QBQ!

Yesterday I talked a little bit about change and how different people handle it. Today just a quick mention of what I think is the main distinguisher between people who handle change well, and those who don’t. Two simple words – Personal Accountability.

One of my favourite little books on personal accountability is QBQ! by John G. Miller. It is such a simple little book, that you can read in an hour or so, but it has a pretty powerful message (IMHO). The central message of QBQ! (which stands for the Question Behind the Question), is about the types of questions you ask (to others or to yourself). Questions like “Why do we have to go through all this change?”, “When is someone going to train me?”, “Who dropped the ball?”, “Why don’t they communicate better?” or “When will someone share the vision?” don’t help at all. They create negative feelings, they create stress, they apportion blame, they create victim-like thinking – and they don’t drive any action.

QBQ! says that the questions you ask should always,
- Begin with “What” or “How” (not “Why”, “When” or “Who”)
- Contain an “I” (not “They”, “Them”, “We” or “You”)
- Focus on an action

So better questions might be, “What can I do to adapt to this change?”, “What can I do to develop my skills in this new area?”, “What can I do better to make sure that mistake is not made again”, What can I do to improve team commmunication” or “How can I better understand the company vision”. Do you see the big difference here?

The big problem with the first lot of questions is they make you feel powerless, like you have no control over the situation. This leads to a little spiral into worry and stress. QBQ! makes the point that stress is internally generated. Stress is a choice you make when you choose to react in a certain way to a given situation. Asking yourself some QBQs, some positive questions. This will make you realise that you can take action to improve things and you will feel more in control and a lot less stressed.

The QBQ! principles obviously apply to the fitness, exercise, weight loss world too – which of these pairs of questions do you think would work better?

“Why is it always raining when I want to go and run?”, or “What cardio exercise can I do instead of running today?”

“Why do they always leave that junk food lying around where I will eat it?”, or “What strategies can I employ to avoid eating that junk food?”

“Why am I always getting injured?”, or “What different exercise plan could I adopt that would be kinder to my joints?”

“Why can’t I seem to ever lose weight?”, or “How can I change my eating plan and/or exercise plan to shift me over this plateau?”

I think I know which questions might create a more positive mind-set and more actionable results. Hopefully you agree!

Check out John Miller’s website if you would like some more information on QBQ! I bought a few copies of QBQ a couple of years ago and encouraged the team to read them. I highly recommend QBQ! and John’s other books.

I went for a ride after work tonight with Voj and Ray from work, and Voj’s mate Danny (who is quite a good cyclist). Voj, Danny and I had our road bikes, Ray was on his mountain bike. Ray also hasn’t ridden much for a while, so he struggled a bit. I hung back with Ray while Voj and Danny went on ahead. We’d decided to do three laps of an 8.5km hilly circuit, and Ray decided after the first lap to head back to work, so I picked up the pace to catch Danny and Voj. We did the second two laps at a faster pace, and pushed it up the hills too – a great 25km ride – nice to have some company on a ride for a change!