Greg McKeown:
Welcome back, everybody. I’m your host, Greg McKeown. I am here with you on this journey to learn how to live a life that really matters, how to connect with the people who really matter, how to be able to have the conversations that really matter most, and so I’m so delighted to be back here for part two of my conversation with Topaz Adizes. He is an Emmy Award-winning writer, director, visionary, all of those marvelous things. His tremendous video work has been captured in film festivals like at Cannes and Sundance and IDFA and South by Southwest, and so many more.
In the first part of our conversation, we talked about why we should try to be able to have these more meaningful conversations with the people who matter.
Some of the things that get in the way of being able to do that the sense of discomfort, the sense of not having created a space to be able to even do this. And we also talked about what we would need to do in physically creating a space and then using the card games that Adize has created to be able to initiate the kinds of conversational moments that actually unite us, bring us closer together, help us to be able to feel safe enough to be unsafe together so that we can be vulnerable about the things that are so valuable but so often lie hidden below the surface.
In this conversation, we’re going to get into the practical things. Some of the specific questions that you can ask as you try to create conversations that really matter.
Topaz, welcome back to the show.
Topaz Adizes:
Greg, good to be here. Good to continue this conversation.
Greg McKeown:
Through a process of years, selected through your own curiosity. Questions you felt would most likely lead to a deep conversation, a curative conversation, with two people that matter to each other, and then, as you experimented with them, you were able to curate the ones that really worked the best, and you took those best questions and you put them into this card game, a series of card games, and then, of course, you’ve written a book now selecting 12 of those questions that you feel are most valuable, and I wonder if you could just start walking us through those questions.
Topaz Adizes:
I mean, 12 Questions for Love came out of, you know, the editors. Who’s a fan of The Skin Deep for years said, “Topaz, can you distill down? What are the 12 best questions and why? Why do they work to create a cathartic conversation?”
In any intimate relationship, partner, parent, family, sibling, best friend. And besides the space there’s how do you construct a good question and what is the right sequence? There’s a sequence to it, much like from filmmaking. You know there’s a five-act structure. It’s a three-act, five-act structure in this case. The 12 questions to take you on a journey such that the last question can be answered. The last question is, why do you love me? Would be answered so much more profoundly because of the journey you had been on than if you just asked out of the blue, why do you love me?
Greg McKeown:
Good grief. That’s so great.
Topaz Adizes:
There is a, so there is an exponential thing. There’s a compounding effect to the questions when they’re in conjunction in a certain sequence with others. So I talk about that in the book and we can talk about that here also. The construction of the question. What’s key to understand is that we prime the answer by the question we ask. Much like a race course is shaped by the race, the course it’s run on or driven on, the answer is shaped by the question that is asked. Let me give an example.
Greg McKeown:
Yeah, no. I mean, I was thinking maybe the very first example of the 12, like, what’s the first question? Well, but maybe there’s a different one that’s better.
Topaz Adizes:
I mean, we can look. If you’re looking for a bang effect is to, like, okay, impressive question. We go to the climactic question, number seven, and that is: What’s the pain in me you wish you could heal and why? What is the pain in me you wish you could heal and why?
Number eight is what is one experience you wish we never had, and why? Those are what I find to be in this structure the most powerful questions, but they’re on an architecture of the previous six that bring you to the space and we can talk about those, like the very first one. The very first question is: What are your three favorite memories we share, and why do you cherish them?
Greg McKeown:
What are three favorite memories we share, and why do you cherish them?
Topaz Adizes:
And see, this goes to the architecture. The question is not a remarkable question, but something that’s going to impress you. But in the context of the architecture, we start in the past. We start in what are the memories that the synergy that is unique to our relationship has created because it has created things in the past, and it will create things in the future, just like it’s creating things in the moment. And so the first three questions speak about the synergy of our mutual love and respect that’s really harped on in the past.
Greg McKeown:
What good things have happened in the past? That’s not what you’re saying. I was trying to restate it. So, what am I getting wrong?
Topaz Adizes:
Because good things suggest like an output and that suggests a transaction, and that’s and that’s not. I’m not going for a transaction relation. We’re going for a relationship of which we are being in it, and from our being, certain events or certain memories are created so experiences. What are the experiences that we shared, that we could not have shared if we weren’t together? Right?
Greg McKeown:
What are those three questions, then? So those are, those are kind of together.
