Change Your Questions, Change Your Life: A conversation with Dr. Marilee Adams

Guest: Dr. Marilee Adams, author and pioneer of inquiry-based coaching and leadership

EPISODE DESCRIPTION

When the world feels complex or scary, we tend to narrow our thinking into rigid, binary judgments — and lose access to nuance, choice, and possibility. Dr. Marilee Adams, author of Change Your Questions, Change Your Life, joins Julie to unpack the Learner and Judger mindsets, the Choice Map that shows how we fall into — and can climb out of — reactive thinking, and why the questions we ask ourselves shape everything from our relationships to our physical health.

ABOUT MY GUEST

Marilee Adams, Ph.D. is an award-winning author and pioneer in the fields of inquiry-based coaching, leadership, and organizational effectiveness. She is the author of Change Your Questions, Change Your Life: 14 Powerful Tools for Leadership, Coaching, and Results, which has sold over half a million copies in 25 languages. Her work focuses on showing people how to ask themselves the best questions to help themselves thrive, both personally and professionally.

WHAT WE COVER

How Marilee developed Question Thinking and the Choice Map, starting with a spontaneous flip-chart exercise

The two core mindsets: Learner (open, curious, creative) and Judger (closed, defensive, demeaning) — and why both are normal

Why awareness is the first step, and how the body often signals which mindset you're in before your mind catches up

The Choice Map: the fork in the road, the “Judger pit,” and the many off-ramps back to Learner

Why Judger is our biological default — and why that's not something to judge ourselves for

Self-compassion and giving yourself time before trying to “fix” a reaction