2022 is upon us and I have decided to pick back up with my writing ... resolutions, gotta love them.
The quote above is overly dramatic, however this post was inspired by Dr. West.
One of the biggest success factors in my career has been asking questions. That may sound simple, however you will see as you progress through your career the amount of people that don't ask questions. They would rather guess, figure everything out on their own, or hope that they correctly understood from the start (rarely happens when you aren't able to ask good questions).
In the opening of his Master Class, Cornel West frames a philosopher in the following context.
I've been blessed to teach philosophy for 44 years. And in each one of my classes, I tell my students, you have come in this class to learn how to die. And they say, oh, Professor West, I thought I was just here to get a grade and try to get my degree. No, no. That's just the professional, formal dimension of it, because dying takes the form of calling into question certain assumptions that you have. And if you let that assumption go, that's a form of death.
All of us have presuppositions. We let certain presuppositions go-- that's a form of death. There is no life without death. There's no growth without death. There's no education without questioning. And so learning how to die-- Montaigne, of course, one of the great French philosophers, he's the creator of the essay itself as a genre. In his essays, he has a whole section on to philosophize is to learn how to die. And so we building on that particular way of understanding why students must be non-conformist long enough to question.
I have written before with respect to conformity. In the 'professional' world there is always a pressure to conform, to fit in and go with the 'team'; it often presents its own set of challenges.
Despite the difficulties I have faced regularly being a non-conformist, I had never framed or considered the position in the way presented by Dr. West. Our presuppositions, paradigms, beliefs, these influence us all the time. They are like glasses in front of our eyes, they colour everything that comes in (the reality is our brains are wired this way) and influence how we interpret and understand what we are being presented. Tie in the need for community, a desire to fit in and a little group think and you start to understand my previous comment ... not that many people ask that many questions.
Asking questions leads to understanding. Asking better questions leads to a deeper understanding. You would probably be surprised how many times in my career I have been able to disrupt a course of action or make an immediate recommendation for a change simply from asking a few more questions.
To link back to the title of the post, the magic starts to happen not only when you question more the things happening around you, but when you take that same rigour and challenge yourself as well. I have always been very open and transparent with my teams that I expect them to challenge me; that my title or position does not mean that I am right and that if they see an issue, a way to improve or are uncomfortable with something, to raise their hand. All of our ideas are only good enough until something better comes along.
Challenge Yourself.
Challenge Your Environment.
Challenge What You Have Been Told.
Be a non-conformist a little bit longer, and see what change it brings for you.
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