Five questions leaders shouldn’t ask... Kids’ endless questions... Plus, how to change your life (one habit at a time)
Hello <<First Name>>,
It’s summertime, which means, among other things, family vacations, long car trips, and… questions. With parents often spending more time around their kids this time of year, they may find themselves fielding even more questions than usual and wondering...
“Why do kids ask so many questions?” That’s the top search phrase that leads people to my website. Apparently a lot of people worldwide have questions about the phenomenon of kids’ questioning. In this short excerpt from AMBQ, I talk to leading child psychologists and neurologists about what’s going on in kids’ developing brains and why that causes them to ask hundreds of questions a day—up until about age five.
Answers will help you in school, but questions will help you in life. Recently I was interviewed by
Education Week columnist Larry Ferlazzo, and he posed some great questions:
What would I say to kids to get them to understand the importance of questioning? What would I say to teachers? If you’re a teacher, a parent, a student, or
anyone with an interest in education you’ll want to read this interview.
“Every answer begets a fresh question.” I highly recommend
this 20-minute 2013 TED talk from Columbia University professor and neuroscientist Stuart Firestein, who wrote the excellent book
Ignorance (which I quote a number of times in AMBQ). In the speech, Firestein talks about how scientists and philosophers creatively use questions, and ends with a great way to create better tests in school.
As you search for answers, are you asking questions of everyone except yourself? That question is inspired by a great quote I came upon from the author Ralph Ellison, one of several new quotes we’ve added to the
Quotes Gallery, including new ones from George Carlin, Tony Wagner, and Frank Lloyd Wright.
Five questions that, when asked by leaders, can actually do more harm than good. It’s important for leaders to ask questions. But it’s also important that leaders ask the right kind of questions. In a recent Harvard Business Review article, I list five unhelpful questions, and suggest improvements.
ON THE BLOG
Are we turning our future leaders into “excellent sheep”? Many of the wonderful ideas Yale professor and author William Deresiewicz shared with me for AMBQ didn’t make it into the book, so here is more from our interesting discussion of how the Ivy League is failing to prepare our leaders.
Want to change your life? Start with this “small” question. Find out what this key question is in
this short article which includes interviews with authors A. J. Jacobs and Caroline Arnold
(left).
Thank you, as always, for your interest in AMBQ, and I hope to continue the conversation with you either via Twitter, Facebook, or on the AMBQ blog.
P.S. Miss any past newsletters? Find them here.
