Journalist Warren Berger, who has written for publications such as the New York Times, Wired magazine, and Fast Company, has a question for you. In fact, he has a lot. He’s literally written the book on questions (three of them, to be exact), and recently updated his book, A MORE BEAUTIFUL QUESTION, for its tenth anniversary. Warren joins me to talk about why questions are important—even more important than answers. We get into why kids stop asking questions, just what a “beautiful” question is, how Google and AI have changed the way we question, why questions are better than advice, and more. And Warren has some suggestions for those who want to start asking better questions, too.
Episode breakdown:
00:00 Introduction
01:46 Writing: A childhood passion turned career path.
05:44 Practical, disciplined approach crucial for successful freelancing.
06:57 Deepening exploration of subjects beyond magazine articles.
13:05 Questioning basics often overlooked, yet fundamentally important.
15:53 Improving questioning skills can transform your life.
17:22 Asking questions builds rapport and connection.
21:02 Innovators’ creativity driven by self-questioning and curiosity.
25:20 Kids fear peer pressure, appearing foolish, uncool.
29:58 Questions guide, empower and inspire personal insight.
34:00 Pandemic prompted questioning, AI raises similar queries.
35:48 Questioning is crucial in navigating AI and information overload.
39:09 Questioning and learning, information at our fingertips.
43:58 Beautiful questions have no definite answer; valuable.
45:31 Unanswered questions spark innovation and drive motivation.
51:29 Devaluing expertise and importance of questioning.
53:53 Importance of fairness in critical thinking process.
57:09 Explore and act on meaningful questions together.
58:58 Check out the book’s fun website too.
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Transcript
Please note: This is an unedited transcript, provided as a courtesy, and reflects the actual conversation as closely as possible. Please forgive any typographical or grammatical errors.
Nancy Norbeck [00:00:06]:
Welcome to Follow Your Curiosity. Ordinary people, extraordinary creativity. Here’s how to get unstuck. I’m your host, creativity coach, Nancy Norbeck. Let’s go. As you may know, I’ve been working on a new 1 on 1 course, and it’s here. Reignite Your Creative Spark is a private coaching program designed to help creative folks build momentum that lasts so they can turn their creative dreams into reality. In 6 private sessions, you’ll discover how to engage with your creative dreams with ease and joy, feeling both more confident in yourself and your work and more vibrant than you have in years.
Nancy Norbeck [00:00:45]:
Wanna learn more? Use the link in the show notes to get in touch. Journalist Warren Burger, who has written for publications such as the New York Times, Wired Magazine, and Fast Company, has a question for you. In fact, he has a lot. He’s literally written the book on questions, 3 of them to be exact, and recently updated his book, A More Beautiful Question, for its 10th anniversary. Warren joins me to talk about why questions are important, even more important than answers. We get into why kids stop asking questions, just what a beautiful question is, how Google and AI have changed the way we question, why questions are better than advice, and more. And Warren has some suggestions for those who want to start asking better questions too. I think you’ll enjoy my conversation with Warren Berger.
Nancy Norbeck [00:01:34]:
Warren, welcome to Follow Your Curiosity.
Warren Berger [00:01:37]:
Thank you, Nancy. It’s great to be with you.
Nancy Norbeck [00:01:39]:
So I start everybody off with the same question. Were you a creative kid, or did you discover your creative side later on?
Warren Berger [00:01:46]:
I was a creative kid, for sure. I was one of those kids who created fantasy, a lot of fantasy worlds, and, you know, using toy soldiers and toy action figures and all kinds of stuff like that and and making up games and created games about baseball and everything where I would use statistics and all kinds of stuff. So I was I was, yeah, I was I was pretty creative in terms of creating my own sort of stories and games and worlds, when I was young. And, yeah. So I think that was probably I wasn’t I didn’t write much. I I did artwork when I was a kid. I painted a little bit, but I didn’t take up writing until probably more like, yeah, as I was getting into college, and I I got kinda serious about writing then.
Nancy Norbeck [00:02:40]:
So what attracted you to writing?
Warren Berger [00:02:43]:
What did attract me to writing? I think it was just again, it was the same thing that I was doing as a kid, you know, creating worlds and, that I could inhabit. And so then, you know, writing became a way to do that, that was a little less involved than, you know, using all kinds of action figures and things like that. So I was able to create it in my mind, and I think, yeah, that’s that’s kind of what appealed to me. And I had a sister, an older sister, who was a journalist for a long time. She worked for Newsweek Magazine. And so I knew about journalism. And so in my head, I kind of thought, oh, that might be where I end up going because I like to write, and so maybe I’ll go into journalism. So that was always there from, probably from the time I was about 17 or 18.
Nancy Norbeck [00:03:34]:
It’s great that you had somebody else that you could point to. It was like,
Warren Berger [00:03:37]:
she’s not
Nancy Norbeck [00:03:38]:
doing it. So so can I?
Warren Berger [00:03:39]:
Yeah. I think that’s so important because, like, when you’re young, you can’t really figure out where you might wanna go or where the opportunity is. And so it’s so important to have role models who show you, oh, yeah. This is a possibility. This is something you could actually do.
Nancy Norbeck [00:03:57]:
Yeah. And I’m guessing that that meant that you didn’t encounter family resistance to the idea because you’d be like, well, she’s doing it, so why can’t I?
Warren Berger [00:04:04]:
No. They no. My family was very supportive of whatever, you know, I wanted to do. So they they were just, as long as I, you know, went to college and graduated college, that was their that was their main thing. And then it was like, you know, whatever you figure out you wanna do after that, that’s that’s up to you. So I I went on a path of being a journalist, you know, working on a staff at a newspaper and in the magazines, and did that for about, probably the first, like, 7 or 8 years of my career. And then, again, talk about role models. I I I saw a couple of people that I knew, who were doing freelance writing and just working for themselves.
Warren Berger [00:04:51]:
And I thought, you know, that if it’s possible to do that, I think I wanna try to do it. And at that time, it was this is a long time ago. You know, we’re talking 30 plus years ago. At that time, being a freelance writer was not probably as common as it is now. Mhmm. So there weren’t that many people that just decided, oh, I’m gonna be a freelance writer, and this is what I’m gonna do for a living. I’m gonna write articles, magazine articles or whatever for a living. It was very unusual to do, but I had a model of a few people that I saw doing it successfully, so I decided to give it a try, and that’s it.
