[teampractices] No questions allowed!

Thu Oct 12 20:01:33 UTC 2017

Last weekend, I had a dream, and this email is about that dream.

I had just started working at an organization, as an Agile Coach (or
similar). I was surprised to learn that one of their important rules was
that everyone was prohibited from asking questions.

Since a HUGE part of being an agile coach is asking questions, this seemed
insane to me. While trying to do my work, I kept starting to ask a
question, and then thinking through how to convey my point in a different
way.

I pushed back, and asked why this rule was in place. The explanation
(remember this was a dream, so it doesn't have to be entirely coherent) was
something along the lines of: It's unfair for you to expect someone to
answer YOUR questions, because it makes assumptions about their goals and
interests. It puts them in a position of "answering to" you.

As I continued to work within this odd framework, it became less
uncomfortable. There were cases where it was actually helpful, especially
since I sometimes have difficulty expressing my own preferences. Instead of
"What should we do next?", I might say "I think we should do X next". It
prevented people from using questions in a passive-aggressive way (which
can happen). And some people who were used to *only* speaking up when asked
a question found themselves force to speak up without prompting.

For the rest of the night, even as I was in other, unrelated dreams, this
idea of "no questions" kept returning. By the end of the night, I felt
mostly at peace with it.

I'm not advocating that we adopt this policy. But I encourage you to take a
few minutes and reflect how different your work life would be if you
weren't allowed to ask questions. For me at least, it was an interesting
thought experiment.

Kevin Smith
Engineering Program Manager, Wikimedia Foundation
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