Welcome to the third episode of the powerful questions podcast. In this episode, I will introduce and talk about a new type of powerful question. This time, we’ll take a look at: “What gives life?”
The simplest way to “get” what this type of questions is all about, is by thinking of any house or garden plant you may have at home. If I asked you what gives life to that plant, chances are you’d know the answers straight away. You’d probably suggest that it was the water you gave the plant, the sunny spot you placed it in, the soil it was planted in and perhaps, if you added some fertiliser, that would have helped as well. Some of us even play music, sing or talk to our plants and could swear by the impact some tunes or an appreciative monologue can have on the wellbeing of our plants! All of these ingredients basically “gave life” to our plant and enabled it to flourish.
As in the previous two episode, what seems like a single and simple question to start with packs within it several possibilities, which I will help unpack for you. But before we do, let’s talk about where this question came from – for me at least.
I came across this question for the first time when I learnt about Appreciative Inquiry – AI in short. Appreciative Inquiry is an intentional posture of continuously searching, through inquiry and discovery, for the places or occasions where something desirable is happening - the experiences that fill us with joy or pride, or that propel us forward, or things that we appreciate because to us they represent beauty, excellence or innovation. Practising Appreciative Inquiry has massively helped me see that these type of experiences or ingredients in our lives are present everywhere, even in our most challenging or darkest moments.
Why do we bother to look for them? Because, people, teams, organisations and even communities or societies move in the direction of what they focus on and what they inquire about. For example, when groups wish to understand what creates current low levels of engagement in their group, they will find that, after a while, engagement becomes even worse. BUT, if a group studies what has kept people engaged over the years, who is currently engaged and why, engagement levels will rise.
A basic practice in Appreciative Inquiry, once we’ve decided what we wish to focus on, is to find when or where it is happening already, or where it has happened already, and then go deeper into inquiry by trying to understand what gives life to that experience. In other words, using the metaphor and example I mentioned earlier: what were the water, the sunshine, the soil or the fertiliser that helped higher engagement happen when it did or where it does. The inquiry itself will remind us what we did to achieve engagement, it will inspire us with some new ideas and help raise our energy levels. We can even imagine what the desired level of engagement could look like, and create innovative ways to mix the potent ingredients we identified to move towards that inspiring image.
When I first received the suggestion to search for what gave life to one of my best experiences, I found the question a bit odd. I wasn’t used to asking questions about the better parts of my life – at best, I just acknowledged their existence. I also found the language a bit odd – what do you mean by “What gives life?” You might find it a bit unusual yourself.
Thankfully, there are many alternative ways to pose that question and you might find some of them easier. For example, if you are asking about a good experience or a moment of high energy, you could ask, what or who made it possible? Or, what enabled that moment to occur?
If we’re talking about something new, innovative or surprising, we can ask, how it was introduced? Who helped it become real or available to us? How?
Other times, especially if it is an unusual experience, you could ask what allows or encourages it to happen in the middle of normal daily life or work experiences. There may have been a particular point when this good experience started. In that case, you could ask questions about the turning point before that success. What and who opened the door for that good moment? This can be a particularly powerful discovery because it creates awareness of the magical point before the big bang of success. Often, we forget about those turning points in our lives.
If we’re talking about a case of something successful that lasted for a while, we could look for what kept the progress going. What enabled continuous improvement or ongoing success over that period?
And we all know that life is not always a string of successful experiences, and that many of us experience challenging moments or unhappy times. You can still look for what has given you and others life amidst the challenges. What or who supported you, or even kept you alive and functioning during that challenging period? A good example of that is, if we think of our individual and collective experiences with Covid19, when so any of us experienced physical and mental health challenges or financial and job uncertainty – how did you as an individual, your family, your team, your business or your community manage to keep going, to overcome challenges, to handle what needed handling – and to come out of the other end of it? It’s one particular example of using our individual and collective strengths, and a great way to tap them is to ask these kind of questions.
You see, ‘life’ can show up, created or be given in many different ways and can be applied to individuals, teams, large groups, organisations or communities. Life is present in every moment of our personal, social, professional or community experiences. Inquiring more deeply into that element of life and what enabled it can yield many useful or inspiring insights.
So let’s talk about the impact and value of the “what gives life” type of questions:
Firstly, it creates greater awareness of strengths and resources we typically don’t notice, acknowledge or fully embrace, or that we take for granted. Recognising those strengths or resources enables us to experience their benefit more often. If we ask people in groups or even in whole organisations what gave life to their best moments and give them the opportunity to share their responses with each other, we can tap into a huge variety of strengths or resources which will enable us to create something very powerful, almost magical, which is an alignment of strengths. Such an alignment, as Peter Drucker, the management and leadership thought leader pointed out, is a great way to overcome our weaknesses.
And it is a very generative question. Asking it regularly can help create new ideas, confidence, it can “connect the dots” between people and create a myriad of new possibilities we can’t see until we start inquiring in this way.
Like with any other powerful question, it is important to consider how to pose it. First and foremost, it is essential to keep a sense of curiosity and fascination when asking someone what gives them, and the situations they are in, life. You might think you know the answer but what you know is less relevant. It is far more important that the person responding gets the opportunity to reflect on and articulate what exactly helped them achieve or create whatever the focus of the question is.
In addition, it is often important to probe into some of the initial responses you might get. For example, if I ask a person or a team about what enabled the moments of higher engagement they’ve had, they might initially say something like “we worked on a better project together”. That is fine as a starting point, but you really want to take them beyond that, so probe further by saying “tell me more”, or What was it about that particular project that was so helpful in engaging you?” etc. By probing into the responses, you and the person responding will gain surprising insights.
So, as we get to the end of this episode, let me of course ask you: what gave you life as you listened to the episode? What in particular did you find interesting? Inspiring? Surprising?
I wish you a life-giving day ahead!
