when I have utilised mentors in the past I have had a huge amount of respect for them. It has been my desire that, one day and in some way, I would be like them, and my expectations were that they would show me how to reach my goal. Currently, I have a mentor who is a Professor of Philosophy, and whilst I never see myself reaching that position, one day I would like to become a wiser person and trust that through the mentoring I receive I am on the road to achieving that aim.
To reiterate, the role of a mentor is a very valuable one that can have a profound impact on people, particularly in their learning, growth and development. As managers and leaders, we frequently act as informal mentors to people and we may also take on more formal mentoring roles with staff. Again, it should be emphasised that there is a prerequisite to wearing the mentoring hat in that you will be expected to bring your expertise, knowledge, wisdom and ideas to the table.
We have explored, then, a number of roles that sit traditionally down the ‘teller’ end of our line, and whilst I absolutely accept that managers and leaders who fulfil their roles well won’t operate entirely from that space, I ask you to bear with me as I continue to approach these explanations from a purely ‘black and white’ perspective.
The ‘asker’ space
Let’s now go to the other end of our line – we are now in the ‘asker’ or ‘questioner’ space. I invite you for a moment to think about what is different now that we are at the other end of the line. Well, there are two things that are different now that we have moved – one is to do with what we believe about another person and the second concerns what we, in theory, need to bring to the table.
Whilst we could argue that there are many things that are different in the ‘asker’ role, I believe that there are two things that fundamentally set it apart from others. First, we believe the person with whom we are interacting has knowledge, wisdom and expertise, and it is our role to draw it out of them. To create a visual representation of this in your mind, please imagine that at the ‘telling’ end of the line you are using your hands to gesture a movement of rolling outwards, which represents sharing. At the ‘asking’ end of the line, please imagine your hands moving in the opposite direction – a movement rolling towards you, which I think beautifully represents your role here as a Potentialiser to draw out that knowledge, wisdom and expertise in the other person.
I have shared this imagery with thousands of people in my workshops, and many people have said to me that the image of me standing there using my hands to represent the ‘asking’ by drawing out knowledge, wisdom and expertise was so profound that they remembered it years later. Let’s hope it stays with you as a powerful reminder of the importance of enabling people by asking them questions. Indeed, you will note that in the ‘asking’ space you bring a different belief about the other person. May I suggest that you see them as being resourceful, creative, knowledgeable and wise, with expertise that is far more amazing than even they realise. Remember, when you are at the ‘telling’ end of our line you don’t believe any of these things about the other person – in fact, you probably believe (or at least infer) that they know nothing. Wow – how powerful it is to remember these things!
Now let’s look at the second thing that is different at the ‘asking’ end of the line. In theory, I don’t need a solution to the problem or issue, because the assumption is made that the other person has the answer and therefore my role is just to draw it out. Now, I know many of you are saying: ‘But what if the other person doesn’t know the answer?’ In that case, asking would be a waste of time; it may be true that they don’t know, in which case you can revert to ‘telling’. However, in many instances they do have some ideas, and the very fact that we automatically go to the ‘telling’ space means that their ideas never see the light of day! So, asking must be the best first response. Later in the book we will explore the way you can respond to various scenarios, such as when someone appears not to know something, but I felt I had to address this point early on as I know objections come up quickly in people’s minds that are best dealt with straight away.
So, if in theory I accept that I don’t need to have the answer but that the other person does have the answer (or at least some ideas to bring to the table), then I hope it makes it easier to step into a ‘questioning’ mode because you recognise that you are there to draw out wisdom rather than to convey information. If you see this ‘drawing out’ as the way to approach your role, rather than being the fountain of all knowledge, you will immediately start to tap into the potential of your team and the dynamics of your relationship will shift to a more positive, empowering and engaging one.
It will be good to explore the ‘asking’ space a little further, so let me share a non-work-related example of when I was able to support a client with a problem she had. In this example, you will see that I had no idea how to help her in a traditional ‘telling’ sense, but by asking her Better Questions she was able to be resourceful and find the answers herself. This particular client had come to me because she wanted to make a number of changes in her life – and one of these changes was that she wanted to give up smoking. What was interesting for me to acknowledge was that I was unable to stand in the ‘telling’ space because I had never been a smoker; I had no personal experience of having to give up smoking, and I also couldn’t draw on expertise from experiences of friends or family as they had never given up smoking either. I hope you can see that I couldn’t be teacher, trainer, educator, expert or mentor – I could only be an ‘asker’.
This was one of my first conscious experiences of being an ‘asker’ rather than a ‘teller’, and whilst I confess to feeling a little apprehensive because I wasn’t able to help in the traditional way by giving advice, I stuck to the principles I knew about asking Better Questions. I have to say that I was amazed by how resourceful my client was and how she was able to find her own answer to her problem. It wasn’t that she was incapable of finding answers to the problem of successfully giving up smoking, it was that she had not given herself enough focused time (and the right questions) to enable her to find the strategy that was going to work for her. Using the skills that I am going to share with you throughout this book, she was not only able to identify her success strategy, but within a matter of weeks she was able to put it into place to successfully become a non-smoker.
I share this story so that you can see that when we don’t provide answers to problems, we can still help people to find answers themselves by asking Better Questions. Indeed, I will make the point that we will revisit later: when we don’t have the answer to something, it is often easier to be an ‘asker’ because then we cannot be tempted to jump in and give the other person advice that inhibits their resourcefulness.
It’s not often that we can make a case for not having all the answers, but in my experience being an ‘asker’ rather than a ‘teller’ frequently enables us to be better leaders. When we always have an answer to something we are often tempted to be ‘tellers’, and it is this issue that will be your greatest challenge to becoming more of an ‘asker’, a true Potentialiser, and using those Better Questions.
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