First you have to ASK

As humans our default setting is to tell others what to do. It makes us feel good, gives us that 'hit' of significance that we need. When I made the leap from Uni to working in a corporate environment I couldn't wait to share of my 'expertise' (oh it makes me cringe now to think of it). I was young, inexperienced but enthusiastic and form day one I started my 'real world' learning.

Then you continue in your career, and I think it was in my late 20's when I realised that there were better ways to do things. I realised the more I listened, the better the products and projects were that I delivered. So I thought to myself 'wow listening is really key'.

Now I know it goes even further. Now I know that you are better to ask first. Even more over time you begin to realise how important the questions are that you ask. Then of course you need to listen. It is amazing how often we don't ask. We don't ask customers what they need, we don't ask staff how they are feeling or what they need to do their jobs better or leaders what they need to be able to empower their staff more. We simply are not hard wired to ASK first. 

Customers know their journeys and pain points, staff know their frustrations and often how to make things better. Leaders often don't know how to facilitate and businesses don't know how to respond. For now let's focus on the first step.

There are a number of ways to ask:

• Focus groups - mapping the customer journey and pain points
• Social gatherings - often in a social environment people open up even more. Creating the right environment in which people will be honest is key.
• Research surveys - now these can do done via face to face 1:1 interviews or over the phone, or online.
• Workshops - of course customer journey mapping is done often in a workshop style. Facilitating workshops to do with team building.

And remember to ask the right people, at the right time and in the right way.

After a time as you become more and more comfortable with asking questions, you will see the value in creating engagement and creating more purposeful solutions. In fact the better you facilitate this process you the more effective you become. No longer do you need to have all of the answers - you simply need to know how to ask.