Warren Berger [00:05:29]:
I mean, I’ve I’ve had not had a job since then.
Nancy Norbeck [00:05:33]:
And I I love that that, you know, it it is so often about the model. Yeah. You can’t really wrap your head around it until you see what it might look like, and then you say, oh, hey. That could work.
Warren Berger [00:05:44]:
Right. Yeah. Yeah. I think so. But what worked for me too was I was also a very even though I was I was pretty creative, I was also very practical minded. So I always was concerned with, oh, how am I gonna make enough money and how much am I making this month, and how much should I be able to make next month? So I took a very businesslike attitude about freelancing, and I think that that was really important because a lot of people go into freelancing, and they don’t have that that sort of, discipline or that business sense of, you know, taking it really seriously and acting like this is a real job, and this is a real business, and you have to produce. And, so I had that for some reason right from the start. I think I was always trying to justify myself as a freelancer and and prove to myself and everybody else that this was legitimate.
Warren Berger [00:06:36]:
I mean, I could I could make a decent amount of money at it, and I wasn’t just goofing off. You know? Mhmm. So, so, yeah, that was important, and that that enabled me to have a, you know, a pretty successful, freelance writing career for, you know, for a long time.
Nancy Norbeck [00:06:51]:
So how did you go from freelancing into writing books?
Warren Berger [00:06:57]:
It was really just about taking, you know, taking something that I would write about for a month, like a magazine article, an in-depth magazine article, and deciding, well, you know, what if I take us I’m really interested in a subject and I stay with it for a year or 2 years or whatever and I just go deeper, it’s really you know, if you if a book is 10 chapters, you can almost think of it as, like, 10 magazine features. And and really that was kind of the way I thought about it. It was just it was just expanding a little bit of what I was already doing. And I think the way it happened was I would I would be writing a lot of articles on one subject, and then eventually, either I would come up with the idea or somebody else would suggest to me, you know, you have all this information on this subject or this industry. What if you just put it all together into a book? And and the the first time I did it, it was about advertising because I’ve been writing a lot of articles about the advertising business. That That was a focus of mine for a number of years. I wrote for Advertising Age and Adweek and publications like that. And, just on a freelance basis.
Warren Berger [00:08:09]:
You know? Never never took a job anywhere. So, but, anyway, I had written so many articles about advertising that a publisher came to me and said, you know, do you wanna do a book on advertising? And and that that was kinda got me going with my first book. And then that has continued to be the case since I now I go into a subject. I maybe I may write some articles about it initially, but, eventually, I’m putting together enough material to, to do it as a book.
Nancy Norbeck [00:08:37]:
That makes a lot of sense. Haven’t thought of it as as 10 articles, but
Warren Berger [00:08:42]:
but yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. That’s that’s but it was that made it less intimidating to think of it that way because sometimes if you think of a book as this giant 300 page, project, you know, but if you break it down and I’m someone who always breaks things down. I do a lot of outlines. I do a lot of you know? That that’s just the way I work. So if I’m writing a book, I really break it down into chapters and sections, and what’s gonna be in each chapter, what’s gonna be in each section.
Warren Berger [00:09:09]:
By the time I get done with that, I pretty much know, know, have a good sense of the whole book, and then it’s not intimidating at all. It’s not then it’s never like thinking, oh, I wonder how this will end, or I wonder if I’ll run out of material halfway through. I don’t have to worry about that because it’s all laid out in an outline or a book proposal or something. And so now I just have to fill it in. Now I just have to, you know, I have to just create the material now.
Nancy Norbeck [00:09:34]:
Yeah. When you do that, especially with something where like the advertising book where you’ve already done a lot of writing about it, do you find that you already know everything that you wanna talk about in the book? Or do you still say, oh, hey. Wait. What about this other thing? And go out and do more research.
Warren Berger [00:09:53]:
Yeah. There’s always changes that happen. Like, like, when I do an outline, it it’s it ends up being, you know, maybe 60% accurate to the finished book. And then there’s always, like, 40% that I was not expecting, things I learned in my research in the course of my research that, you know, I had no idea that that idea existed or that person existed, and then suddenly someone will come along and they they’ll change the way you think about something. And that happens all the time, when I’m interviewing people. I, you know, often run across people who tell me something that changes the way I think. And I go, oh, wow. That’s interesting.
Warren Berger [00:10:32]:
That’s a whole different perspective, and then it’ll take me down a different path, different direction. And that happens a lot, and I like that. That’s part of what makes it interesting. I think it would be boring if my outline my book ended up exactly like my outline. You know, then it would just mean, you know, filling in the blanks. But but, really, there’s always surprises, and there’s always new stuff and new changes of direction and that kind of thing.
Nancy Norbeck [00:10:59]:
Yeah. That makes sense to me. I’m I’m definitely the kind of person who would be like, okay. But I know all this already. Why do I need to write the book?
Warren Berger [00:11:06]:
Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. It’s, well, one thing I’ve learned too is that the deeper you go, the more you learn how deep everything is. You know? And like like the like, I never would have thought that I could write 3 books on the same subject. And yet now on questioning, I’ve written 3 books, and there’s no the end is nowhere in sight.
Warren Berger [00:11:27]:
I mean, could I could just go on forever writing about questioning because the deeper I go into the subject, the more I realize that there’s more to it than I ever imagined, and there’s different directions I can go in. There’s different offshoots of it. So it it just I I think that’s probably true with a lot of things. You know? The the deeper you go, the more interesting it gets and the more you learn about things you never knew, even though you’ve been may have been studying something for years.
Nancy Norbeck [00:11:59]:
Yeah. That that makes sense, especially with something like questions because as I was as I was reading the book, I thought, you know, good grief. You could go down such a rabbit hole of asking questions that you would just never ever come back out. And I suspect you probably know more about that rabbit hole at this point than most people.
