Humble Inquiry, 3rd Edition: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling

Most leaders assume they're good communicators. What they're actually doing—most of the time—is telling. And telling, even when well-intentioned, is a subtle power move that shuts people down, withholds critical information, and quietly erodes trust.

Humble Inquiry makes the case for a different approach: asking questions you genuinely don't know the answers to, from a posture of curiosity rather than authority.

What you'll find inside this fully updated third edition:

• The ORJI cycle—why conversations go wrong in a split second, and how to interrupt the pattern
• A levels-of-relationship model to diagnose where your team is—and how to move toward real openness and trust
• Why hierarchy and “tell” culture actively undermine psychological safety—and what to do about it
• A new chapter on humble inquiry in remote and hybrid work (spoiler: it works—and may work better)
• Reader exercises, twelve mini case studies, and a discussion guide for teams

Best for: managers, leaders, coaches, healthcare professionals, and anyone navigating complex, interdependent teams. This is a mindset shift, not a script.

Foreword by Michael Bungay Stanier. Based on Edgar H. Schein's fifty years of research at MIT. Over 300,000 copies sold.