Are You in Judger Mode or Learner Mode?
There are many things to like about Marilee Adams book Change Your Questions, Change Your Life (here). Written as a business parable, this book explores the role of asking questions and curiosity in effectiveness at work and in life. Routinely in my coaching and training practice, I use many of her
particular questions as well as her idea of Q-storming (brainstorming with questions) to help clients become more creative and less stuck.
One of the most useful distinctions in the book is the distinction Adams makes between judging and learning. Oftentimes, someone behaves in a manner we are unaccustomed to or tells us something unfamiliar, and we immediately judge it, oftentimes as something bad. This is entirely natural, as human beings we are “living-breathing assessment machines,” and the making of assessments and judgments is part of our evolutionary apparatus that once protected us from harm on the savanna.