The Importance of ‘How’ and ‘Why’ Questions

Arnold Schwarzenegger

Arnold Schwarzenegger says that in leadership and life there is great value and importance in curiosity and how specifically it’s expressed.

The bodybuilder, actor and former governor of California talks about his favorite questions for knowing exactly what to do and how to do it smarter.

“Asking good ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions about something you’re interested in increases the chances of information sticking in your brain and connecting with other related bits of information — making all of it more useful to you when it’s time to put it all to work in service of others,” he says.

“That’s why I loved being governor more than any job I ever had. It was an opportunity to soak up all this information about the way our society runs while being in a position to use that information to help millions of people.

“I was learning nonstop. The more I learned, and the more questions I asked of the people who were teaching me, the more I understood how things were connected and the better leader I became,” he says.

Ellen Langer

An expert agrees. “‘How’ tells the listener that you’re interested in what they are saying and ‘why’ may suggest that there may be more than one view of it,” says Ellen Langer, a professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University.

“Both of these make the conversation more interesting which will make it more memorable,” she adds. “If it’s interesting, you’ll mindfully think about it, which is why it is memorable.”

As he communicated, Schwarzenegger has a large appetite for knowledge and learning and sees how this approach can make him best informed and develop him as a leader.

Those with this mindset will often see the difference it makes for solving problems expertly, driving success and serving people at a high level.

“Asking questions and listening to answers makes us more mindful and less like robots,” Langer says. “When we’re mindful, the neurons are firing and we’ve found it is literally and figuratively enlivening. So when mindful, novel solutions are more likely to be found.”

This behavior trait makes an impression too, a positive one, Langer asserts.

“Most important for the leader, when mindful,” she says, “people see you as charismatic, genuine and trustworthy.”

Everyday citizens and leaders could begin to ask “how” and “why” more often to learn, understand and make better decisions. Yet it isn’t common.

“To our loss, we are taught to be mindless,” Langer says, “to seek single answers to questions and to seek certainty.”

There’s a costly and dangerous problem when this is the norm. “When we are mindless,” Langer says, “we’re frequently in error, but rarely in doubt.”

As Schwarzenegger has learned and says and now recommends to leaders, “… the more questions I asked of the people who were teaching me, the more I understood how things were connected.”

Intellectual humility, curiosity and “how” and “why” questions can help us to see more clearly.

Source: Ellen Langer is the author of more than two hundred research articles, and thirteen books including the international bestseller “Mindfulness; The Power of Mindful Learning.”

She is also the author of:
“On Becoming An Artist”
“Counterclockwise: Mindful Health and the Power of Possibility”
”The Art of Noticing”
“The Mindful Body: Thinking Our Way to Chronic Health”

Langer is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, three Distinguished Scientist Awards, the Staats Award for Unifying Psychology, and the Liberty Science Genius Award.

She is widely known as the “mother of mindfulness.”