Topaz Adizes:
What are your three favorite memories we share, and why do you cherish them? Then we move to what was your first impression of me and how has that changed over time? Now, why is that interesting? Because it harks back to the past. What was your first impression? What was that first thing that drew you in? And how have I changed over time to the now? Because between the first time we met and who we are now, our story has changed. My perception of you has changed; I have changed. Are we acknowledging that? So it’s a shout-out, it’s a reminder of what brought us together and it’s a starting of digging around. How are we shifting since then? What has changed?
And then the third one. So, this closes the first act. If you will, this is a five-act. The closing of the first act is a third question: When do you feel closest to me?
Now, what that does is it brings it closer, the past to the present. What are the things that happen now where you feel closest? And the individuals will find themselves to go to the moment where they feel close, and that physiologically starts opening up a sense of love and intimacy. Right, so, much like when you ask what’s your favorite memory. I mean that’s going to open up also a sense of love and intimacy and trust. So the first act one, the first three questions really are bringing out the foundations of why are we together? What is unique about our connection? What is at stake?
Greg McKeown:
I love that. So that’s act one.
Topaz Adizes:
Act two is conflict. How do we handle conflict, and what is it doing?
Now, we’re warming up to the peak, which is the climax. Seven and eight, which I’ve already mentioned. So, let’s go to number four. This is the beginning of act two. What are you hesitant to ask me, and why? Where are we not shining the light of our relationship? Or we’re not talking about; we’re not bringing it because we’re hesitant. There are other versions of this, so, throughout the book.
Greg McKeown:
What can’t we talk about?
Topaz Adizes:
What do you or what are you hesitant to ask me? What are you hesitant to tell me? What do you think I’m hesitant to ask you? So, in this book, I offer 12 questions. I promise you that if you ask these 12 questions to your partner, you’ll have an incredible conversation. In the back of the book, I offer you other questions to ask that can be replaced in any of these acts. Right, and more importantly, I can explain why these questions work.
Greg McKeown:
Yes, I understand.
Topaz Adizes:
But number four, what are you hesitant? So, where are we not talking? What is lingering there that we’re not that? Okay, right now is not a big deal, but soon, it becomes question five. That thing that we’re hesitant can become, what is the biggest challenge in our relationship right now, and what do you think it is teaching us? What’s interesting…
Greg McKeown:
They’re such well-formulated questions, and actually, that really is why we even have this conversation happening between you and I. I’m being meta for a second, but it was when I read those questions that I thought behind these questions is a real curator.
So a lot of people come to you through these videos, and in a sense, I wish I had too, because it’s been going on for so long, and it’s such a great human experiment, and it’s doing so much good in the world too.
I don’t know if you know the story, but Jony Ive, living in England, when he first used the first Macintosh by Apple, had a connection beyond the technology. He could feel that the product had been created by someone who cared beyond the actual technical abilities of the machine, and so the questions were like that to me and that’s where we led here. But these are very carefully thought-through questions. I know these are just a curated set of a much broader set of questions. Of course, that makes sense, but please continue now. it.
Topaz Adizes:
But let’s just focus on; I just want to…
Greg McKeown:
Riff on that. Please go ahead.
Topaz Adizes:
Yeah. But as we go through these questions, I just want to point out the power of the question, and that’s a cliche we all hear, but let me point out especially this is take-home value for anybody who is in a relationship or running a company.
Okay, when you ask a question, you are priming the answer. So if I drop an F-bomb or say the S-word, you know, in my question, that automatically gives permission, though it might come off as aggressive, but that gives permission for the other person to respond also with an F-bomb as and therefore break the rules of formality.
If I ask a formal question, I will get a formal answer. If I ask an informal question, I will get an informal answer. What I’ve learned from. So what do you want? Then, ask a question that can help you get what, in theory, what you want. I’m not saying this is transactional, but if you want to have a real conversation, then ask a real question that’s rooted in curiosity and have the conviction to ask. You know what the hell is our biggest challenge right now and what do you think that is?
And that’s what two is. We give a lot of power in the question. So, if you’re going to go to your partner and say, “Why do we have a lack of trust in our relationship?”
If you ask that question A, you’re saying that there’s a lack of trust. So you’re already an arbiter of truth because you’re saying there’s a lack of trust. And secondly, you’re also giving them the power to be the arbiter of truth because you’re not saying why do you think or why do you feel. You’re saying why do we have a lack of trust? And therefore, they’re going to say this and then they’re not arguing from their perspective of feeling. They’re arguing as though they’re the arbiter of truth, and that is already setting up a conversation of conflict. Instead, all you have to do is say, “Hey, why do you feel that I feel we have a lack of trust in our relationship?”
