Last week’s treatise “Advice on Cutting Down Hallucinations” stimulated some interesting discussions.
Whilst ostensibly about techniques for crafting prompts for more precise and accurate GenAI responses, the venerable Bill Schmarzo reminded us that our questioning skills are critical in person-to-person communication as well as in “GenAI land”.
Bill shared his blog post on mastering the art of questioning which re-acquainted me with the ancient Greek philosopher, Socrates (not the Brazilian footballer!).
The “Socratic method” encouraged critical thinking by asking deeper questions, some 2,500 years ago.
He encouraged his students to challenge assumptions, uncover inconsistencies, arrive at a deeper understanding of a topic through collaboration, challenge their own ideas and reach conclusions by revealing contradictions in their beliefs.
We are constantly reminded of business strategies poorly thought out and even more poorly implemented, 70% (or more) of digital transformations failing, the challenges of HIPPO (“highest paid person’s opinion”) reinforcement, the shiny new object syndrome, the “Emperor’s New Clothes” and of course, my personal favourite, the “Dunning Kruger Effect” that charts our repeated ascent of “Mount Stupid” . . .
All of these issues manifest in our daily struggles to “make a difference” with our teams, our colleagues, our customers, our businesses and our lives.
It seems to me that while we are all encouraged to “think out of the box”, a refresher in the specifics of the Socratic method would help us all. It certainly helps me!
Whether or not we rely increasingly on data and AI, we need to strengthen these essential Socratic human skills;
- Critical thinking
- Active listening
- Effective questioning
- Problem-solving
- Self-reflection
- Communication
There are six types of Socratic question that play to our daily engagement with colleagues, customers, enabling stakeholders and partners. They might just get us closer to root cause analysis and better design and execution of our strategies and plans;
- Questions for clarification: Why do you say that? Can you share a little more detail?
- Questions that probe assumptions: What assumptions are we making? Can we verify or disprove that assumption?
- Questions that probe reasons and evidence: Why? What would be an example? What do you think causes this to happen…?
- Questions about Viewpoints and Perspectives: What would be an alternative? Is there another way to look at it? What are the strengths and weaknesses?
- Questions that probe implications and consequences: What could go wrong? What unintended consequences might occur? How would this affect xxxxx?
- Questions about the question: Can you explain that further? What leads you to ask that? How does his apply to . . .?
I’m also thinking that the “Five Whys” approach to problem diagnosis, coming from LEAN Six Sigma, may also have its roots with Socrates.
Better critical thinking could make society a better place too.
Clever one, that Socrates . . . .
Bill’s post digs into the Socratic method of questioning. You can read it here . . . .
Thanks for reading . . .