Warren Berger [00:12:17]:
Yeah. Well, that’s where, you know, the organization becomes really important and the outlines and all that stuff I was talking about a minute ago, because with a subject like questioning, there are so many directions you could go in. And so you really have to decide early on, okay. This is what I’m gonna focus on. I’m gonna focus on this aspect of questioning, and and I’m gonna break it down this way and that way, and I’m gonna have a chapter on this and a chapter on that. And it’s really important to do that because, otherwise, it’s almost infinite in terms of what you could do about questioning and the way you could talk about it. Know, I like to compare it to breathing. You know? It’s like it’s such a it’s such a it’s such an important, thing, a human thing.
Warren Berger [00:13:05]:
There’s there’s just, you know, it it’s it makes it both hard to talk about it because it’s, to a lot of people, it might seem obvious. Right? Like like like, I encounter people who almost say, like they may not say it outright, but I can tell they’re thinking it. They’re thinking and they’re like, why would you write a book about questioning? You know? Again, it would be like writing a book about breathing. You know, like, why would you do that? Because it’s so basic and it’s so fundamental that, you know, do you even need to talk about it? Do we even need to explain it or you know, because it’s just basic. And, and that’s kind of interesting to me because, you know, what that reveals is that they haven’t thought about it that much, and it’s true of a lot of things in our lives. There are there are many things that we take for granted, and we don’t we don’t think about them probably as much as we should. And some of those things are very important. You know? They’re very important to our lives.
Warren Berger [00:14:07]:
You know? Like listening is another one, similar to questioning. It’s starting to get a lot of attention now. I’m seeing more and more books on listening. But for a long time, it’s like that would be a similar thing. Like people would just take that for granted. Right? Like why do we need to think about listening? We all listen. It’s a natural thing. We don’t need to talk about it.
Warren Berger [00:14:28]:
But yet, when you go into something like questioning or listening or curiosity, you know, you you realize that there are all these levels to it that we don’t think about, and there are there are all of these, practices that we can do, and there are skills involved. There are you know, it’s just all this stuff that is not just automatic or instinctive the way we might think it is.
Nancy Norbeck [00:14:54]:
Yeah. And and to your point, we have books about breathing now too.
Warren Berger [00:14:58]:
Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, it’s absolutely. Breathing is a great example. Like, you You might think, oh, breathing. You breathe in and you breathe out. No. There’s a lot more to it than that, and there are ways to breathe.
Warren Berger [00:15:09]:
There are techniques. And breathing can change your life. I mean, it can it can change the way you feel. It can change your performance level. So it’s like there’s they’re just, you know, all of these things that we think are simple are oftentimes a lot more complex and a lot more interesting. And and the more you think about it, the more you appreciate it. And, hopefully, the you you learn to do it Berger, you know, whatever it may be, whether it’s listening or breathing or questioning. The chances are the better you’re gonna be at doing that particular thing.
Warren Berger [00:15:53]:
And, and then the other piece that people don’t may not appreciate is how if you do get better at these things, these various things we’re talking about, they may not appreciate what a difference it can make in your life. I mean, being more willing and able to ask questions just changes every dimension of your life, everything from your ability to learn, how interesting you are to other people, how interested you are in them, the conversations you have. It just I I as I talk about in the book, it even affects things like leadership. You know, we don’t think of leaders, right, as being questioners necessarily, but if leaders learn to question well, it can really improve their ability to lead other people. So it it has all of these these effects and benefits that most people probably are not aware of.
Nancy Norbeck [00:16:53]:
Absolutely. And and I know I’ve mentioned it on the show before, but since I started doing this, I find myself being much more curious about other people and wanting to ask them tons of questions, and I kind of have to rein myself in. Like, they didn’t sign up for this. This is not
Warren Berger [00:17:09]:
the podcast. You can’t just do this.
Nancy Norbeck [00:17:10]:
But but, yeah, I definitely am always
Warren Berger [00:17:10]:
like, oh,
Nancy Norbeck [00:17:11]:
tell me more about that. And, you know, what what do I not know about how that.
Warren Berger [00:17:17]:
And, you know,
Nancy Norbeck [00:17:17]:
what what do I not know about how you got from a to b? And then And
Warren Berger [00:17:22]:
for the most part, it’s it’s really has a positive effect on other people. I mean, I know that you can that it’s possible to take questioning too far, and and it’s possible sometimes that you can end up asking people too many questions, or they can feel like you’re interrogating them or something like that. But for the most part, people love to be asked questions, and they love it because it shows that you care about them or what they’re doing. You have an interest in it. It gives them an opportunity to talk about something that they’re probably really interested in. So it it’s a great relationship builder. It’s a great way to build rapport. You know, it’s the reason why if you look at people who are in the business of having to build relationships quickly with other people, like coaches or therapists or like, at the most extreme example, you have someone like a hostage negotiator.
Warren Berger [00:18:21]:
And they have to build relationships like instantaneously with people. And if you look at what they do, they always build it around questions. Questions are their primary tool that they use to break through to somebody else to to quickly establish trust. And, and so, you know, we can learn from those people. I mean, they’re using questioning in a professional way, but the rest of us can use some of those same techniques, in a personal way on a on a in terms of our personal relationships.
Nancy Norbeck [00:18:54]:
Yeah. Absolutely. So how did you fall down the question rabbit hole?
Warren Berger [00:19:02]:
Well, it started with the fact that I was a journalist, using questions as part of my job. And, one of the things I noticed pretty early on was that, I felt like a you know, I was use oftentimes, I was around other journalists, other reporters. You know, we’d be covering a story together. We’d be going to a press junket or something like that. And I didn’t really like the way other reporters asked questions. I felt that they were asking sometimes quest the wrong questions. They were asking obvious questions. They weren’t asking questions that drew would draw out more information.
Warren Berger [00:19:44]:
They were asking some sometimes closed questions when they should have been asking more open ended questions. They were using the wrong tone. So a lot of journalists will use a sort of aggressive tone or, just a tone that’s not particularly welcoming to people. So so I really thought, well, there’s something wrong here. You know? Like, why why is it the journalists who who use questions every day as part of their job aren’t better at it. You know? And then it occurred to me, well, you know, I went to journalism school. And can I remember any courses or any training on questioning? No. I can’t.
