Ask what can we learn here
Before you give an answer, ask what can be learned from the situation in front of you.
Why it works
Garvey Berger and Johnston’s first habit is asking different questions instead of having the answers. The Integral Leadership Review’s summary of the book describes the shift as moving toward questions about what can be learned in a given situation, and links that to enhancing a leader’s capacity for listening. This page’s inference, not the review’s: a question keeps a situation open, while a verdict tends to close it before the next piece of information has arrived.
How to do it
- Before you state a view in your next meeting, write down the question you are actually trying to answer.
- Rephrase it as “what can we learn about this situation?” and ask that out loud.
- Listen for one new fact in the reply, and write it down before you respond.
- Then state your view, and say what would change it.
Evidence
The first habit, asking different questions in place of having the answers, is named in Garvey Berger and Johnston (2015) and in the Cultivating Leadership summary of the book. The learning-question framing and its link to listening come from the Integral Leadership Review summary, and the book’s own passage was not read directly. (anecdotal)
No outcome study of this practice was found. The authors present it as a habit a leader builds, not as a tested intervention.
Sources
- Garvey Berger, J., & Johnston, K. (2015). Simple Habits for Complex Times: Powerful Practices for Leaders. Stanford University Press. (The DOI resolves to the 2020 e-edition record.)
- Integral Leadership Review (2015). Book review of Jennifer Garvey Berger and Keith Johnston, Simple Habits for Complex Times: Powerful Practices for Leaders.
- Cultivating Leadership, book page for Simple Habits for Complex Times (Garvey Berger & Johnston), accessed 2026-10-14.
Common mistake
Asking a question that is really a hidden statement of the answer, such as “don’t you think we should…?”, and then calling the conversation an inquiry.
Practice this with IX Coach
More practices for Jennifer Garvey Berger’s Simple Habits for Complex Times
- Hold feedback as one partial view
Treat each piece of feedback as one partial view of the situation, not the final verdict on it.
- Take a view you disagree with seriously
State a position that clashes with yours in terms its holder would accept, and find what it shows that yours does not.
- Map the system around a problem, not its single cause
Trace the people, rules and feedback loops (chains in which an effect feeds back into its own cause) around a recurring problem, and where its boundary seems to sit, before you settle on its cause.
- Sort the situation by its domain before you decide
Before you choose a response, decide whether the situation is simple, complicated, complex or chaotic.
- Act on what the present shows and let the next step appear
Take the next small action you can see, observe what it does, and let that observation decide the step after it.
- Notice when you reach for a simple story
Catch the moment you explain a messy event with one tidy cause and a confident prediction, and write the story down as a story.
- Test the sense that you are right
Treat a strong feeling of being right as a claim to check, and name in advance what would show you were wrong.
Related concepts
- Vertical Development Practices: How Adults Grow, Not Just Add Skills
Heat, colliding perspectives, and sense-making — and what the research can and cannot promise
- Torbert’s Seven Action Logics of Leadership
Seven ways leaders make sense of pressure, how common each is, and how to work with your own
- Adaptive Leadership, Made Practical
Distinguishing adaptive challenges from technical problems — and leading accordingly
- Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory (AQAL), Made Practical
Five elements for catching what your view of a situation leaves out, held as a map rather than a truth
- The Immunity to Change Process, Step by Step
Why a change you truly want keeps not happening, and the step-by-step way Kegan and Lahey take it apart
- Kegan’s Subject-Object Theory, Made Practical
Moving from being run by your assumptions to being able to examine them
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