What Are They Really Asking? | Former Starbucks SVP Wanda J. Herndon on the Second Question #99

" I had to start trying to think beneath the questions: what are they really saying?" - Wanda Herndon Wanda J. Herndon trained as a journalist, then spent forty years on the other side of the notebook. Dow. DuPont. Eleven years as Starbucks SVP of Global Communications while the company grew from 550 stores to more than 11,000. Her curiosity starts with a middle child in Flint, Michigan, who wore out her siblings asking why. She describes learning, after being misquoted, to ask what a reporter is really asking. She calls listening a discipline she never mastered. And the question that carried her through divorce: what is this moment trying to teach me? Crisis work as a puzzle solved with who, what, why, when, where, how. Mentoring as a two-way street. Why she always asked Howard Schultz why. Being the CEO of you. Owning Flint rather than letting others define it. And her right now question: will we survive this chaos, and what can I do to help? This Curated Questions episode can be found on all major platforms and at CuratedQuestions.com. Be sure to subscribe to the weekly Curated Questions Dispatch newsletter for more fun with questions and curiosity! (https://substack.com/@curatedquestions (https://substack.com/@curatedquestions?)) Keep questioning! Resources Mentioned Orin Smith (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orin_C._Smith) Nikki Giovanni (https://www.nikki-giovanni.com/) Starbucks (https://www.starbucks.com/) Audre Lorde (https://alp.org/about/audre) Flint Michigan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint,_Michigan) Howard Schultz (https://schultzfamilyfoundation.org/team-member/howard-schultz/) Onward by Howard Schultz (https://a.co/d/0cG7QyPF) Pour Your Heart Into It by Howard Schultz (https://a.co/d/00OhYP7W) Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. (https://aka1908.com/) Greater Seattle Chapter of The Links, Inc. (https://www.greaterseattlelinks.org/) Wanda Herndon website (http://wcommgroup.com/) Wanda Herndon on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/wandajherndon) Wanda Herndon on Facebook (https://facebook.com/wandajherndon) Wanda Herndon on Instagram (https://instagram.com/wandajherndon) Producer Ben Ford (https://www.producerbenford.com/)