Warren Berger [00:20:27]:
I can’t remember a single class when I was going to journalism school that really focused in on formulating questions and the tone of questions and all. It just was a nonissue. And I thought, well, that’s really strange. So that kind of was in my head through the years, like, why aren’t we paying more attention to questioning, in terms of I guess, initially, I was focused more on professional people who and how they use questioning. But then I started to realize, no. No. No. This is like a questioning is also important for, like, everybody, for the general public.
Warren Berger [00:21:02]:
You know? And another light bulb moment for me was that I was writing a lot about innovators and, just really creative people. So I was writing for, like, magazines, like Wired Magazine, and I would be profiling somebody who was, who created some amazing thing. Right? Very creative person. And I found that those people oftentimes were really good questioners. So they were what they were doing though is they were, like, they were like working on questions in their own head. You know? So it wasn’t like it was very different from the kind of questioning that I was focused on as a journalist, which is more about, you know, asking someone else a question to try to get information out of them. With these innovators, it was more like they were asking themselves questions that were really interesting. Like, what if we could take this industry and change it by doing that? Or what if we could use this technology that is has been developed to find a better way to do x, y, or z.
Warren Berger [00:22:08]:
So they they were always grappling with these big questions about invention and creation and changing the world, around us. And so that was a big, like, a big epiphany for me because suddenly I started to think, well, questioning, it’s not just this communication tool. There’s this whole other aspect of it that the questions we ask ourselves can be this amazing force for, like, innovation and change and and creativity. And once I had that piece, then I really knew, okay. This is big. This is a big subject that, is worthy of a book, and that’s that’s kind of where I went with the first book. I I just focused in on I really focused in a lot on that idea of questioning can help you come up with ideas and new ways of thinking about the world and that kind of thing.
Nancy Norbeck [00:23:05]:
Yeah. I think it is it’s such a a lost art, and, you know, I I love that you start the book off with, you know, how many questions little kids ask and how quickly they lose it because I had sort of thought maybe that stuck with them a little bit longer than it did, and I was surprised by that. I was like, wow.
Warren Berger [00:23:25]:
Yeah. It’s an interesting phenomenon. And, you know, a lot most of us know about the idea that kids ask questions. It’s it’s it’s, you know, it’s it’s like a it’s like a thing. You know? Kids are famous for it. Right? They’re famous for asking a lot of questions. But we don’t really think about, okay, what happens to that? I mean, does it go away? Does it change? What what happens to all those questions? If if kids are asking hundreds of questions a day, which they are, according to the research, at what point does it change? At what point does it decline? And if so, why? Why does it decline? And so that was one of the things I I looked at in my book. You know, I was I don’t know that there are definitive answers to those questions about what happens to the to their questions.
Warren Berger [00:24:16]:
I think we can there are theories. There there are ideas that we can put out there that, you know, it’s a multifaceted thing. Like, for one thing, when the questioning seems to decline as kids go through school, and I guess we can pretty much assume that education is not really encouraging questioning in our in our students because it’s so answers based. It’s so much about
Nancy Norbeck [00:24:42]:
Right.
Warren Berger [00:24:43]:
You have to memorize the answers, and that’s what you’re gonna be rewarded for. That’s what you’re gonna be judged on. And we don’t really care if you ask questions. It really doesn’t matter to us. You know? So that gets internalized, I think, by young people. They they quickly figure out what is expected of them and what is wanted, and, and so that’s one factor. And then another factor is simply, there’s something about questioning that involves humility. Because when you ask a question on the most basic level, you’re admitting you don’t know something.
Warren Berger [00:25:20]:
Right? So for kids, as they’re getting older, this becomes a a scary thing, especially as they become aware of peer pressure, how they’re being perceived by others. You know, they suddenly or gradually become aware that if I ask a question, is it gonna make me look foolish? Or maybe it’ll be the wrong question. Maybe I’ll ask a question that, you know, has already been covered, and I don’t realize it or or something like that. Or maybe the other students will just think that when I ask a question, I’m just trying to kiss up to the teacher. I’m trying to I’m trying to look good or something. So there there are all these fears that get tied to, you know, showing vulnerability if you ask a question. And so that’s another big thing, I think, that that really puts a damper on kids questioning as they get to be like teenagers, and they’re all it’s all about appearances and how they how they’re looking to their peers. And unfortunately, questioning is not cool.
Warren Berger [00:26:30]:
I mean, I wish it I wish it was, and it’s one of the things I I try I talk with people about, how could how might educators make questioning cool so that kids who do it, seem like they’re doing something cool. And, you know, it’s an interesting challenge. It’s an interesting question to to think about and work on.
Nancy Norbeck [00:26:50]:
It’s a great question. And and as I’m listening to you, I’m thinking back. I used to teach, and I’ve done some tutoring. And I think probably the hardest thing to convince a kid to do in either of those situations is to say, look. I don’t understand your homework assignment either. You need to go ask the teacher.
Warren Berger [00:27:13]:
Right.
Nancy Norbeck [00:27:13]:
And they immediately, at least 9 times out of 10, will say, no. I can’t do that because then my teacher will think I’m stupid.
Warren Berger [00:27:21]:
Right. Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:27:22]:
And I you know, that’s when I would always say, well, a good teacher is gonna think you’re smart because you came and you got clarity and you, you know, made sure you understood the assignment rather than potentially doing the wrong thing and failing.
Warren Berger [00:27:35]:
Right.
Nancy Norbeck [00:27:36]:
And and it just you know, they are absolutely dead set convinced that that teacher will think that they are the biggest idiot that ever set foot in their class room Yeah. If they go ask that question.
Warren Berger [00:27:47]:
Yeah. And I think I think that that that’s a challenge for teachers to overcome that, and and it’s not easy. But, you know, I I what what I when when I talk to educators about this, you know, I I I just say that I think the challenge is there’s a couple of things you have to do. Number 1, you have to model the behavior of a questioner, and that means, not just asking a student, you know, do you know what the answer is to this? Because that’s one kind of questioning, and that’s the kind of questioning we expect from a teacher. You know? The person in authority who’s calling on you and and and asking you to give an answer. So that’s very common. But I think the less common thing that we see teachers and authority figures do is, you know, grapple with questions themselves in front of the kids and to say, I’m wondering about this too, and I don’t really know. And I wonder if this or that.
