The Harvard Business Review posits that our language can have a profound effect on our creativity. Compare “How can we…” with “How might we…” The latter suggests wide open possibility, the former a glimmer of probable success. From the piece: 

When people within companies try to innovate, they often talk about the challenges they’re facing by using language that can inhibit creativity instead of encouraging it, says the business consultant Min Basadur, who has taught the How Might We (HMW) form of questioning to companies over the past four decades. “People may start out asking, ‘How can we do this,’ or ‘How should we do that?,’” Basadur explained to me. “But as soon as you start using words like can and should, you’re implying judgment: Can we really do it? And should we?” By substituting the word might, he says, “you’re able to defer judgment, which helps people to create options more freely, and opens up more possibilities.”

Read the entire article here.

This article was originally published on 99u.com.

Sean Blanda is the managing editor of 99u.com.

Photo: Shutterstock