Greg McKeown:
It’s such a distinct difference and this idea of allowing somebody to be an arbiter of truth is that’s a. You used it almost as if it’s an example of something to avoid. I mean, I think that is sort of the context for it. But that is a huge issue. If you are in any relationship in which, either because you have given that power or because someone has taken that power to be the arbiter of truth, this goes to me about as close to the absolute foundation of relationship as exists because it’s like the difference between I try to say what is true versus what I say is the truth. I make the truth by what I say versus I try to express in my words an external truth, and that is not nothing what we’re talking about.
Topaz Adizes:
Let me articulate that in a different way. I think you can state the truth of your experience and feeling. It’s much more difficult to state the truth of our mutual experiences and feeling.
Greg McKeown:
Well, I agree, it’s just the difference between like. I mean, there is a kind of psychological way of reading an idea in the Bible where you say you know the power of the word right, the redeeming word, that is, to speak what you really believe is true, how important that is to try to speak the truth as you see it and as you understand it. And then there’s an alternative way, a completely contorted upside-down idea, which is it’s like I am God because what I say is the truth.
And one is toxic and one is curative.
Topaz Adizes:
Well, one is objective, and one is subjective. And when you have the pressure of objective truth, which means it’s objective, means it’s true for you, true for me, true for everyone that’s imposing a lot of the truth on everyone else, on their subjective point of view. I do a beautiful little thing when I go to schools, and I talk about truth in high schools and schools. I pull out a quarter, right, and I’ll hold the quarter between two students, one. On either side of the quarter were two different students, and I asked the student, “What do you see?”
And he says a quarter.
I said to the other student, who was on the other side, “What do you see?”
“A quarter.”
I go, “Okay, but what do you really see?”
And they look, and they say, “I see an eagle, tails.”
And I say the other one, “I see heads.“
“Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You both see a quarter, right?”
“Yes.”
“But you see tails, you see heads. So where’s the truth? Because you’re seeing different things.”
And what I, if I ask them, what you know, if the arbitrary of your subjective truth is this is your feeling you’re experiencing. You’re seeing tails, you’re seeing heads. You know, I’m seeing a lack of trust in a relationship. I’m seeing this; this is my experience, and we don’t have to argue about my experience. We can argue about what are we doing about it. We can argue about why am I having it, right? And I think that a lot of times, by virtue of our questions, we create up scenarios where we are going to be in more conflict and more in a round circle and then actually spending the energy to resolve it or get closer.
Greg McKeown:
100%. If we’re speaking in terms of this is what I say. Is the truth? Then, it is inherently. It’s like true competition has been produced because now the fight is over. Who has the control of the truth rather than, let’s understand. You share what your experience is and I’ll try and make sense of what you’re saying, and I’ll share some of my experiences. And let’s each be the meaning makers. What does this mean for each of us? Let’s learn together. It’s a very different thing than somebody just telling you what the truth is.
Topaz Adizes:
Yes. Exactly. And let’s bring it home to the power of the question.
Greg McKeown:
Yes.
Topaz Adizes:
If you ask someone, “Why is our business failing? Why is our love failing?”
You are putting them in a position of arbitrary truth. And then the argument is around is that the reason? Versus, just by saying, why do you feel or why do you think? You’re not going to argue about whether that’s you’ll say that’s their opinion. Great, I got that. And so the power of the question is how we shape it because that shapes the answer and the possibilities that exist.
Greg McKeown:
But there’s a gem here, and you keep saying it so quickly. I want to make sure I’m not missing it. It’s that you add in the phrase “Why do you feel?” You know what else…”
Topaz Adizes:
What do you think? Why do you feel?
Greg McKeown:
What is it that you feel about this? Why do you think that it’s this?
Topaz Adizes:
What, in your opinion?
Greg McKeown:
What, in your opinion, is this?
Topaz Adizes:
What, in your opinion, is this? What in your experience, right? So that’s just these slight things, and that’s why I say the power of the question is a cliche, but you wield so much power in how you shape the question, and we can talk more about this because, for me, my suggestion, my bottom line, is we should all stop looking for answers, and we should just focus our energy on creating better questions.
Greg McKeown:
Keep going on this movie storyline here.
Topaz Adizes:
So, just in terms of shaping the question, is that if you start any question, was, is, are or do, whatever comes after that, that question is asking a binary question.
