Why?

My almost-three-year old niece, like most kids her age, asks "why" a lot. And while this can get a bit tiresome, one recurring thing in leadership trainings I've attended is understanding the why.

At Willowcreek's Global Leadership Summit, one speaker told an anecdote about two kids fighting over an orange. Their mother stepped in, cut the orange in half, and gave them each half. The first child peeled it, threw away the peel, and ate the orange. The second child peeled it, threw away the orange, and used the peel for something she was baking. 

It's situations like that where we often tend to make assumptions. But in such a case, asking why rather than making an assumption would've given both kids the full part of the orange they wanted, and nothing would've gone to waste.

A few weeks ago I woke up in the night to the sound of Peanut whining on the dresser. She has a little stool she uses to jump up there so she can look out the window. Assuming she was whining at something outside, I told her to come back to bed. She stayed where she was and kept whining, and again I told her to come back to bed. This exchange continued for a while until finally I realized she wasn't whining at something outside - she was whining because it was too dark for her to find her stool to jump back down. The very thing I was telling her to do was the thing she was whining about being unable to do.

It was a great reminder to me that as I seek to be a strong leader, I need to avoid assumptions and ask "why" almost as liberally as my niece. If someone complains that they are unhappy with an assignment, I need to ask why not just once, but keep digging until I understand what lies below the surface.

Why?

My niece Hannah, at age 21 months, is in the "why" phase. When my family was all together, we tried different tactics to avert her "why" questions. Sometimes we simply answered them. Sometimes we  used words we knew she wouldn't understand to offer her answers, hoping to frustrate her from continuing to ask. Sometimes we gave the same answer over and over until she gave up. Sometimes we just didn't answer. My personal favorite was when I preempted a why that I knew was coming by asking her first, and then she didn't know what to say. (I also liked to randomly ask her why even if it wasn't preemptive.)

Often she'd start a conversation with "what's that?" and point to something random. Usually something she clearly could identify on her own, like a bagel or a toy. Then, when you told her what it was, she'd ask "why?" This was a particularly difficult "why" to answer. Why is it a bagel? Um...cuz they put the ingredients in that make it a bagel?

She asked other questions, too, like "What's the buzzy fly doing?" (To which my mom responded "buzzing" and then I said, "and flying. The description really said it all...") But mostly she stuck with her favorite. I always thought toddlers asked why because of a genuine curiosity about the world. Which maybe they do sometimes. But I came to realize she just thought it was fun to say. Maybe because it's one of the few ways she knows how to strike up a conversation. (On one occasion, she went up to a couple family members and with no context at all asked her standard question. I don't think she got a response that time...but it does help make my case.)

But despite my realization that she wasn't always genuinely curious about knowing why, the chorus of "why's" throughout the week got me thinking about how little I ask that question. Too often I just accept that things are the way they are without considering: why do I do it this way? Why does my company do it this way? Is there a better way? Why do I believe this? Is it really biblical, or just cultural?

I think we all could use a little more "why" in our lives. Except Hannah, she's got plenty as it is!