Sometimes one question can disturb a story we've spent years telling ourselves.
Some questions don't give us answers. They change what we can see.
For years I had a perfectly good explanation for why I pushed myself so hard, why achievement mattered so much and why I could be so bloody unforgiving of myself when I didn't quite get to wherever I'd decided I ought to be.
It was my dad's voice in my head.
I'd said it often enough over the years. It had become part of the story I told about myself. And it was a story that made sense to me.
Until someone who loved me asked a question.
“Is it your dad's voice, really? Or is it someone else's now?”
It was like a punch in the face.
Because, of course, I knew.
It wasn't his voice anymore. It was mine.
Nothing had changed about my history. My dad's influence hadn't suddenly disappeared. But an explanation I'd repeated so many times that I'd stopped examining it had been interrupted.
I was the one keeping that voice alive. And I wonder how often we do that.
We develop interpretations of ourselves, other people and the world around us. We notice patterns, draw conclusions and build explanations that help us navigate life.
We need to. It would be exhausting to approach every situation as though we'd never encountered anything remotely similar before.
But somewhere along the way, an interpretation can become so familiar that we stop recognising it as an interpretation.
It becomes what we know.
I'm just someone who needs to be busy. She's always been difficult. He doesn't cope well with change. That's how things work around here.
But when did we last examine them? What might have changed while we were busy repeating the same explanation?
I think that's where a genuinely good question can do something rather extraordinary.
It can interrupt.
Not necessarily dramatically. Sometimes it's a quiet question asked by someone who's noticed something we haven't, or who's simply curious about a conclusion we've reached.
But suddenly the familiar explanation isn't quite so settled.
And what becomes visible might be uncomfortable, surprising, relieving or even rather exciting.
The question about my dad's voice didn't suddenly transform me into someone wonderfully relaxed about achievement. I didn't wake up the following morning having abandoned every demanding expectation I placed on myself.
Because if I continued to believe it was entirely his voice, I could keep explaining my behaviour through something that happened long ago.
Once I recognised that it was now mine, I had something different to consider.
What was I doing with it?
Perhaps that's the movement I'm interested in.
Not necessarily movement towards an immediate answer or action, but movement in what we can see.
I've been thinking about how this happens between people, too.
We carry stories about those we've known for a long time. We think we know how they'll respond, what they'll want and what they're likely to do next.
Sometimes we're right. Sometimes we're so accustomed to seeing them in a particular way that we leave very little room for them to be different.
I wonder how often a conversation becomes an exchange between two sets of assumptions rather than two people genuinely curious about what's happening now.
I see versions of this in organisations, too. Teams can become so familiar with their explanations of how things work that nobody thinks to examine them.
Then someone asks, Is that still true?
And suddenly the conversation has somewhere else to go.
Of course, there's an important distinction between curiosity and simply asking questions because we want someone to reach our conclusion.
I know that temptation particularly well from coaching.
Sometimes I can see what looks to me like a perfectly sensible way forward for someone. I want to help, and before I know it a “Don't you think you should...?” has crept into the conversation.
It sounds like a question.
But it isn't really.
I've grabbed the steering wheel.
Usually with the very best of intentions, but I've grabbed it nonetheless.
And so I hand it back.
Because genuine curiosity asks me to be willing not to know what someone else's answer will be. To allow for the possibility that they might see something I haven't.
And sometimes, frankly, another bloody question is the last thing anybody needs.
If you have information I need, please tell me. If someone is frightened or overwhelmed, they may need something quite different from an invitation to examine their assumptions.
Curiosity matters. So does judgement.
But perhaps it's worth noticing when a question catches us off guard. When we become defensive. When a familiar story suddenly doesn't feel quite as convincing as it did five minutes earlier.
The question might have missed the mark completely.
Or it might have interrupted something we've stopped seeing.
I still remember the physical jolt of being asked whose voice was really in my head. The question didn't change my past or tell me what to do next.
But it changed what I could see.
And bloody annoyingly, once I'd seen it, I couldn't unsee it.
Bobby Davis is a qualified executive and team coach with extensive experience in organisational development, business change (the people angle), human resources and personal leadership.
Her coaching experience is against a backdrop of 30+ years working in managerial and human resources/OD roles in the British Army, Not for Profits, Professional Services and most recently with a private equity owned Hotel Group.
She has led the People “strand” within large business transformation programmes, creating people strategies, internal coaching schemes and embedding strong performance cultures, as well as supporting at all levels of an organisation to implement effective change.
She is absolutely passionate in her pursuit to support, challenge and deliver sustainable change for individuals, teams and organisations, one person at a time if necessary!
You can catch her for a chat about coaching, using your body better as a leader and/or supporting you in HR/OD here Bobby Davis FCIPD PCC | LinkedIn
And check out her dulcet tones in “More Than A Lumpy Jumper” - Conversations about Leadership, Life and Learning here More Than a Lumpy Jumper | Podcast on Spotify
