hope to persuade. We send mixed signals to our partner.
And, even when we are pure of motive and only seeking another’s views, this experience of someone honestly and without agenda seeking our view is so rare, most of us remain on the defensive nonetheless.
All awareness begins with a question: what's that?
Next: is that an opportunity or a threat?
Once here, we can stop thinking and allow reflexive responses to set our course.
Or we can do the much harder work of staying with questions.
When I began this series last week, I asked myself if you would find this expression of the cognition of questions interesting, valuable, and or useful? It's a closed-ended question. The question has two parts: would you find it interesting of itself? Would you find my presentation of it interesting?
If I asked these questions of you before I presented this work, they would have been an open-ended question. Since I made the decision to drop this on you, it's closed. You'll receive it as interesting, valuable, or useful or you won't. I will have been right or wrong about your response to this presentation.
Do you want more? Here's what's coming.
Reflective statements
Probing Questions
Tell me more
Brief insertions
Pauses
Commitment questions
Option questions
Leading questions
Summary questions
REFERENCED IN THIS LETTER:
Ada Yonath: https://www.nobelprize.org/womenwhochangedscience/stories/ada-yonath
posts: https://www.kairoscognition.com/blog/919a8a31af9f8856