Is this the right thing to do? Are we happy, you know? Do you want to go to the to do this? You are already by saying is, are, or do, you’re already setting up an answer. That’s a binary answer. So just be aware of that. Like, if you can just change the beginning of, you already know you get a more interesting answer if you start the question with what or how, or why. Right, so just to be aware. That’s what I mean by the power of the question is that we shape the answer, the possibilities,
Greg McKeown:
Okay, okay. So staying on that though. So, staying on that. Now, what is the way you start a question? If you are going to make somebody else the arbiter of truth, what is that?
Topaz Adizes:
What do you mean?
Greg McKeown:
Well, we’ve just said that if you ask a question, with what, in your experience, has led to this and why do you feel this, and why do you have the opinion that this is right, that adding that removes the dynamic of somebody else being the arbiter of truth. So, how do you ask a bad question that makes them the arbiter of truth? Is it just never? It’s just not put in words.
Topaz Adizes:
No, no. It’s like, “Why do we fight so much? Why do we fight so much? Why is our company failing? Why isn’t this working? What should we do?”
So those questions are setting you up as you’re going to be the arbiter of truth, decision making. What I was suggesting here with is are and why. That’s a separate thing about. Don’t ask binary questions, yeah.
Greg McKeown:
Yeah, I understand the difference between the binary and so on, but now that we’re going into the specific formulation of the question, I don’t want to miss this because we’ve been taught most people have been taught you’ve got to ask questions. I don’t think very many people have been taught to formulate questions, really, how to formulate them, and which element of a question will formulate a certain kind of question. I mean, you have spent 10 years doing something that is unusual, and it’s rare, but of course, it’s powerful. If we say that asking questions matters, if we say that asking the right questions is hugely important, but then we don’t know how to construct questions, I mean, that’s a missing piece. I mean the how.
Topaz Adizes:
I want to give you right now five things – top line. Number one, don’t make it binary. We just discussed that, okay. Two, this is a big one. I’ll just hit the big one right here. Two in, we’re talking about the context relationship. Make sure that in the question, you’re acknowledging the two people in the conversation or the three people. What do I mean by that? If I ask you a question, “Greg, what scares you, what scares you the most?”
Okay. And if your wife says, “Greg, what scares you the most.” And the bartender says, “What scares you the most?” and your answer is the same. It doesn’t acknowledge the people asking the question.
If, instead, I said, “Greg, what do you think scares us the most? What fears do you think we share?” If I ask you that question and your wife asks you and the bartender, you will answer those questions completely differently because it acknowledges the relationship and the people.
Greg McKeown:
I love that.
Topaz Adizes:
So, number two is ask a question that acknowledges the connection, and we rarely do that in our questions. A lot of the products out there are like what do you think about love? Well, you can talk for hours about that; it has nothing to do with me. How do you think we feel about love differently and the same? Well, it’s acknowledging our connection. So ask a question that acknowledges the people, the participants in the conversation.
Three questions shape the answer. Why are we shaping questions that are disempowering and lead us to a dark place and that are not constructive? Why do we fight so much? Okay, your mind will give you a litany of reasons why we fight so much, but, like here, question five: What’s the biggest challenge in our relationship right now and what is it teaching us? Okay, what is it teaching us? There’s an empowerment there. We can come out of that, right? How does conflict make us better? Okay, so ask questions that are constructive.
Four is trying to connect two disparate ideas that we don’t normally put together. Greg, what does earning money cost you? Right? We don’t usually put earning money costing you something. What is the downside? These questions are not perfect in a relationship, but they’re good examples of what I mean by putting two things that are separate together. What’s your favorite memory from your worst relationship? What is your favorite memory from your worst relationship? How often do you think about that?
Asking questions that put two different it’s like connecting two different neural nodes in the head together in the brain. A flip side of that is also asking questions, and this is something you’d love because you’re a fan of Carl Rogers is creating empathies by putting the other person in your shoes or them in yours. Greg, what do you think is the hardest thing? Being your friend? Now you have to think about them in relation to you and what must be their experience being your friend. Asking questions that put other people in each other’s shoes creates a great deal of empathy and understanding.
And last, when we ask these questions, let’s not come at it with an agenda, right? It’s much harder for someone to really answer and be vulnerable and share and actually be open if you put them up against the wall. So those are the five things.
Greg McKeown:
What was that very last one? I’ve been taking notes.
