Yes, it’s my age – I was brought up on Monty Python, and every time I hear names like Socrates, their “Philosopher’s Song” pops into my head!
However, when it comes to critical thinking, which is an essential skill, both in business and in life (and becoming more so all the time) Socrates has some genuinely useful tips. You may well wonder how a 2,500-year-old methodology could have relevance in the 21st Century, but the fact that it does is testament to how little actually changes when it comes to our approach to logic and evidence-based decision-making.
Socratic Questioning
If (unlike me) you have studied Cognitive Behavioural Therapy in detail, you may well have come across Socratic Questioning. A lot of coaches and mentors use it, and it is a skill well worth understanding.
The way Socrates expressed it, the concept is one of conversation and considered questioning of each party to uncover what they are really trying to say.
It is about clarification, the investigation of assumptions, evidence, alternatives, and implications. By considering all of these aspects in a calm and respectful environment, the likelihood of arriving at some form of truth is considerably increased.
If critical thinking encourages us to develop tools and strategies to assess and understand our thinking, Socratic questioning helps us to focus specifically on how to tease out the real issues behind that thinking.
Here is a very superficial outline of the process:
Assumptions – the frame of reference
This is all about making sure you are clear as to what it is you are dealing with. It’s important if there are multiple people involved – call it “singing from the same hymn sheet” if you like. Make sure you understand what is being said, and question it, or read it back, as appropriate: “Have I understood this correctly – you are saying x?” or “What precisely do you mean by y?”
Make sure that you have a clear summary of what is being discussed, and that everyone involved understands it.
Evidence
This may involve a bit of challenging some of the assumptions that you have unearthed in the first step. It’ important to do this respectfully, by asking “What specifically have you based that belief on?” and also potentially by testing the evidence put forward: “Could the situation have changed since you saw that evidence?” or “How confident are you that the evidence was valid?”
Done properly, this step might uncover inconsistencies or contradictions and, carried out respectfully, is more likely to result in someone saying, “Hang on – perhaps that doesn’t quite stack up!” as opposed to them becoming defensive because you have told them that they are talking rubbish.
Challenge
This is about challenging the problem as opposed to each other. it may become clear that there are multiple strands to the question under discussion, so this might be a time to reset the parameters. Maybe it is better to deal with two or three smaller questions as opposed to one big one.
By the time you have got to this point in the process, you might see a different perspective, or some of the initial viewpoints or assumptions might have begun to fall away.
Questions to ask at this stage might be about the strengths or weaknesses of a specific viewpoint, or “Why is this the best approach?”, or “What would be another way of looking at this?”
You might also ask, “Why do you think this is important?”, or “Who are the winners and losers of this approach?”
Consequences
Once you begin to gain some clarity, and solutions or options begin to present themselves, you need to consider the implications of each one.
“What are the chances of this working as we expect?” or “What are the risks involved?” might be good questions to start with, along with the more obvious questions about cost-benefit and that sort of thing, which you may give more weight to in a commercial environment, of course.
As a final step, you may decide to ask some questions about the entire exercise you have just gone through – questions about the question, if you like. This may be something like, “Why do we feel that this is important?” or “What was our reasoning behind asking this question or having this discussion?”
So what was the point?
You may well be thinking that this is all a bit “meusli and sandals”, but it is in fact the baiss of a powerful tool in your decision-making arsenal. Far too often we make decisions that we have really (if we are honest with ourselves) already made before we discuss them as a business.
We know the outcome we want, and quite often the conversation will steer its way around to an agreement without any rational analysis of the reasoning, risks, or benefits.
Most importantly this technique can demonstrate that not all opinions and viewpoints are equal – that doesn’t mean you discount things out of hand, but it means that people are forced to analyse and justify their input to a decision. If they can’t, then clearly their viewpoint ought not to be given equal weight to more tested ideas.
This method will increase the chances of your decisions being based on valid and demonstrable truths – the best ideas need a bit of work. Critically, the approach relies upon mutual respect for all thoughts, and polite and constructive dialogue.
Give it a shot, and let me know how it goes!
Photo by Rob Schreckhise on Unsplash