Warren Berger [00:28:49]:
So so they can model the behavior of a curious questioner as opposed to just an what I would call an authoritative questioner, right, who’s the person at authority who’s calling on you. But model the behavior of someone who’s doesn’t know everything, is wondering, is curious, and is asking about it.
Nancy Norbeck [00:29:09]:
Yeah. Yeah. It got me thinking back to what I could have done differently when I was teaching as a result. But but I will say, you know, one of the most memorable and powerful educational experiences I ever had was going to see a professor for office hours in my freshman year in college. And I don’t remember what it was that I went to ask. What I do remember was that he didn’t give me a single answer. He asked me a bunch of questions that led me where I needed to go. And I walked out of there, and I thought, wow.
Nancy Norbeck [00:29:46]:
Wow. You know? That was totally different than anything else I’ve ever experienced. And, obviously, it made an impression even though I don’t remember what I went in for in the first place.
Warren Berger [00:29:55]:
Yeah.
Nancy Norbeck [00:29:56]:
You know, that experience was more important than the answer.
Warren Berger [00:29:58]:
Well, that’s one of the most powerful things questions can do, is, like, you can use questions to guide people and to help them come up with their own, like, insights and and breakthroughs, and it’s much better than just telling them what to do. You know? I I this is something that, like, I I will say to a supervisor at a company or a manager. If if you can rather than telling someone how to deal with a problem on their job, if you can help them figure it out themselves, it’s gonna be way more valuable to them and to you. And questions can help you do that. You know? Very, simple basic questions like, you know, okay. What have you tried so far, and how did that work, and what do you think you could do differently? And, you know, questions like that, which, again, I go back to therapists. Think about what therapists do when they’re, talking to a patient. They don’t tell you, the good ones, anyway, don’t give you the answers.
Warren Berger [00:31:07]:
They don’t tell you what you should do. They don’t say, oh, you’re really messing up your relationship with your spouse. Here’s what I think you should do differently. Most of them do not do that. They will use questions to try to help you figure out, you know, oh, I see. I think I think I could try this, and it’s just way more valuable. There’s a consultant, named Michael Bongastonier who says he’s he’s big on telling people, stop giving advice. You know, we all give too much advice.
Warren Berger [00:31:42]:
He said, you can just simply use questions so that the person figures it out for themselves. You don’t have to tell them what to do or what they should do. And it’s much better if you don’t do that because it you might be wrong. Your advice might be wrong. Yeah. It’s it’s much better to help them figure it out. And then, also, they will appreciate it much more if they’ve come up with it themselves. If they’ve come up with the idea themselves, it’ll mean more to them than some advice that was handed to them by somebody else.
Nancy Norbeck [00:32:15]:
Yeah. Absolutely. I I don’t think most people take advice. They think they want it. Right. But, you know, or they think they have to ask for it, but they don’t really they don’t really want it. And a lot of the time, people offer advice when they haven’t been asked for it too, which is another issue. But but, yeah, I I’ve kind of smiled to myself when I got to that part of the book because, you know, I’ve realized that there is so much unsolicited advice, and that can backfire in its own ways.
Nancy Norbeck [00:32:43]:
Whereas, you’re right. You know, if you can do for somebody else what that professor did for me and ask the right questions to get somebody to really turn it over in their own head, the result is just better, and they’re more likely to act on it.
Warren Berger [00:32:58]:
What I would just say to people is, you know, the next time you’re thinking about giving advice to someone, think instead about, can I break it down into a few questions about the problem they’re having? Like, what is the problem you’re having? What have you tried to do before? What do you think you could do differently? How might you take the what what could be a first step, an easy first step you could take? So you try to break down the questions to, very actionable, things that they could think about or possibly do, and and that’s much better than, than giving advice.
Nancy Norbeck [00:33:37]:
Yeah. I think so. I think so. And I think they’ll appreciate it more in the end anyway.
Warren Berger [00:33:42]:
Yeah. I think so.
Nancy Norbeck [00:33:43]:
Yeah. So a more beautiful question is came out 10 years ago, and you’ve just released an updated edition. And I’m curious to know what made you decide to update it and what you learned in the process of doing that.
Warren Berger [00:34:00]:
Well, there were a bunch of things that, you know, in the 10 years, there was a pandemic. You may not have known that. And so I thought that that was an interesting thing I wanted to address, because the pandemic was kind of a time when I think people were wondering about change and asking them maybe asking themselves big questions and rethinking some of their priorities maybe or the way they worked, things like that, whether they wanna go into an office every day anymore or not. You know? So it was sort of a time of questioning, and so I thought that was an interesting thing to address in the new edition, and I did. And, and AI has happened since then, and AI is really, you know, it has a big connection to questioning because really AI, much like Google search engines, just runs on questioning. You know? It runs on prompts and, and which are in many ways questions. So there’s an interesting kind of relationship between AI and questioning and even raises the question of whether, you know, as we move toward AI, does it do we still need to ask questions or be good questioners, or will the technology do it for us? And so I talk a little bit about how I believe, at least, that right now, technology still is all about answers, and humans are the ones that are responsible for the questioning. So, we’re only gonna get good information out of the technology if we put in good questions.
Warren Berger [00:35:48]:
And then on top of that, we also need to use questioning to analyze what comes back to us from the technology, from AI. You know, when AI gives us a nice report on something or an article or something, you know, we need to have our questioning skills to in order to analyze it and to ask, you know, does this make sense? Is it can I trust this? Is it really the best way to to say this? So that’s where, again, where I think our questioning becomes even more important as we move toward this this new world of AI. And then one other well, a couple of other things. I wanted to address leadership in this new book. I mentioned earlier that I think leadership it’s really important for leaders to be good questioners. And I wanted to address, the area of critical thinking, which really is about, you know, how all of us deal with all this this crazy world we’re living in, all the information coming at us and trying to figure out what can we believe, what what should we not believe, how do we make sense of of of all the information overload that’s that’s that’s coming at us, and that’s where, our critical thinking skills are so important. And critical thinking is really all about questions. It’s all about knowing how to ask the right questions at the right time when you encounter new information.
