Question-asking Tips I Learned From a Ruby on Rails Workshop

At the end of October, I attended a two-day workshop by Rails Girls LA for people interested in learning Ruby on Rails. Learning more code has been on my to-do list for a long time, so this seemed like an excellent opportunity to take care of it. Before we get into the meat of this post, I want to thank and congratulate Rails Girls LA, their leader Jen Diamond, their partner Spokeo and all the mentors for putting on one of the best events I’ve ever attended, especially since it was a woman-focused one. While the event was mainly for women, there were male mentors and male mentees were allowed. Each mentee was paired with a mentor, and together, we worked our way through the material. I learned so much, met great people, had lots of fun and left very energized. Bravo!

But we are here to talk about questions because that is my own pet project this year. And before we kicked off coding on day two, there were a few speakers. The speakers talked about lots of important things — mostly about growth mind-set and how that leads to success. But because I am question-focused of late, I couldn’t help but draw parallels between their conclusions with how to ask and craft great questions and growth-mindsets.

THIS IS A STUPID QUESTION

The first speaker, I believe Rails Girls leader Jen Diamond, talked about “self-bullying.” She said that she often sees intelligent women preface their questions with the phrase, “This is a stupid question.” Then, they ask a really intelligent one. Of course, there’s a lot of data out there about how women in particular struggle with this. But in my own experience, I’ve seen men and women not ask a question because they’re afraid of how they’ll be perceived. I’ve done it myself. But this ties into the post I wrote earlier: when you practice your curiosity, you learn that the question you’re thinking is most likely something else many others are thinking OR it’s something that opens up a new and fruitful avenue for everyone else.

I’ve always found strength in this anecdote about the philosopher Socrates — that the Oracle at Delphi called him the wisest man in Athens because he knew he didn’t know everything. Another version of this story I just looked up says that when Socrates learned the Oracle called him the wisest man in Athens, he set out to prove her wrong. Finally, he realized the Oracle was right because he was prepared to admit his ignorance rather than to pretend to know something he didn’t.

And if that anecdote is too classical for you, here’s something a very talented friend of mine told me about her success:

“When I’m stuck,” she said, “I always ask myself, ‘What would I do?’” To me, what this means is that when we ask ourselves that question, we probably would say what we’d ideally want ourselves to do. It’s a good mental trick to making yourself braver. I’ve tried it a few times recently, and maybe that’s another way to stop self-bullying.

IT’S OK TO GET 10% OF WHAT’S BEING TOLD TO YOU THE FIFTH TIME YOU’RE TOLD

The next speaker talked about how it’s OK to be confused. Obviously, that was very relevant at a Ruby on Rails coding workshop where the majority of students had never coded or used Ruby before. Coding is a language after all, and when you are learning a new language, you need to wear floaties while standing ankle-deep in the water and holding someone’s hand. And that’s OK of course! If you’re still only understanding 10% the fifth time something is explained to you, you’re still doing great! That’s because you’re still in the game in spite of the confusion.

The parallel I saw to question-asking was this: Often, when people are learning interviewing skills, they get stuck on asking the right question. What is it? What is that magical one-shot question that will get you everything you need?! But if you only get 10% of what you need in the first question, then you can follow up with one or five more questions to extract the information. Your success rarely relies on one question. Rather, it relies on a string of questions that help create a conversation, and each answer and question build on each other.

And! If you don’t get what you need and have to follow-up then that’s also OK! Depending on the interview, it’s hard to know what you’re looking for; I find this especially true with UX research. That’s why I always like to conclude interviews by asking if my interview subjects are OK with me following up with questions. I may do it or I may not. But their answer keeps the conversation going even when we are no longer face to face, and it helps me identify who cares the most about the topics under discussion.

TROUBLE-SHOOTING & DEBUGGING

The next speaker talked about how even the mentors, whose experience ranged from 1 to a bajillion years of experience, would run into problems with the material that day. And then, much like that wholly remarkable book….

The keywords “Don’t panic!” should be applied.

Because, and I quote, “That’s what questions are for.”

When you hit a problem in your coding (or conversation), it’s so easy to get stuck with a mental block. Instead, don’t freeze. Ask yourself or others or the Google questions to thaw your way around it.

This made me think of all the times I’ve been in contentious situations with friends with families with clients. Questions are an excellent way to help draw out the emotional or logical core behind an issue. And then once it’s in front of you both, you are able to plan a strategy to take care of it. Questions help us trouble-shoot and debug life problems!

ACCESS vs. MEMORIZING

I’m not sure which speaker this nugget is attributed to (maybe the previous one on trouble-shooting), but she talked about how we shouldn’t put pressure on ourselves to memorize everything we were learning today. That’s what the Internet, our mentors and our growth-mind-set were for.

And that’s what questions are for! We’re not looking to memorize information when we ask questions; we’re not looking for static, Valley-of-the-Forms type information (Plato reference!). Rather, we’re looking for access into information to discover what we need. Much like how you don’t know what answer you need when you trouble-shoot a technical problem, when you’re interviewing a subject, you don’t know what answers you’ll really want until you start asking questions. That allows for spontaneity and flexibility in your conversation. And any interviewer will tell you that the best answers are always the most unexpected ones.

DEFEATING IMPOSTER SYNDROME

One coach that afternoon talked about how he used to work as a security guard before he became a developer. He taught himself python scripts and other languages. He would go to meetups, but he had a lot of imposter syndrome when he went. He talked about how you have to be careful about how you think in these situations because your brain would rather be comfortable than anxious. And that’s how imposter syndrome affects us — it keeps us from trying something new because we are uncomfortable with being afraid.

The parallel to question-asking is this: We might think a question is dumb because we don’t feel we have the right to ask it, and so we won’t ask it. Or we’ll wait until we’re more comfortable asking it — like to a friend or via text message or whatever. But all we’re getting from that hard work of negotiating the situation is not the answer to the question.

As the coach said, sometimes the hardest thing to say as newbie Ruby coders is, “I am a programmer.” (Gulp. I guess I am a programmer.) And the same goes for questions as we peddle through life. If the question is on the tip of your tongue, no matter where you are, don’t hold it in. Let it out! See where it takes you. You’ll be surprised about what you can access!

Thanks Rails Girls and everyone else who is unwittingly participating on this question exploration! Got thoughts? I want to hear them!

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Other Articles So Far:

“The Art of Asking Questions: A Design Thinking Workshop”

“The Question Asker-er: Tactics on How to Use Questions to Get What You Want/Need.”

“The Tricky Business of Close vs Open-Ended Questions Especially in Interviews.”