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You don’t have to be a parent, simply being around kids aged 2 to 4 will have given you good insight into their curiosity. Children of that age naturally turn into mini question cannons: “what’s this? How does that work? Why are my bogies green?”.
Some kids wake up with a question on their lips and only stop when they’re back to sleep once again! It’s often funny, sometimes fascinating, and frequently exhausting having a barrage of questions coming at you and we instinctively know that this is the way children learn. In fact, it’s how we ALL learn. A key difference is that whilst little people in the main ask their questions to bigger people, us bigger people increasingly ask Google. Our schools and workplaces take this natural curiosity with its myriad of questions and do their best to control it into some semblance of order. And so, the five year old starts school and learns very quickly that he or she cannot spew questions all day, that they need to have permission to ask something, usually by raising their hand. And having received that permission, that they will ‘take the floor’ with every eye on them and then lastly, the quality of their question is going to be assessed. Out of the blue, questions are assigned a status: “good question Jonny!” or a response that most of us will recall from our school days, a response that made us feel like we shouldn’t have asked: that our question was mis-timed, or an inconvenience, or just somehow the ‘wrong’ question.
Most of us learn to apply filters to what comes out of our mouths and for the shy or the unconfident, our questions mostly remain unasked from that point on. Learning is limited by that, it has to be, doesn’t it? If I don’t understand something and I don’t feel able to ask questions for fear of interrupting, or for any other reason, I’m going to make assumptions, take a guess with what understanding I do have. Progressing into world of work, we are often told that there is no such thing as a ‘dumb’ question, but we have ALL seen eye rolls and mutterings from co-workers when someone does come out with a question that everyone else does consider dumb. Adults often protect their vulnerability by pretending to be knowledgeable or competent at work, for fear of appearing what? Unknowledgeable and incompetent of course!
Just as one question, quite often leads to another, when questions are stifled or restricted, our curiosity muscle gets weakened and lazy. This can lead to us staying well within our comfort zone and there’s no growth or learning happening in that small space! I asked a client recently what was one of his nightmare scenarios. He said it would be having to go to a social occasion with strangers. I asked him what he would do in that situation, and he said he’d try and find someone he had something in common with. This is probably what most people would choose to do. I suggested that unless what you had in common was a real passion for something, rather than work or where you live, you were unlikely to learn something new or interesting from that kind of conversation. If instead you struck up conversation with someone who you had nothing in common with, or would normally never meet, then you have the makings of something interesting. To extract new knowledge or understanding, you usually need to ask good questions. Maybe we’ll explore some tips for asking powerful questions next time…
Article written by Sarah Kallend.
Sarah is an Emotional & Mental Health Therapist offering a variety of therapies at her base at Ogston Reservoir. You can find out more about Sarah at