Topaz Adizes:
Agenda, agenda Don’t come at someone with an agenda. There’s a joke in lawyers that says don’t ask a question you don’t know the answer to. How many times are you in a relationship? Whenever you’re in a relationship, and someone asks you a question you know, you can feel that they already know the answer to and they’re setting you up like it’s a chess move. You’re not really going to answer the question. Answer the question; you’re just playing chess now. So if you’re going to ask a question, it’s got to come from a place of curiosity, without an agenda, actually really creating the space for them to be who they are and answer it in a way that’s true for them.
Greg McKeown:
Yeah, I think I want to just think about that last question. I’ve been thinking a lot about the balance between the tension between having an agenda and being open, and that’s a subtle difference because, obviously, there is a difference between having no agenda and being open. But I was just listening to a conversation with a diplomat who expressed it this way as a diplomat, you’re leaving and representing a country, so you have to still remember. He said what team you’re on while also being completely open to the people that you’re there and what you’re learning, and I thought that tension was there was something useful in maintaining that because, in life, we do have these agendas. So it’s maybe something like, for me now, be aware of your agenda, hold that here, or maybe you shelve the agenda for a while, but you are aware of it and then construct okay,.
Topaz Adizes:
Well, look. I’m offering people the guidelines for how to have a conversation you are intimate with, not just romantic, but intimate so that they can deepen their relationship.
If you’re going to have a negotiation…
Greg McKeown:
That’s the agenda.
Topaz Adizes:
That’s the agenda, that’s the intention, but you know, if you’re going to have a negotiation or you’re going to have to be a diplomat, for god’s sake, I would hope you’d have an agenda, and you’re going to play that game. It’s a different kind of game, right? And so what I’m saying is if you’re going to your partner, are you going to someone that you work with but you want to have a deeper relationship with? It’s not just transactional. We need to ask questions that come from a place of curiosity, without agenda, because everyone feels it when there’s agenda and they don’t open, they close.
Greg McKeown:
Well, I don’t know why it matters so much to me, but it seems to me that it is having an agenda, but the agenda is the relationship, and so it’s not having a private agenda, it’s having an intent. I want to understand us.
Topaz Adizes:
I think let’s just parse that. I think that we should give a distinction. We could create one here. There probably is a great one between agenda and intention, and they might have. My intention here is to have a deeper conversation. How we do it and how we get there, I don’t have an agenda for, right? Oftentimes, in a relationship, you’re right, so my intention, so that’s okay. The agenda might be the outcome and how, but the intention is what sets the space. That should be clear, and that could be right, so like so sometimes, yeah, that I think is a big distinction.
Greg McKeown:
So for our conversation at least, here we’re saying an agenda is I already have the outcome, the solution to the thing that I want, already ready, and I’m just going through a pretense of a conversation before trying to make sure that you come to the conclusion I’ve already come to. So that’s what we mean by agenda versus intent, and I do think those are nice ways of passing this and certainly enabling us to understand what we mean and intent is. Look, I want to come up with solutions, I want to enrich our relationship, but I haven’t defined that it has to be this way. This is the answer prior to the conversation. So yeah, I love that.
What other specific? So you just went through these five criteria for question selection, but you have shared, in addition to that, two specific micro-skills for the actual formation of the questions. So the criteria you’ve just given me is criteria by which I could judge a question, and it’s certainly intent that I could have. But you have an expertise beyond this because, for example, on binary, you said well, if you’re using…let me just get it. If you say is, are, or do, you’re asking a binary question, and how, why, what. If you say is, are, do you’re asking a binary question. And how, why, what, when means that you’re making the other person the arbiter of truth.
Topaz Adizes:
No, no, no, no, no, no, no. The arbiter of truth. It’s just creating that there’s not going to be a binary answer. There’s going to be some type of specific answer. There’s going to be some type of specific answer. The arbitrary truth comes. Just listen to what is or what are, just go, just add, do you think or do you feel, or in your opinion, just add those bits, and then they’re just the arbitrary of their own subjective truth.
Greg McKeown:
Yeah, yeah, okay, I love that. So, really, the difference is adding those little extras before, but those are now. We’re almost at a sort of Mad Lib level of understanding when you have deconstructed to that level because now somebody else can pick up those tools and immediately apply them to a question that they want to ask. That’s in the book.
Topaz Adizes:
Yeah, that’s in the book. That’s why the book is great because where do we learn this? Where do we actually learn to have better conversations and ask better questions? We don’t.
Greg McKeown:
What other deconstructed Mad Lib level tools do you have for formulating questions that support these five criteria for great questions?
Topaz Adizes:
The other tool I have is more for individual questioning what happens when you’re stymied. So, I have three tools for what you do when you’re stymied, and you have a challenge, and this is what comes back to you.
