Blindspot!
From Issue: 657 [Read full issue]
Powerful Questions
Questions are more transformative than answers and are the essential tools of engagement. They are the means by which we are all confronted with our freedom. In this sense, if you want to change the context, find powerful questions.
Questions create the space for something new to emerge. Powerful questions are those that, in the answering, evoke a choice for accountability and commitment. They are questions that take us to requests, offers, declarations, forgiveness, confession, gratitude, and welcome, all of which are memorable and have a transformative power.
Questions that have the power to make a difference are ones that engage people in an intimate way, confront them with their freedom, and invite them to cocreate a future possibility.
Powerful questions are the ones that cause you to become an actor as soon as you answer them. You no longer have the luxury of being a spectator of whatever it is you are concerned about. Regardless of how you answer these questions, you are guilty. Guilty of having created this world. Not a pleasant thought, but the moment we accept the idea that we have created the world, we have the power to change it.
Powerful questions also express the reality that change, like life, is difficult and unpredictable. They open up the conversation - in contrast to questions that are, in a sense, answers in disguise. Answers in disguise narrow and control the dialogue, and thereby the future.
We can generalize what qualities define great questions, and this gives us the capacity not just to remember a list but also to create powerful questions of our own.
A great question has three qualities:
It is ambiguous. There is no attempt to try to precisely define what is meant by the question.
It is personal. All passion, commitment, and connection grow out of what is most personal.
It evokes anxiety. All that matters makes us anxious. It is our wish to escape from anxiety that steals our aliveness. If there is no edge to the question, there is no power.
Compiled From:
"Community: The Structure of Belonging" - Peter Block, pp. 101-106