Productivity for the Gifted Professional
December 20, 2024
In School, Did You Peek the Other’s Answers?
January 7, 2025
Better Questions For Someone at Your Advanced Level
What a year! Did anyone get the license number of that truck that just ran over us? Do you have more questions than answers these days? Can I count on you to step into the GCP Community to help us sort this out and come up with better questions?
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I deeply appreciate every subscriber, new and with us from the start. Thank you for engaging every week with your responses, your comments, and your better questions. I love the multiplicity of answers. I’d much rather create a space in which you can connect, belong, and reflect on your life than tell you what to do.
High hopes for 2025 were dashed on November 5 for 49% of voters and the weeks since the election have left 100% of us anxious and rushed. This period of uncertainty and searching is more overwhelming than all of last year.
Do we want answers? Do we need better questions to get to better answers? Or do we want whatever is about to transform everything—finances, work, relationships, and health, do we want it to be over like a mighty tornado so we start rebuilding?
The Communicators, Inc.
Better Questions For Someone at Your Advanced Level
On the plus side, you are here and this is what we’ve learned about you and what happens when we connect professionals with communicators and with gifted minds. We get along great with others who are intensely practical and forward-looking, funny and irreverent, deep thinking and broad-minded, compassionate and not afraid of vulnerable, curious and inspiring.
Everyday questions will not work for you. Oh no. Exceptional adults push the boundaries for better questions.
As 2024 closes out, I took a proper break, turned off the screens, and retreated to my library—that sanctuary of sanity with floor-to-ceiling bookcases surrounding me, the 8-foot window that brings in brilliant daylight and moonlight for reading, and my dog. Because 2024 and 2025 are telling me this is the time for epic transformations, I did a second reading of two Warren Berger books—A More Beautiful Question (2016) and The Book of Beautiful Questions (2018).
Three questions driving me into these books came first:
- Is Berger still the best at bringing his insights and blending it with your lived experiences in recent years?
- Why are there two books in two years? What did Berger learn about us and how our curiosity evolved to generate better questions? What sets these works apart, while also pinpointing the depth and nuances he developed in the later book?
- Do the better questions lessons from Berger get better with time? Did he see we were headed into more complicated situations and would be much better outcomes than before?
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Why Does This Matter to You?
Both books revolve around Berger’s belief: Better questions drive innovation, solve problems, and deepen understanding. A More Beautiful Question introduces the Why-What If-How framework, inspiring us to adopt curiosity as a transformative tool. This foundational work is broad and philosophical and encourages exploration.
The Book of Beautiful Questions shifts from theory to practical application. Berger zeroes in on decision-making, creativity, leadership, and connection. It’s a targeted guide, offering questions tailored to real-world situations. The first book increased curiosity and the 2018 book gave us tools to take focused action.
What are the better questions? Berger provides pages and pages of better questions, organized, tagged, and presented in a way that brings those questions to life when matched with your unique experiences. How often does someone say the answers are already inside of you but where are the questions that only you can recognize as just right to unlock growth, connection, and creativity?
Great questions are not abstract tools—they are practical, actionable, and transformative.
By integrating your own stories, you show how leaders like yourself live these principles and benefit from asking better questions. For every area of life important to you there are better questions.
What about building relationships and communities that serve others while satisfying your sense of worth? What if you ask, “How can I help others feel seen and empowered?”
What about decision-making and getting clear with your thinking? What if you ask, “What assumptions am I making, and how can I test them?”
What about creativity and a time when you procrastinated instead of doing the hard thing first? What if you ask, “What would I try if success were guaranteed?”?
How about connections you desire through communication? What if you ask “What can I ask to truly understand this person?” Maybe they are waiting for you to improve the relationship with the next question.
Credit Alban Gogh at Pixabay
Which Brings Me to You
Ready or not, the year ahead is bigger than you and you will experience wave after wave of transformations.
That’s why it’s important to hold on to these truths, which nobody can change.
First, time will move as it always has and your life happens one day at a time. The illusion of time feels fast or slow, but the reality is the clock ticks the same for all matter, living and dead.
Second, you are a social animal and a member of many different communities. You are never alone—not until your final minutes of life and that is utterly a one-time, alone moment. Your best chance at a worthwhile life is one of creating and serving others instead of a self-absorbed life of greed and manipulating others for your benefit.
Third, you learn nothing by talking. You only learn by listening. The questions we ask don’t just help us uncover answers—they create opportunities to lead more effectively, decide with confidence, innovate boldly, and connect meaningfully.
My commitment is to bring you the very best of what I’m living and learning while keeping it real and honest as I go. Please don’t expect perfect and do expect thought-provoking ideas, timeless wisdom, dry English humor, and an unwavering devotion to help you live your most expansive, expressive, and meaningful life.
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My name is Georgia Patrick. I work with curious, intense, understanding professionals—still in practice and retired, to tap into their full potential and get extremely clear on their gift (their value) to individuals actively seeking such wisdom. It starts with an email to georgia@communicators.com. Maybe, later, a short call to make sure we both understand you. Whenever you’re ready, there are 4 ways I can help you.
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