Warren Berger [00:37:25]:
So that became another, new chapter in the book. And then the last thing I added was a little more about interpersonal questioning. You know, when you’re when you’re asking questions of other people, you know, how do you do it in the most effective way, and how do you how do you ask questions in a way that, you know, makes people comfortable, draws out, good information from them, creates a good dialogue, a good conversation, so that was one more thing. So I really added quite a bit. I mean, it was like it was about 40% new from the the original version of the book, which was I would say the original A More Beautiful Question book was much more focused on innovation and creativity. And it was all about, you know, gee, you know, you might not have realized how important questioning is in terms of, you know, coming up with ideas and innovations. So that’s still there, but now I’ve added these other components.
Nancy Norbeck [00:38:21]:
So I’m wondering and I I was wondering this as I as I was reading. Do you think that things like Google with search engines and and now the large language models, do you think they’re changing the way that we question?
Warren Berger [00:38:38]:
I think a little bit. Yeah. I I think well well, one, it it has a mixed, it’s a mixed blessing, I would say. It has a positive effect and a negative effect. So I’ll start with the positive effect. The positive effect would be we we have some place to go with our questions. Like like before, in the past, we might have had questions in our head and not known what to do with them. I’m wondering you know, like, let’s say as a person a person is saying, gee, I’m wondering about this or that.
Warren Berger [00:39:09]:
I’m wondering why this problem exists in the world, or I’m wondering, you know, if there’s any history behind this thing I’m seeing. Like, I wonder So in the past, they would have had those ideas in their head, and unless they were really willing to go to a lot of trouble, like go to the library, you know, and start taking out books and everything. Unless they’re willing to do that, you know, they they probably didn’t have any place to go with those questions. Now we all have some place to go immediately with our questions. We can we can immediately start getting information right away on whatever the question is about. And, and so that’s I think that’s one one big positive change. I think the negative change it has had is is this idea that, we can get easy answers to our questions just by going on Google, just by going into, using AI that, you know, we the the whatever comes back to us, that’s it. Now we know.
Warren Berger [00:40:10]:
And I don’t think that’s true at all. I think that what we need to be we need to be thinking of these resources as just a step in the journey of of learning and of inquiry. So you start you may start out with Google, and you may start out getting some information, but you have to think of it as, okay. That’s only a partial answer, and it may not be right. It may not be complete. So I have to if I’m serious about answering my questions, I have to treat each question as more like a research project. You know? That’s an ongoing, thing where I’m not only gonna ask Google, I’m gonna ask people I know, and I’m gonna I’m gonna try to find a book on it, and I’m gonna I’m gonna think about this question over time. I’ll only use Google or AI as a starting point, a launching point, and then I will, go from there.
Nancy Norbeck [00:41:10]:
You’re reminding me of how, you know, you tell the story of the founder of Polaroid who was asked by his daughter, why do we have to wait for the picture? Yeah. And it kinda makes me wonder. You know? If in 1943, he had had Google, would he have just Googled the answer and said, sorry. Not possible. Never mind. Gonna go back and do what I was doing. So
Warren Berger [00:41:31]:
Right. Right. Well, you know, what’s interesting about that question is and I and I think this is true of a lot of beautiful questions. The the the questions that really lead to breakthroughs, and I call them beautiful questions in the book. You know, they’re they’re questions that somehow end up changing the world. Okay? And that was that example that you gave is one of them. A little girl asks her father, why do we have to wait for the picture? And, because this is the forties, you know, he’s taken a photo of her, and in those days, you didn’t see the results of your photo until a week later or something. Right? So she’s asking why? Why why, you know, why can’t we see it right away? And it causes him to really focus in on this this this possibility, and it ends up leading to the Polaroid instant camera where you do see the picture right away.
Warren Berger [00:42:21]:
And, so what I say about those kinds of questions, like that little girl asked, is they’re questions that that don’t work on Google. Right? Like, if you if you typed into Google, you know, why do we have to wait for the picture? Google’s not gonna know what to do with that question. AI is not gonna know what to do with that question. Right? Other than maybe give you a really obvious answer. You know? If it can even figure out the question, it may it may be confused by that question. And if it can figure it out, it may say, you know, we have to wait because the the the technology says this. So it would give you a very, you know, basic, factual answer. But what is what happens with beautiful questions is they’re really not asking for a factual answer.
Warren Berger [00:43:15]:
Like, that little girl was that question that she asked, the reason it was powerful was because there was no factual answer to it. You know? Like, what it was really asking is, why are we willing to tolerate a world where we have to wait for the picture. Right? And Google can’t answer that question. Right? Only an inventor can answer that question. An inventor can say, yeah, which which which the Polaroid guy said was, yeah. We shouldn’t have to wait for it. Like, there’s no good reason, and therefore, I am going to change that. I’m going to create a product where we don’t have to wait for the picture.
Warren Berger [00:43:58]:
And that, you know, to me, that’s what makes a beautiful question beautiful is that oftentimes when the question is asked, there is no answer. Not only can Google not answer it, nobody can answer it. And when you get that kind of a question, you’ve got something really valuable. Because if nobody can answer it and yet it’s a really important question that addresses a real need, now you know you’ve got potential here. Because if you can answer it, if you can be the 1st to answer it, you’re gonna have, you know, your big, Silicon Valley, IPO that’s gonna make you a $1,000,000,000. And that’s why in Silicon Valley, they’re all really looking for those beautiful questions. Right? They’re trying to find that question that says, why hasn’t somebody used technology to solve this particular problem that’s driving everyone crazy? You know, why hasn’t someone done it? What has been stopping them? What could I do differently? How could I get started? They’re asking those kinds of questions, and and that is the thing that will lead them to the big the big breakthrough.
Nancy Norbeck [00:45:10]:
Right. And I’m I’m also thinking now of the high school student who invented the test for pancreatic cancer. Right. Even though, you know, I mean, when when I was reading that, I thought, okay, your brother, the chemist, told you you couldn’t do this.