Don’t focus on the answer. Focus on the question. So how? And this happens to a lot of us. We are stuck in. We cannot crack the code on this question. You’re stuck in a question when should we live? What are we going to do about this? What should our strategy be? What is the mission of the company? Where should we go on vacation? What should I do with the remaining 10 years of my life? Okay, well, how do I build my business? To go explore whatever? Okay, well, you’re stymied. You’re thinking about that for hours. You’re running in circles. It’s like stop, just stop. It’s not, that’s not helpful. Take all your attention and put it on the question. Focus on the question and create a better question.
Instead of thinking about how and what, you think about why and you go back to the now three ways to do it. Number one, when I just had a phone conversation with someone, and I said look, I don’t want to spend time talking about the tactics strategy because we don’t even know. If that’s what you really want to do, let’s just do this.
Then, what I tell people is to create 50 questions, and there are three parts to a really good question that you ask yourself. One is time. Give it an aspect of time. So, just imagine three blank fields. The first field is time. In three months, in two weeks, in five years, in 10 years, in the next 25 years, in three months, in two weeks, in five years, in 10 years, in the next 25 years, in the next six weeks.
Okay, the second field is how does it make me feel? Vital, challenged, uncomfortable, safe, secure, right, vibrant, physically, whatever. Feel that. Second.
The third one is how does it affect others? Supports my community, supports my family, inspires others more intimate with my partner, and elevates the workplace. It supports others. It affects others. The first one is time. The second one is how I feel. The third one is how it affects others.
Create 50 questions when you just put in different things in those three slots and then look at those lists of 30 to 50 questions and circle the one that you want to answer, one that you’re most inspired by, and I promise you the answer will be that much, it will be so clear.
It’s kind of like your 85% right in your first book. Like, instead of spending all the energy on the answer that your bank is like no, no, no, stop. Focus on a great question. Create a great question, and the answer will be clear. It’ll be instead of. You know. You’ll have you create the answer then, and it’s so much more empowering. That’s one of the three tools I suggest when you’re stymied, personally.
Greg McKeown:
Yeah, these are just terrific. I mean there’s I mean it’s interesting to me and I want to get back to this movie version of this question. We need to complete that, and it’s interesting to me to think of your expertise as having two sets of competence. I think this is actually very interesting. To me, it’s interesting, I think it could be useful to you too, because, on the one hand, you have developed the actual questions right. That’s the card games. Here is the solution. Here are the questions that you can ask to build this deep connection and intimacy with people who you love.
Okay, that’s what the book primarily is. Certainly, that’s the way the book is framed: 12 Questions for Love. But there is this other competence, which is question formation and formulation and curation, and I think that’s extremely valuable. I really think this is certainly something I am absolutely taken with. It’s something I’m researching right now. It’s something I’m studying. That’s something I’m researching right now. It’s something I’m studying.
I mean it is already valuable to remind people, as you just did ask better questions. Remember, don’t focus only on the answers. Look back at the questions, and then you can up the ante by saying well, don’t just ask more questions. Ask the right questions. You know, it’s not just quantity; it’s quality of questions. I mean, all of that’s right, but it’s so much telling.
Okay, great, “Let’s ask the right questions!”
Now what?
There’s not much that’s been written that I have been able to get my hands on. That really deconstructs how to ask better questions. It’s more like somebody has found that somebody else asked a good question. They say, “Well, I’ve learned that it’s really useful to ask,” I mean, this is my own example. “It’s really useful to ask teams and individuals what is your essential intent. What is the one most important thing, the priority you want to achieve over the next X amount of time, and so on.” Well, that question has already been formulated. It exists, and I’m offering it like the business cards rather the cards that you have in your business, but to teach people how to construct questions that can open up new possibilities and can guide them.
Topaz Adizes:
Thank you. So that’s the initial impetus of the book. It’s 12 questions for love. Yes, you can ask these 12 questions. Yes, you’ll have an incredible conversation, but what’s more important is not that you’re getting the fish, but that you learn how to fish, learn how to construct the questions, you learn the power of the questions. Where to put your energy and attention? And that’s really the reason I find it so important that I hope lies in the utility of the book.
Greg McKeown:
It’s your next project, though, because the framing will matter, right, like help, and I don’t know the right, precise framing for you because I don’t know where the connective tissue needs to exist between where people you know your future readers will be so that they understand. Yes, I need to know how to construct questions, but I’m thinking of the book that’s done well and is, it’s called, A More Beautiful Question. I mean that that alone is that’s an attempt at what we’re talking about. But I think, I think I think the book we’re discussing right now does not exist.
