Ask to understand isn't about trying to lay out a gotcha scenario.
You explain what you see as the problem as clearly as possible, and you try to get the other person's view of what went wrong and why.
I use this often in a management role. You explain, explicitly, clearly, and carefully what you see as gone wrong, but not your perception of the intention behind it. In fact, you try to avoid having that perception or trying to guess the intention. That's management/working with other humans 101.
Then you ask probing questions to get at the why that choice was made/mistake happened.
The idea being that most people act in good faith and rarely make a complete fuck up out of maliciousness. They do it because of a lack of information or a lack or perspective or lack of training/knowledge, or because you as the manager lack one of those things and can't see the solution was actually a good solution.
You can fix the last four, you can't fix malicious. And asking questions reveals what the deficiency is.
If a manager makes that conversation into a 'gotcha' scenario without laying out what the issue is first and immediately, they're bad at their job.
And if an employee gets defensive about a fuck up, they're a bad employee.
I've had a wide range of work experiences, military and civilian, white and blue collar. "Ask to understand" as described in the article is something I mostly see in civilian white collar circles, and in my experience (both first and second hand), it usually plays out like this:
X has a problem with something Y did.
X: "So... talk to me about what happened yesterday? Help me understand."
Y at this point knows the following things:
- X didn't like what happened
- X won't tell Y what the problem is
- X has been thinking about this
- X wants an explanation from Y
All of which is far too cloak-and-dagger for effective team-building.
Every scholar of leadership from Thucydides to Simon Sinek has come to the same conclusion: that successful organizations are built on trust. Using the power of a supervisory position to coerce your reports into tipping their hands without you tipping your own is bad leadership.
Is it possible to ask questions and seek understanding in a more productive way? Sure. But that's just genuine empathy, which can and should be used regardless of management technique.
That's what I'm saying. Your interaction there is not a positive one, and it's based on a gotcha from a bad manager.
It should start more like this:
conversation happens between manager/managed who have built up a relationship based on trust via transparency in action and word over more than the last 12 hours
X: So yesterday [bad thing] happened, and it seems to be based on choices you made. My perception of what happened was [perception here]. I wanted to talk to you to see what the reason was, and let you explain why we did [choices].
This is, as you point out, called genuine empathy. We have to label it as 'ask to understand' (side note, I fucking hate Steven Covey), because so much management literature since the 1980's told us to remove empathy/sympathy and emotion. Injecting it back in, appropriately, is difficult for some people without a matrix or checklist.
The problem is, that checklist is often used as a substitute for the real work of managers - building relationships and guiding people to see they can do better, even when performing at their best.
if it happens like that you are right, but if i don't tell what the actual problem is than how can possibly expect any useful response? that just makes no sense. in other words without that explanation i am not actually asking to understand.
Comments
Ask to understand isn't about trying to lay out a gotcha scenario.
You explain what you see as the problem as clearly as possible, and you try to get the other person's view of what went wrong and why.
I use this often in a management role. You explain, explicitly, clearly, and carefully what you see as gone wrong, but not your perception of the intention behind it. In fact, you try to avoid having that perception or trying to guess the intention. That's management/working with other humans 101.
Then you ask probing questions to get at the why that choice was made/mistake happened.
The idea being that most people act in good faith and rarely make a complete fuck up out of maliciousness. They do it because of a lack of information or a lack or perspective or lack of training/knowledge, or because you as the manager lack one of those things and can't see the solution was actually a good solution.
You can fix the last four, you can't fix malicious. And asking questions reveals what the deficiency is.
If a manager makes that conversation into a 'gotcha' scenario without laying out what the issue is first and immediately, they're bad at their job.
And if an employee gets defensive about a fuck up, they're a bad employee.
I've had a wide range of work experiences, military and civilian, white and blue collar. "Ask to understand" as described in the article is something I mostly see in civilian white collar circles, and in my experience (both first and second hand), it usually plays out like this:
X has a problem with something Y did.
X: "So... talk to me about what happened yesterday? Help me understand."
Y at this point knows the following things:
- X didn't like what happened
- X won't tell Y what the problem is
- X has been thinking about this
- X wants an explanation from Y
All of which is far too cloak-and-dagger for effective team-building.
Every scholar of leadership from Thucydides to Simon Sinek has come to the same conclusion: that successful organizations are built on trust. Using the power of a supervisory position to coerce your reports into tipping their hands without you tipping your own is bad leadership.
Is it possible to ask questions and seek understanding in a more productive way? Sure. But that's just genuine empathy, which can and should be used regardless of management technique.
That's what I'm saying. Your interaction there is not a positive one, and it's based on a gotcha from a bad manager.
It should start more like this:
conversation happens between manager/managed who have built up a relationship based on trust via transparency in action and word over more than the last 12 hours
X: So yesterday [bad thing] happened, and it seems to be based on choices you made. My perception of what happened was [perception here]. I wanted to talk to you to see what the reason was, and let you explain why we did [choices].
This is, as you point out, called genuine empathy. We have to label it as 'ask to understand' (side note, I fucking hate Steven Covey), because so much management literature since the 1980's told us to remove empathy/sympathy and emotion. Injecting it back in, appropriately, is difficult for some people without a matrix or checklist.
The problem is, that checklist is often used as a substitute for the real work of managers - building relationships and guiding people to see they can do better, even when performing at their best.
if it happens like that you are right, but if i don't tell what the actual problem is than how can possibly expect any useful response? that just makes no sense. in other words without that explanation i am not actually asking to understand.