The AWE Question: How Wonder Opens Better Mentoring Conversations
Have you ever been struck by something outside yourself that filled you with a sense of awe?
For me, it happens in the middle of ordinary moments. Like this: I might be driving down I-90, thinking about my day, when I glance up and see that, as we say around here, “the mountain is out.” There’s Mt. Rainier in the distance, vast and luminous against the sky.
And suddenly, the short winter days in Seattle feel like a fair trade. The rain, the gray, the early darkness all fade into the background. And in the summer, when daylight stretches late into the evening, the mountain feels like icing on the cake, an invitation to squeeze in a weeknight hike and still make it home before dark.
It feels breathtaking. At once calming and invigorating. It takes me out of my head and away from my thoughts. It makes me more present and helps me feel part of something grander than myself.
That is what awe can do.
It pulls our attention beyond the tight circle of our own concerns so that we pay attention instead to what is in front of us.
When we are no longer focused only on ourselves, we become more available to wonder. Wonder is what happens when we pause long enough to notice that there is more here than we first understood. It does not rush to categorize, solve, or control. It lingers. It looks again.
And in that looking again, wonder becomes a doorway to curiosity.
Curiosity is wonder put into motion. It asks: What else is here? What else might be true? What else have I not yet seen?
That same spirit belongs in our mentoring conversations.
Michael Bungay Stanier popularized one of the simplest and most powerful coaching questions in The Coaching Habit: “And what else?” He calls it the AWE Question. It is a memorable acronym for a deceptively small question, one that asks us to stay curious a little longer before advising, solving, interpreting, or steering. It’s a great question for coaching, and for mentoring.
In mentoring, the first answer is often the polished answer. The practiced answer. The answer the mentee gives because it is the one most available to them in the moment. “And what else?” gently opens another door. It says, “I’m still with you. I’m still interested. There may be more here.”
Research supports this intuition. In a recent article in The Chronicle of Evidence-Based Mentoring, Jean Rhodes summarized research on listening, curiosity, and connection in mentoring relationships. One key finding: follow-up questions are not conversational filler. They are among the most reliable predictors of connection. Studies cited in the article link thoughtful follow-up questions to greater liking, perceived responsiveness, trust, autonomy, relatedness, and willingness to disclose again in the future.
In other words, curiosity is not simply a nice mentoring quality. It is a relational behavior people can feel.
This is powerful because mentoring is not merely the transfer of advice from someone more experienced to someone less experienced. At its best, mentoring helps people hear themselves think. It helps them locate their own judgment, name their own desires, and see possibilities they might otherwise miss.
A mentor who moves too quickly to advice may miss the deeper layer.
A mentor who stays curious can help the mentee find it.
“And what else?” gives that deeper truth room to emerge.
A mentee can also use the question for themselves: “What else might be possible here?”
The question is not only useful inside a formal mentoring relationship. Moving Beyond Mentoring, “And what else” is a great question to ask ourselves when we think about our developmental networks – the relationships we need to help us, and others, grow). In a developmental network, growth does not come from one wise person with all the answers. It comes from a web of relationships that help us see more fully. Curiosity activates that web. It helps us ask better questions of peers, sponsors, managers, colleagues, direct reports, friends, and even ourselves.
Within mentoring, the AWE Question deepens the conversation.
Beyond mentoring, it becomes a way of moving through the world.
It asks: What else is true here? What else might be possible? What else am I not seeing? Who else might help me grow?
The next time you feel the urge to give advice, pause.
Let wonder do its quiet work.
Then ask: “And what else?”
As the story evolves over the first 90 days of their mentoring relationship, Rafa comes to appreciate the importance of a good launch, and the critical role preparation plays in moving forward. He learns many lessons about how to build a trusting, open and honest relationship, how to maximize his mentoring time, and how to take charge of his own learning.