The actual structure, you know, like you don’t say to people, “Write an essay,” before you say, “Here are letters, here are words, here is a sentence, here’s how to construct a sentence, here’s how to construct a paragraph, here’s how to construct an argument, a thesis, here’s how you build the evidence. Now you can do an essay.”
You can’t jump to write an essay, but this is what we do with questions. We say, well, it’s like we, you know, after having got people 20 years in education, maybe not as much as 20, maybe we’re saying more like 15, 60 years of education. Now, it’s not about answering questions anymore. Now, you need to come up with questions. That’s as far as we go. I don’t think we construct the, we do not give the tools with which somebody can construct the question, the lego bricks of question making. Yeah, go ahead.
Topaz Adizes:
That’s me going back to my point when I said where do we learn this? Because there’s a great deal of power in the yielding of the question, and so one reason why we don’t learn this in school we don’t know other than what you model in your families and whatnot, and family groups is because there’s a lot of power in the. The answer is shaped by the question, and so a lot of us are asking societally programmed questions.
Greg McKeown:
Oh, I agree with that. Yes, yeah, of course.
Topaz Adizes:
And I hear what you’re saying about the construction of the question. I’m just yeah, yeah, yeah. Is this your next book? Is this what you’re saying? Are you setting up that your book is going to tell people how to write questions? Is that what you’re saying?
Greg McKeown:
There is a chapter that I am currently I’ve been working on for years, but I am currently working on again specifically on questions and formulating them and so on then, specifically on questions and formulating them and so on. But in the process of doing it and now because we’re having this conversation as well, I am more animated within myself and more convicted that we simply don’t have it. And I think, although I think there’s many reasons that schools teach people how to answer questions, there’s a lot of reasons for that. I think one of the reasons that you don’t reward for questions is because it’s just like we just don’t have a curriculum for it.
Topaz Adizes:
But the power is yielded by the question asker.
Greg McKeown:
Yes, okay. So if that’s true, then okay, maybe you, definitely. Maybe it’s by design that you don’t offer the question formulation tools, but I’m not convinced that the people who are creating the curriculum for schools are themselves that if you actually then challenge them, if you say, “Okay, I’m going to pay you now, I pay you a million dollars to write a course on how to construct questions as elementary as. Here are letters, here are words, here is a sentence, here’s a paragraph like building up to how you could ask the right question.” I’m not convinced that they could do it. I mean, of course they could go away and look work on it, but it’s, it’s just an area of knowledge, I think, that has been is a path less traveled by.
Topaz Adizes:
Yeah, I mean, I agree with this. I’m a witness to that by all the productions we have. When people walk into a room or when I hear back about people playing the end card games. I go, “Wow, these are, these are incredible questions. I haven’t asked this before.” And therefore, your mind, which is there to serve and answer the question, to chase down any stick you throw, a stick being a question, will find the answer. It goes, “Oh, I haven’t run this track before. I haven’t connected these two ideas. I haven’t asked that of myself before. Oh my God, look at the room of exploration here.”
Now put that in the context of a relationship. Oh my God, look at this connection. We was there, but we didn’t see, we didn’t feel, and that gives you vibrancy, that gives you fulfillment of your life and of your relationship, and that’s why it’s worthwhile having these conversations.
Greg McKeown:
I love all of it. I really could go, you know, geek out further and go deeper on these questions. There’s more. I go, you know, geek out further and go deeper on these questions. There’s more, I think you know, than we’ve been able to tap into in this conversation. Carry us through with this movie the different acts of these twelve questions.
Topaz Adizes:
So we were in the middle of the second act, and so we just read question five, which was: What is the biggest challenge in our relationship right now? What do you think it is teaching us? Then, we go to number six, which is the end of act two. It’s what is the sacrifice you feel you’ve made that I haven’t acknowledged, and why do you think that is? What is the sacrifice you feel you’ve made? So it’s not that you’ve made. You feel you made it. So there’s not. There’s no argument over where it was made, right that that I haven’t acknowledged.
So then it’s, and this is interesting because he goes, “I have acknowledged it.”
They say, “Well, you haven’t acknowledged it.”
But there’s a little kind of safekeeping here in the shape of the question. And why do you think that is? Because that puts the person who’s answering it in my shoes. That didn’t acknowledge it. Right?
