Humble Inquiry Examples

Within my organization, there are several examples in which Humble Inquiry could be put to good use. Barriers set up for by social humility and military structure can make it difficult to get tasks accomplished. If we could all learn the art of asking versus telling, these barriers would be less prevalent and we could accomplish our tasks in a less dramatic way. As a military member, it is defined for us how we should treat our superiors. It is customary to always address the officers as Sir/Ma’am or using their rank. When walking outside or accepting an award, it is required that we salute and provide the proper greetings, acknowledgment or thank you. If we are called to our leader’s office for an extraordinary reason, a reporting statement …show more content…
An example of this is a recent conversation with regards to our members who are deployed. These members will be returning after they have been gone for 6 months. Upon return, but before these members are allowed to go home, there are certain requirements they have to compete at our installation. There is a team of people who are to help these people with these requirements. Currently the number of people we have deployed makes this process difficult. It is difficult for several reasons, to include the fact that the members that normally help with this process are also deployed. We have an officer from another organization trying to tell the few leaders we have left in our organizations, how we are doing business as many of the return requirements directly affect his group. Humble Inquiry could help this process tremendously. If the officer from the other organizations were to use Humble Inquiry, he would be immensely more effective. First, he is in a situation that involves two of the three kinds of humility. These includes optional humility, because these people have worked to get where they are and have earned their statuses on the base. He also has the influence of here-and-now humility. He needs each area to cooperate with him because he has to rely on all areas or he will not be successful in accomplishing his requirement. The art of humble inquiry would help all areas to be successful. First, they could all discover that everyone is busy by asking “What is going on?”. It is so easy to get tunnel vision, but if they would take the time to ask each other what the others organization is dealing with, they would understand that we are all very busy right now. Next, they could use diagnostic inquiry to figure out why we are all busy. We are busy not only because we have these people coming back from deployment, but also because we are