June 19, 2024

Big Questions and Other Important Ones

By Ken Giglio, Principal of Mindful Leadership

When the pandemic took over our lives in 2020, many of us asked ourselves big questions such as:

• Who am I?
• What is my purpose?
• Who am I beyond my roles?
• What is my work to do in the remaining days and weeks of my life?
• How does being in this job/career keep me healthy and growing?
• What qualities I want in a relationship?
• What will be my legacy?

These questions and many others bubbled up because we thought we could die at any time. (Many of us know, and remember, people who didn’t make it through the Covid gantlet.) With most activity coming to a standstill, we had time to reflect on our lives, if we chose to.

When the pandemic’s existential crisis passed, we gratefully went back to our lives. Our big questions faded into the background, and we returned to smaller, though important ones such as who do I go to with this business problem? What work do I delegate, and what do I hold on to? Where will we go on our summer vacation? What restaurant will we go to on Friday?

With 2024 half over, I suggest we take a break from our busy lives and return to big questions. Why wait for a crisis or the end of the year to reflect on what you are doing with “your one wild and precious life” as the poet Mary Oliver asks.

Mindful leaders ask themselves big questions as part of their reflective practice to help keep themselves awake and aware and to ignite insight and embed learning. They know questions lead to more questions and the increased capacity to be with uncertainty and ambiguity. The two core questions they keep close are:

• What am I noticing?
• What am I sensing in my body and in my surroundings?

I offer a sampling of additional questions leaders can ask themselves. Feel free to generate your own and share them in the comments on LinkedIn.

• What patterns are present in the way I am leading others?
• What are my mindsets and habits?
• What is enhancing my leadership and what is detracting from it?
• What am I observing about the enterprise I’m working in that is supportive of peoples’ well-being and development?
• Who will give me honest feedback?
• How can I re-set expectations for myself and my team in a fast-moving, chaotic business environment?

Here are some things I keep in mind when working with big questions myself and also when working with executive coaching clients:

• Treat the questions as if they were old, dear friends, ones you trust will not judge you and yet will tell you the truth about what they see about you and your life. Be in a caring relationship with them.
• Use them to examine and investigate first and foremost and not as problem-solving tools. Big questions are designed to wake us up, not generate quick answers, so avoid quick action. Take your time with them before following through on your insights.
• Carry them lightly—pick them up and put them down as needed. They are here to help us listen to ourselves, to what’s going on in our minds and in our hearts.
• Big questions can come with a wide range of emotions. Be aware of the normal worry and fear and back away from the questions when you find yourself ruminating over not having resolved this or that, or perseverating about a future that isn’t here.
• Collect questions that resonate and challenge you to pause and reflect. Here’s a good one from Henry Thoreau; “It is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. What are you industrious about?”

Finally, always approach your big questions with gratitude. They are gifts. In a world filled with chaos and suffering there are people in Ukraine, Sudan, and Gaza who can only ask essential questions to survive.

May we take the time in whatever situation and season of life we find ourselves to live the questions now!

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, … Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And, the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

― Rainer Maria Rilke