With TEDxMileHigh 2019 coming up this weekend, The Regis Company is taking a look back at Mike Vaughan’s 2015 TED Talk, which explored the power of questions. Mike focused on one of the 2009 global challenges facing humanity, “the capacity to decide,” by asking the audience to evaluate how they ask questions. Ten years later and “decision-making in response to rapid change” continues to be listed as one of the 15 Global Challenges facing the 21st century, making the need for critical question-askers more important than ever.
Developing the skill to ask “good” questions in order to create meaningful solutions to a problem takes practice. Most people think they ask good questions; however, according to Mike, most of the questions people ask expose superficial information. Good questions trigger deep thinking and provoke different emotions, which can include uncertainty, fear, and anxiety. Good questions require vulnerability.
So, why should we take the risk of making ourselves so vulnerable? It’s because asking questions that surface deeper thoughts and feelings is an invitation to build connections, understanding, and empathy—the foundations for addressing global challenges as a global collective.
For Regis, this means developing leaders who lead by questions… “not by questioning, but [by] asking questions that [inspire] others to think about what they could do and not what they should do.” We believe that everyone has the capacity to build meaningful conversations and to tackle important problems by asking questions that matter. Everyone has the potential to be a leader. All it takes is a little vulnerability and committed practice.
So, what great question did you ask today?