I’ve been rereading the book Primal Leadership over the past month as part of a company-sponsored book club, and I've rediscovered the idea of dynamic inquiry discussed in the book. Dynamic inquiry involves asking questions, listening, responding, and then asking better questions, thereby repeating the cycle of active listening and questioning to gain a deeper understanding. In the book, the authors discuss dynamic inquiry as the best way to learn and understand the true feelings of the people on your team.

I immediately thought of the qualitative research process when I heard about dynamic inquiry this time around. I spent 3 years completing my Doctor of Strategic Leadership, and the culmination of that degree was a real-world qualitative research study. I explored the effects of change management methodology on change initiative success. I spent countless hours interviewing leaders in my organization, sorting through transcripts, finding codes & themes, and understanding the landscape of change management within my organization.

But when I first started the journey, I was skeptical. I was most skeptical because I knew interviews were the main method of data collection. I thought surveys were better. They gave you clear data, actionable insights, and you could easily collect a lot of responses. I was also skeptical about how interviews with 15 of the company’s 300 leaders could paint an accurate picture of an organization with over 3,000 total employees.

But when I actually sat down, conducted the interview, listened, and asked follow-up questions, I was proven completely wrong. I learned so much about how front-line leaders in my organization felt about change. In fact, the picture was so clear to me that I was able to easily identify themes after the interviews. (I also verified these themes with survey data, for my fellow nerds interested in the research process.)

Overall, this exercise taught me the power of talking to people to make sense of things and really understand what’s going on. It’s been about 4 years since I first started using dynamic inquiry on a routine basis, and I’ve run dozens of internal studies with dynamic inquiry as the main data collection tool. Asking questions, listening, asking follow-ups, and seeking to genuinely understand another person’s perspective is the best way to make sense of what you observe in the world. Talk to your people and find out how they really feel.

It becomes so much easier to create better conditions once you know how your people feel. Before you embark on any initiative, build out a list of questions that would help you understand the situation better, then go out and ask your people those questions. You’ll learn so much about your employees and how they feel. And as a bonus, you’ll be building trust with your people.

Until next time,

Rick

P.S. I’d love to chat with more people running qualitative studies or using dynamic inquiry to make a difference in their organization. Reply to this email or schedule some time to chat here. I’d also love to help you build out your own set of questions you can use to spark conversations!