Warren Berger [00:45:25]:
Right. That would
Nancy Norbeck [00:45:26]:
have been enough to stop me and probably a whole lot of other people
Warren Berger [00:45:30]:
Yeah. That he
Nancy Norbeck [00:45:30]:
didn’t stop.
Warren Berger [00:45:31]:
Well, again, this is this is the thing, about questions that don’t have an answer, an immediate answer, either on Google or or from, let’s say, the established scientific community or the the business community or whatever, engineers, they don’t have the answer already, and that usually will stop people. They they’ll say, okay. There is no answer because we don’t have it already. That means there is no answer. But what the innovators, including that 16 year old kid realizes, just because there isn’t an answer already doesn’t mean there isn’t an answer out there waiting for someone to discover it, and that’s kind of the heart of innovation right there. If if you believe that, you know, there is something out there that is waiting to be discovered, then, you know, that that gives you something to go for. But what leads you to those places is the question. You know, the question is what the unanswered question is what drives you and what motivates you, and it’s the thing you’re kind of working toward.
Warren Berger [00:46:37]:
And that’s what I think a lot of people have not did not necessarily appreciate about questioning is that its role in innovation. We tend to think innovation is all about answers. Right? We think it’s about, oh, someone comes up with the answer, like a light bulb in their head, you know, just suddenly flashes one day, and then they’ve got the answer. And no, it doesn’t usually work that way. It usually they’re usually starting with a question, and they don’t have the answer. They don’t have that light bulb, moment right away. But what they do have is they have a question that they’re working on. They’re thinking about it.
Warren Berger [00:47:16]:
They’re doing research on it. They’re collaborating with other people. And then eventually, somewhere along the line, things start to click. You know? Ideas start to click into place, and that’s when the answer starts to materialize. But, you know, without the question, you’re never gonna get to that place.
Nancy Norbeck [00:47:36]:
Right. Right. Well and and here’s the other question that popped into my head while I was reading because you talk about and and both of these stories kind of illustrate this point, you know, questioning the experts. My brother, the chemist, says I can’t do this. It’ll never work, but I’m still gonna keep going with this. And yet as as soon as as, you know, I’ve had that thought about questioning the experts, I thought, okay. Yeah. There are valid reasons to do that.
Nancy Norbeck [00:48:04]:
If you assume that we already know everything, nothing else will ever happen. Right. But where where do we find the line between asking questions to find new things or make new things and and going too far with it, like, the Titan submersible is what immediately popped into my head. This was a guy who was disrupting everything and paid the ultimate price for it. And I just, like do you have a sense of how to navigate that as wisely as possible? Did he fail to You
Warren Berger [00:48:40]:
know, it’s that’s
Nancy Norbeck [00:48:41]:
further questions?
Warren Berger [00:48:42]:
It’s a very complicated, question to answer, and Right. I do I do in my book grapple a little bit with this idea of, if we say question everything, and we say that as as if as a positive. Right? In other words, some people like like, I like the comedian George Carlin. Right?
Nancy Norbeck [00:49:04]:
Right.
Warren Berger [00:49:04]:
And George Carlin used to say, question everything. Question everything you’re told. You know, don’t necessarily take anything at face at face value. You know? And then Carl Sagan, the the great physicist, was was another one who astronomer rather, Carl Sagan. He’s another one who said, you know, you have to be questioning everything, everything out there. And then, you know, you can see where that is is valid, and it’s it’s the right thing to say, but you can also see where it can go wrong. Because if you have a society where people are always questioning the experts, right, they’re always questioning, In other in other words, anytime the scientific community comes to us and says, this is what we believe we should do in this situation like the pandemic. This is the best knowledge available is saying we should do this or that or the other thing.
Warren Berger [00:50:03]:
And if you have people that are just always questioning experts to the point where they never believe anything an expert has to say, it’s gonna be a problem. You know? Because because then what happens is we we get to this extreme of saying expertise doesn’t even matter. It’s it has no value, and that’s not true. You know? Like, these innovators who are questioning the experts, I don’t think they’re saying that x the experts don’t matter or the things that we’ve learned in, in the past don’t matter at all. They’re just saying they’re having respect for that expertise, but they’re saying, I think there might be something that they’re missing. I think there might be something beyond that. And I think that kind of respect has to be there. You have to have respect for knowledge.
Warren Berger [00:50:55]:
You have to have respect for expertise. Now you can challenge it. You can question it, but you have to do it with humility and respect. You know? You can’t necessarily have this, attitude like I know better than all the experts. You know? That’s what I’m kinda seeing now that really bothers me in our world. I’m seeing people who are you know, they’re podcast hosts or whatever. You know? And they’re they’re acting as if they know more than people who studied something for 20 years or you know, and it’s it’s insane. I mean, it’s insane to think that.
Warren Berger [00:51:29]:
You know, there’s a football player named Aaron Rodgers who talks about things as if he knows more than, you know, the leading scientists in this field, and it’s just insane. You know? So I don’t know how we got to that point where, you know, expertise is getting devalued and sort of regular people are saying, I know more than any of the experts. But I think that’s that’s kind of a dangerous position to be in. Yeah. So so do you see what I’m saying? There’s a distinction between there’s a there’s a distinction between saying I know more than any of the experts and being a questioner who’s saying, I respect what the experts are saying, but I think there may be something they’re missing, and I’m going to do research. I’m gonna get really deep into that area that I think they might be missing, and I’m gonna see if there’s something I can come up with. That’s what I I believe in, people having that attitude and that mindset.
Nancy Norbeck [00:52:31]:
Yeah. I think you’re on to something with the idea of having respect for the science, the expertise, the, you know, what’s come before. And I think I agree with you. You know? I absolutely think it’s important to question, you know, what’s what do we not know? We think we think we know this much. What do we not know about it?
Warren Berger [00:52:48]:
Yeah. No. And I think I don’t I don’t think anything is off limits, when when questioning. Right? I I mean, I think on the other side of the of the of this issue that we’re talking about, you may have people that are, you know, saying, oh, you can’t question certain things. You know? You can’t question, what the the government tells you, or you can’t question certain certain political taboos you’re not supposed to ask questions about. And I don’t believe in that either. You know? So I think we we have to navigate this very kind of sensitive territory where we have to figure out, you know, nothing is off limits for questioning. Everything can be questioned, but at the same time, we have to be responsible.
