And the more we indulge it the more it becomes a habit and takes over. While it’s true we can never get rid of Judger, we can learn to manage it, to just be with it. Once you can do that a whole new way of being becomes available to you.

‘Either you have your questions, or your questions have you.’

“If it’s true that you’re coming across as a know-it-all,” he continued, “which is the downfall of the Answer Man, you don’t leave much room for anyone else. You’re great at the technical stuff, Ben, but your present job requires much more than that.

And we’re most effective at virtually everything we do when we’re in Learner. That’s when we’re most resourceful and flexible and have the most options.

practices and emotional intelligence, as well as Appreciative Inquiry, Action Learning, and positive psychology.

Thus Ben learns to self-coach,

What happened? What do I want? What’s useful about this? What can I learn? What’s the other person thinking, feeling, and wanting? What are my choices? What’s best to do now? What’s possible?”

“Action follows thought,” Grace added. “It’s a basic principle. But I never thought about it in terms of questions. Action follows questions. Seems to me the trick is to just keep ourselves in a Learner frame of mind.”

Socrates’ injunction “know thyself” speaks to this keystone of emotional intelligence: awareness of one’s own feelings as they occur.