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Here is a little hack around that to not put people on the defensive. Instead of asking "Why," say "For what reasons." It makes people less defensive. (Source:
by tchock23 10y ago
Here is a little hack around that to not put people on the defensive. Instead of asking "Why," say "For what reasons." It makes people less defensive. (Source: Was a qualitative market researcher for 10 years, learned this through hundreds of customer interviews).
- ak39 10y agoThank you very much. This is great advice. I will use it for my conversation with my teenage son. I think many times before asking the "why" questions. Many times I simply don't know how to ask. Your suggestion is excellent.
- neom 10y ago"What do you think about..." works really well for me. Whenever I'm asking my team why they are doing something, I just ask them to tell me what they think about it. Instead of why did you use node.js instead of java? I ask, what do you think about node.js as a choice instead of java?
- bbcbasic 10y agoI'm going to use this when asking about legacy code. Thanks!
- suls 10y agoIn our post mortems we tried using "How come .." instead of "why" for a while but the wording was a bit to awkward. "For what reason .." is a great starting point I think -- thanks a lot! It really shifts the perspective to objectively look at the "thing", without having too much ego on the line
- jkaptur 10y agoA crisis hotline that I worked for simply banned trainees from saying "why" or "I" during training calls. Omitting those two words makes it surprisingly hard to be judgmental or confrontational.