Warren Berger [00:53:29]:
We have to do it with a certain humility and a certain, sense of, of, you know, respect for facts and logic and things like that.
Nancy Norbeck [00:53:39]:
Yeah. And I think the fact that there’s so much questionable information out there now probably makes it harder. You know? Somebody who goes in with an honest question, pulls something up on Google, and doesn’t realize that Oh, yeah. You know, it’s
Warren Berger [00:53:53]:
not valid. Yeah. And that taps into the a Berger part of, my chapter on critical thinking is about, you know, the most basic thing of critical thinking. Like, there’s a lot of aspects to it. It can be a very complicated subject to talk about. But if there’s one thing that I think is important about critical thinking, if if I had to boil it down to one point, it’s that when you’re doing critical thinking, you are always trying to be fair minded. So you’re always trying to weigh both sides of an issue. You’re always trying to see things from multiple perspectives, and you’re trying as best you can not to have an agenda, not to say, this is what I believe going in, and therefore, I’m going to look for information that fits what I believe, and I’m gonna somehow skirt right past any information that doesn’t fit with what I believe.
Warren Berger [00:54:51]:
And that to me is the biggest problem we’ve got right now, or one of the big problems we’ve got right now is that we have all this information coming at us, and people are allowing their, their biases and their, yeah, their tendency to want to believe something in particular, they’re allowing that to guide them as they choose pick and choose what they’re gonna listen to, what they’re gonna pay attention to, what they’re gonna believe. And, it’s a it’s a really big problem right now. I’m not I’m not sure how we address it, but one of the things I I wanted to hammer home in my chapter is you can’t call yourself a critical thinker if you have an agenda and if you are only trying to, you know, think in move in one direction with your thinking.
Nancy Norbeck [00:55:41]:
Yeah. Confirmation bias is a real thing.
Warren Berger [00:55:43]:
Yeah. Absolutely. So it’s the biggest it’s the biggest, issue right now around critical thinking.
Nancy Norbeck [00:55:48]:
Yeah. Well, I’m wondering if if you have any suggestions for anyone who’s listening who wants to start asking better questions short of go out and read the book, which you should because it’s really good, but something that you can share in the next couple minutes?
Warren Berger [00:56:08]:
Well, I think I think it’s really about, you know, being a better question is a questioner is about paying attention to what’s the world around you and maybe a little more closely. Slowing down. It’s about slowing down because questioning is a form of slow thinking. And so if you’re kinda rushing around all the time and you’re not really giving yourself those quiet moments to sort of think deeply about something, then you’re not gonna be doing asking questions the the right way. So I I think one of the things I advise people is just, you know, give yourself the time, maybe every day or maybe once a week. I don’t know. But give yourself some quiet time to think about, questions and and and questions that are important to you, questions about your work, questions about your life. Maybe see if you can come up with one particular question that is really important to you that you wanna pursue.
Warren Berger [00:57:09]:
You know, how might I find a way to do better at this, Or how might we as a family or maybe the we as your company or your community, how might we tackle this issue or find a way to do a better job of something or other? If you can identify a big question that can become a motivating, a thing for you. That can become your beautiful question that you’re gonna work on and you’re gonna pursue. And, so I advise people to to do that. I advise them to practice asking questions of other people. You know, practice asking you know, when you go to Starbucks, you know, ask the, barista about the about their job, about how about that blend, about how they how they make the coffee. Ask your spouse. Ask your best friend, questions, that you maybe never have asked them about, something about their life that from years ago that maybe, might be an interesting thing they wanna talk about. So I think, you know, there’s lots of opportunities to do both self questioning where you’re asking you’re taking quiet time to ask yourself deep questions and then, taking the time to ask other people questions to learn more about them.
Nancy Norbeck [00:58:27]:
Sounds good. And I think a lot of those things will end up making you a better listener too, so that’s a nice bonus.
Warren Berger [00:58:33]:
Yeah. Oh, absolutely. I think that’s that’s part of it. Being a list good listener and a good questioner, they they go hand in hand.
Nancy Norbeck [00:58:40]:
Yeah. Completely. So alright. Well, I am so glad that we had this conversation. It’s been fascinating, and I hope that people will check out the book because it really is a good, fascinating read, too. It’s it’s full of all sorts of thought provoking stuff. So
Warren Berger [00:58:58]:
Yeah. And you also, I would advise them, check out the website because there’s a there’s a fun website that, my creative partner and I created for this book. It’s just the name of the book, a more beautiful question.com. And, but it’s fun. You know? We we it’s not just, like, about the book. It’s really about questioning in general, and there’s a lot of fun features on there, a lot of a lot of interesting things you can learn from the website, and, and just things like those quizzes you can take, and there’s a list of songs that have a question for a title. So silly fun stuff, but all stuff related to questioning in some way.
Nancy Norbeck [00:59:37]:
Yeah. We’ll put that link in the show notes so everybody can check it out and fall down the question rabbit hole themselves.
Warren Berger [00:59:42]:
Yeah. Go down the rabbit hole. Yep.
Nancy Norbeck [00:59:43]:
That’s right. Well, thank you so much, Warren.
Warren Berger [00:59:46]:
Nancy, thanks. It was great to it was great to meet with you.
Nancy Norbeck [00:59:50]:
That’s our show for this week. Thanks so much to Warren Berger for joining me and to you for listening. Please leave a review for this episode. There’s a link right in your podcast app, so it’s really easy, and it will only take a minute. If you enjoyed our conversation, I hope you’ll share it with a friend. Thanks so much. If this episode resonated with you, or if you’re feeling a little bit less than confident in your creative process right now, join me at the spark on Substack as we form a community that supports and celebrates each other’s creative courage. It’s free and it’s also where I’ll be adding programs for subscribers and listeners.
Nancy Norbeck [01:00:27]:
The link is in your podcast app, so sign up today. See you there and see you next week. Follow your curiosity is produced by me, Nancy Norbeck, with music by Joseph McDade. If you like Follow Your Curiosity, please subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And don’t forget to tell your friends. It really helps me reach new listeners.
