Knowledge Advocate

Has this happened to you?

We answer a great question and then ask the questioner the same question– no response.

What happened here? The person thought up the question. He or she understood it in the context of our talk. And now, no answer. Silence. Or, a dodge, a move on, an avoidance, a focus back on us, the person who just offered the answer, supposedly to “hear more of the answer.”

When questions boomerang — why no answer from the person who asked in the first place?

So many reasons surely we cannot list them all. Context of the talk, content already shared, maybe it relates to the purpose of why we were speaking in the first place. All true, and still? Someone asks a question and is not willing to answer himself or herself, really?

Do we care to hear the answer?

Maybe he or she thinks we don’t care. They do a little dance to test our mettle. So then, if we “care” enough, we persist. If we want to hear that person’s answer, we repeat the question, this really expresses our interest. A game of sorts, true? A social exchange: “No really, what do you think?”

Why do these dancers tip toe around the answers?

Why the delay though, that is what this post is about. Why would a person who thinks up a perfectly great question become a dancer of his or her own answer? What is going on that he or she thinks enough to ask the question yet is perfectly content to not offer an answer. So curious.

What if the failure to answer is a fundamental road block to better relationships at work and in life?

There. I said it. What if this ability to not answer becomes an omission that critically affects how we live and play and work and act? That’s what this post is about. What if by holding back, by demurring, by reserving judgement and opinion and thought and feeling, we really become part of the problem? What if it is with those unanswered questions, those very questions we are happy enough to ask others, that we can forge true common sense and achieve simple and delightful mutual understanding?

The willingness to answer our own questions is a perfect path to solving our problems.

We have the opportunity to answer our own questions. The results will startle us. We can come clean with our thinking, sharing, and feeling in spoken word. We can share our answers out loud in response to the very questions we ask of others. This is an excellent first step to solving our problems. It is in realizing our own answers that we will find opportunities, make sense, and see the common ground.

How exciting!