Incisive Questions

My first conscious experience of the power of an Incisive Question happened during my Thinking Partnership training back in 2014. It was so transformational that, from that very moment, I became a Thinking Environment ‘purist’ and have never looked back!

I have spent much of my life focusing on personal development, exploring different approaches, and working at understanding and removing unhelpful patterns of belief and behaviour that have limited me. Many of those approaches have enabled me to become more true to myself. But, as my patterns and inhibiting layers were peeled away, they were often accompanied by what I would call a ‘healing crisis’. For me, this is when I had managed to gain an intellectual understanding, which had started a release and realignment, but it had then taken a while to really work its way through my system. A bit of a rollercoaster that might have taken some time and given me an uncomfortable feeling, almost a ‘hangover’, before I found a new balance.

It was surprising and very exciting to find that reaching that Incisive Question on that day, not only took effect immediately, a clean shift to a new way of being, but actually gave me a burst of energy!

I had started from a place where the state of my relationship with my Dad meant that communication was difficult between us. It was coming to a head because I needed to talk to him about an important issue. I knew I was avoiding it, more than that, I just couldn’t face it. I was feeling a mixture of anger, anxiety and torpor, but I also knew that the conversation had to happen! In my thinking session it took the majority of my time to recognise that I had one deep-seated assumption that he would ‘reject me’. It was this one that was most stopping me from talking to my Dad.
As it came to light, I was overwhelmed by tears as I released those long-held feelings. I slightly regretted opening myself up to that degree as I suspected that this emotional overwhelm might carry on for a long time, it felt huge! In fact, it quickly subsided giving me some room for a fresh wave of thought in which I realised that life had moved on and that it was not actually true. The thing that leapt into my mind to replace that old assumption was that I knew that he ‘loved me’ and we would find a way through this.

After the session a part of me was still a little apprehensive about it all, but the opportunity for a conversation presented itself a few days later, and without hesitation I raised the issue. To my astonishment it flowed with ease and lightness! It was as though we were two different people. Looking back, I can see that because I had released that old assumption and considered new possibilities, it had actually changed the way that I behaved. I was able to be more assertive, I came from a place of believing that he would love me rather than reject me, and the whole shift of tone allowed my Dad to respond to me differently. I also now saw him more clearly and understood that it was about his filter on the world, his own vulnerabilities and a lack of his own coping mechanisms, that caused him to push his own anger and anxieties onto me. We actually communicate much more honestly and openly about many things now.

So where does the magic happen?

We have all constructed a very unique set of assumptions to help us to navigate, cope with, or simplify our own unique life circumstances and experiences. Our assumptions have helped us to get our needs met, to make sense of our world, or to fit in. And most of the time they do just that! But when they don’t, we need a way to unpick and untangle those assumptions that are holding us back.

In a Thinking Environment an Incisive Question is a very specific type of question that breaks through untrue and limiting assumptions lived as true. Those assumptions can be about who we are, how we ‘should’ be or how the world works. At the same time the Incisive Question actually goes much further and invites new possibilities.  
It is all about breaking an old thought pattern and replacing it with a blank page for something else that could be healthier and more useful to us. We don’t have to do it through will power, we just open the door a little to potential, we don’t even have to adopt it if we don’t want to. But when we have wholly engaged in the process, just the act of imagining a new possibility and letting it embed itself in our thoughts can truly change us, not just in terms of the way that we think, but also in the ways that we embody and enact those new potentials. If we do choose the new way of thinking it is with ownership and motivation, which is an extremely empowering place to approach the outcome that we originally desired.

But let’s just take a step back and recognise that this involves a lot of preparatory work, exploration and clarification. The Incisive Question is the end product of a much lengthier thought process.
Firstly, we have to have the time to get everything out onto the table before we can work out what we are trying to achieve or want to accomplish. Once we know what we are trying to move towards, only then can we identify the assumptions that are stopping or blocking us from doing that. Although we tend to focus in on the one assumption that is most stopping or blocking us, there may be many others that we have to take out, have a look at, and ask if they are true or not. This is a very useful exercise in itself, using the concept of assumptions as an exploratory tool.
After we have explored the one that is most stopping us from moving forward, to see if it is true or untrue, there is still more exploration to do. Either we need to find out why we think that assumption is true and perhaps discover a further untrue and limiting assumption which is hiding a little deeper, or we need to sit with the recognition of the untruth. And if necessary, when we can’t see past an assumption being true, we can imagine a new possibility or a more helpful assumption which could help us to work towards our desired outcome.
All of that work has to be done before we can build an incisive question.

This is the thought process that we explore when we take part in Thinking Partnerships or Thinking Environment Coaching. When we have the honour of witnessing this process unfold in these extended thinking sessions it is often without seeing the layers and the leaps that happen in the thinkers mind, because it can certainly be achieved by the Thinker doing their own independent thinking without any interventions. But where some support is needed there is a question framework that has been developed to mirror the questions that we seem to ask ourselves unconsciously, as part of our natural thought process. What is certain, when we stand back and look at how we arrived at the breakthrough, is that it is rarely a linear process.

We can ‘shoehorn’ people through it as an exercise, and it can work quite well. We can sometimes use our own broad-brush versions of Incisive Questions like ‘If you knew that you could be free to do it your way, how would you do it?’. They are still possibility generators that can help us to think outside of assumptions and limitations.

Having said all of that, over time I have come to believe more and more that to really unhook from those untrue and limiting assumptions we really do have to fully explore them, with all their nuances and entanglements, in our own way, in our own time, as they are ready to appear out of the waves and pauses of thinking. There is nothing like the penetrating focus of the words that have been defined and refined by the Thinker themselves to release them and to allow them to experience the realignment that follows. Framed by those simple but rigorous questions about desired outcomes, limiting, untrue assumptions and incisive questions, our own words are absolutely unique, loaded with meaning and transformational power.

So, before we get too excited about Incisive Questions and their amazing impact, perhaps using them to move ourselves and others towards solutions, thinking that it will speed things up, we should also very much remember that the Thinking Environment is about independent thinking! We should avoid focusing on ‘liberating’ people using Incisive Questions. We always have to ask the question “How far can a thinker go with their own thinking before they need mine?” and bring ourselves back to giving our generative attention without interruption. It is enough to hold a space where Incisive Questions are a concept that is valued and present. We can trust in the process and watch with curiosity and interest to see whether the Thinker creates their own Incisive Questions….