Ask the right questions

I find the questioning easy because I am trained to do it. When I join a group and facilitate the diagnosis sessions, leaders are blown away with how I am able to get people talking so openly and frankly. You can achieve this too.

During this stage, I ask clients:

1. What is the present situation?
2. Where do you want to be?
3. What is preventing you from achieving your goals?
4. What are the biggest blocks and barriers to success?
   

When I go through this step with a client, I gather the data, ask questions, spot inconsistencies and simply get curious. As an outsider, I create a safe and confidential space so that people can speak freely, and I am not emotionally involved so I can remain totally objective. It becomes a little trickier if you try to do this process with someone from within rather than an external consultant, but it is possible. You have to build trust first and explain why you are asking the questions - the purpose. 

But before you even begin asking the questions, plan your questions. What is it you really want to know? 

And now you have the questions, you need to be prepared to hear the truth. Later, we will discuss how to set up the feedback sessions and some great tools to help you and your team structure the conversations. For now though, you need to prepare yourself. Remember, your people and teams have a unique perspective of how the business operates. Their insights and experiences might be very different to yours, and that's where the insights come from. 

It’s not uncommon to get triggered when you hear negative comments or feedback, especially if it feels like criticism or attack.  Often, when I feedback from the data I have collected, clients challenge me, challenge the data and often take it as a personal failure. They are emotionally attached, especially when they care so much and have only ever made decisions for the right reasons, so a enter the conversation with diplomacy and empathy. 

Prepare yourself so you can really listen. Drop your guard. Listen more than you speak and be receptive.

I don’t hold back or sugar-coat the feedback – on the contrary, I speak the truth, but with heart. The usual responses are defensiveness, blame or justification. ‘We haven’t had the time…’, ‘We have recruitment problems…’, ‘I haven’t had the support from our colleagues…’ I get it, no one sets out to do the wrong thing. You need to be mentally and emotionally prepared to hearing the feedback and seeing the data and then draw a line under the past, focus on the present and create a plan.