The Art of Questioning

By L. Michael Hall, PhD, Author, Executive Thinking (2018)

Your thinking can go wrong and it often does!

But you are not alone. Highly intelligent men and women at the highest levels in organizations make critical and strategic mistakes in their thinking. After the 2008 financial debacle of many of the greatest companies, Paul Carroll and Chunka Mui wrote a book documenting “the most inexcusable business failures of the last 25 years.” They tell the story of Kodak’s over-dedication to the status quo and their bankruptcy. They tell the story of Motorola Iridium satellite phone system and the billion dollar loss due to the confirmation bias. They tell of Federal Express’s Zapmail and the stories go on and on.

The problem? Certainly not the lack of intelligence. Within each of these companies there were brilliant men and women at all levels of leadership. Yet still flawed and erroneous thinking led to fantastically poor decisions. What happened? They did not question their thinking! They were over-confident and that was their blind-spot. As a result, they did not even think that their thinking could be wrong. 

What about you?

• Do you have the critical thinking skills required for effectively questioning your thinking?
• Do you know meta-cognitive thinking skills so that you can monitor and recognize when your thinking may be off, may be ignoring critical information?
• Do you know how to access and apply your highest executive thinking functions?

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You have executive functions in your higher levels of brain neurology (your prefrontal cortex) and you can learn to use them for meta-awareness, mindfulness, critical thinking, insightful decision-making, etc.  To do that is to engage in a cognitive make-over and to make high quality Executive Thinking yours.


(Dr. Hall is the founder of the International Society of Neuro-Semantics and is author of over 50 books in various applications of Neuro-Semantics. He is considered a global guru in Neuro-Linguistic Programming and is a significant leader in the NLP Leadership Summit. His most recent book and training is on Executive Thinking, considered as the next big "think" in the field of human excellence. He will launch the training in various parts of the world in 2019 with trainers, coaches, and business executives. Reach us for more information at [email protected] so we could assist you.)