This worldwide bestseller offers simple guidance for building the kind of open and trusting
relationships vital for tackling global systemic challenges and developing adaptive innovative
organizations over 200 000 copies sold and translated into seventeen languages! We live say
Edgar and Peter Schein in a culture of tell. All too often we tell others what we think they
need to know or should do. But whether we are leading or following what matters most is we get
to the truth. We have to develop a commitment to sharing vital facts and identifying faulty
assumptions it can mean the difference between success and failure. This is why we need Humble
Inquiry more than ever. The Scheins define Humble Inquiry as the gentle art of drawing someone
out of asking questions to which you do not know the answer of building relationships based
on curiosity and interest in the other person. It was inspired by Edgar s twenty years of work
in high-hazard industries and the health-care system where honest communication can literally
mean the difference between life and death. In this new edition the authors look at how Humble
Inquiry differs from other kinds of inquiry offer examples of it in action and show how to
overcome the barriers that keep us telling when we should be asking. This edition offers a
deepening and broadening of this concept seeing it as not just a way of posing questions but
an entire attitude that includes better listening better responding to what others are trying
to tell us and better revealing of ourselves. Packed with case examples and a full chapter of
exercises and simulations this is a major contribution to how we see human conversational
dynamics and relationships presented in a compact personal and eminently practical way.