So I can go deep and say, “You didn’t acknowledge it because you know you’re a narcissist or you’re this or that. And why do I think you did that? Well, maybe because it reminds you of this trauma as a kid, or maybe because in the past relationship, or maybe because you were so busy at work, you didn’t realize it.”
So it creates a space of empathy because it’s balanced, and therefore, because it’s balanced, it also allows you to go deeper.
So those are the three questions I didn’t act to. And what do you notice? Hesitant is something that we haven’t brought light to. The biggest challenge is right now, what is it teaching us, right? And then what happens to the small thing that doesn’t get addressed? What happens to the big thing that doesn’t get addressed now and someone? Don’t just solve it and have to sacrifice or take a bigger. Then it becomes a sacrifice that we didn’t acknowledge and that becomes a big thing. That’s basically a cancer growing. So that second act is how do we deal with these small growing conflicts and right cancer’s come? Now you’ve dealt around that.
Now, we step into what I call the climax act. Three, which is the peak, is number seven. What is the pain in me you wish you could heal and why? And this is really this; there’s always a pause, and this is what the book is. I’m taking you through the book, and I reference it in the book, like here is an example of a pair from our library of over 12 asking this question. You can watch them here, you can see, and you can see throughout our you know answers. Often it was an example of what happens when you ask that question and if you think about it, so there’s an exploration in that. Eight is: What is one experience you wish we never had and why? So that’s the climax. Those are the two peaks.
Now, we need to start landing the plane. We’ve gone there. We’ve really shared something vulnerable. Now we’ve got a question nine, what I call landing the plane.
Act four, what do you think you’re learning from me? What do you think you’re learning from me? This is an opportunity for gratitude, for acknowledgement, for appreciation, because, at the end of the day, this other person is there with you. They’re sitting through that discomfort, that uncomfortable conversation.
Number 10, second part of landing the plane of act four, what is one experience you can’t wait for us to share and why? This is talking about the future. Where are we going together? Now, we start resolving at the very end.
These two last questions are, in my opinion, essential to ask to go to the very beginning of part one that you spoke about, which is how do we know if we live the life that matters? How do we say the things that are so important? Because it’s so temporal. Eleven, if this were our last conversation, what would you never want me to forget? If this was our last conversation because what would you never want me to forget? Let’s go there. Why are we waiting until some disaster happens? And then maybe you’ll tell me then. No, we don’t have that luxury. Let’s share that now. And, by the way, that answer can change. Every week, every year, something new happens. And the last one is, why do you love me?
Greg McKeown:
Yeah, they’re just so good, and the construction of them as a movie storyline past, present, future there’s a bit of future is itself well-designed. Something that I’ve, an exercise I’ve run all over the world with organizations includes an eight-minute process where they first graphically draw down their life from this point, from the time of their birth till now, and then they share it with each other. It’s a very succinct experience and I think about it like a strategic narrative. It’s past up to the present, and you just suddenly see a whole version of somebody that isn’t captured in their job title, which is often as deep as we get in our understanding of somebody in a work environment. And what you’re outlining for us in this book and in this conversation is a strategic narrative for the relationship, and so that’s such a useful thing to add.
If you’re in a work environment, okay, fine, maybe you just need to learn about each other. Just what’s your story? You don’t have the origin story in the same way as you do in an intimate relationship and a close relationship, but that’s what it seems to me that you’re doing, and it is just so useful, so well-constructed, and opens my mind to a lot of applications in my own life and in the groups that I work with, and I just loved every moment of our conversation. So, thank you for being with us again on the podcast.
Topaz Adizes:
It’s a pleasure. It was really a pleasure. Thank you so much for this. It was awesome.
Greg McKeown:
For everybody listening. You know the questions. What is something that stood out to you today, you know? What did you hear? What did you think about? What did you feel? Secondly, what is something you can do now? How can you apply this in the next five minutes, 10 minutes, certainly today that you can initiate something with somebody. Maybe it’s getting these, you know this card game. Maybe it’s getting one of the card games. Ordering that. That would certainly spark this conversation to continue.
The book is 12 Questions for Love. It’s an unusually great position for you because you can get the book and then you can have the cards to go with it. So you will really understand the sequence of these questions. Why to ask them, so much more than you would ever get in the game alone, but together, what a great combination these are.
This marvelous new book from a marvelous individual, award winner in every way, but now with an award-winning book, 12 Questions for Love. Go order it right now. Go get it immediately. And who will you have that conversation with so that you can continue this conversation now that this conversation has come to a close? Thank you really. Thank you for listening.
