I Get the Answer and Lose the Person

If you ask someone what's wrong the second they walk through the door, before they've set their bag down, you get an answer, not the truth. They'll say "nothing" or give you the short version just to close the question and get past you.

I do this in one-on-ones more than I'd like to say. Someone comes in to talk about a project and I ask for the status before they've finished sitting down. I get the number. I move on. It feels efficient in the moment — it is efficient, in the moment.

A few months back I did this to someone on my team who'd come in wanting to talk about a project that was going sideways, and I asked for the status three sentences before she was ready to give it. She gave it to me — accurate, short, complete. I said thanks and we moved to the next thing. It wasn't until later I found out the status wasn't really what she'd come in to say. I got the answer I asked for and missed the one she had.

I've been doing a worse version of this for years before I found out it had a name — Edgar Schein calls it humble inquiry, asking a question you don't already know the answer to and actually waiting on it. I recognized the problem before I had the word for it, which tells me it's old, not new.

The Marine in me wants the number. Status, cause, fix, done. That instinct is not wrong on its own — sometimes the number is exactly what's needed and everyone's grateful I asked plainly. But I don't have a reliable way yet to tell, in the moment, which conversation I'm in. I read task well and temperature badly, and I still get this wrong more than I get it right. I've worked on slowing the first question down. I have not solved it.

If you manage people who like a fast, direct question — how do you know when fast and direct is the wrong instrument for the moment you're in?