[teampractices] No questions allowed!

Thu Oct 12 20:13:35 UTC 2017

This is such an awesome list.  I love getting a colleague's dream
description in my work inbox!  Thank you, Kevin!

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On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 1:01 PM, Kevin Smith <ksmith at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> 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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