I Keep Six Honest Serving Men

Five learning skills, or “habits of mind,” were at the core of her school, and each was matched up with a corresponding question: Evidence: How do we know what’s true or false? What evidence counts? Viewpoint: How might this look if we stepped into other shoes, or looked at it from a different direction? Connection: Is there a pattern? Have we seen

“You know and I know that good questions arise out of a genuine interest, a genuine curiosity to understand.”

Here are some examples of powerful questions to ask someone, that you can modify per your needs:

• What do you really want?

• What about this is important to you?

• What does that look like?

• How do you feel about this?

• What’s next?

• What else is possible?

• What’s right about this?

• What are your concerns?

• What is standing in your way?

• Tell me more

Another way to think of it is that as we increasingly find ourselves surrounded by the new, the unfamiliar, and the unknown, we’re experiencing something not unlike early childhood. Everywhere we turn, there’s something to wonder and inquire about. MIT’s Joi Ito says that as we try to come to terms with a new reality that requires us to be lifelong

‘I keep six honest serving men (They taught me all I knew); Their names are What and Why and When And How and Where and Who.’ Rudyard Kipling, The Elephant’s Child