Читать книгу Better Health & Wellbeing Professionals Ask Better Questions - Lindsay Tighe - Страница 12

Let’s look at another hat that we wear – it’s one we are sure you all relate to within your lives: being ‘the expert’. Here you are a person who considers yourself to have the best knowledge and advice about certain situations or things and believes that your role is to offer this knowledge or advice to help people. There is a sense that you do know best, and this doesn’t necessarily come from an egotistical place; it is likely to be a genuine belief that, given your education, role and experience, your opinion really is right. We can recall many people telling us that they are aware that they often converse wearing the expert hat in the absolute knowledge that they are right about things, and frequently they are!

Health & Wellbeing Professionals who wear this hat usually do so out of real concern and care for their clients, often in the belief that if they don’t provide this knowledge or advice there will be adverse consequences. Indeed, there are often situations where both you and the client feel that it’s your role to be the advice-giver and you have a duty of care for your client. Very often a habit and expectation develops over the years that you will be the advice-giver and the expert, and your clients will approach you with an automatic expectation that you will wear this hat in your role. We have had many people share with us that they readily recognise this role and, without realising it, have even become relied upon to be the provider of answers. It’s clear that whilst dependence is not a good thing, being available as an expert to your clients will be one way to enable them to live safer, healthier lives through sharing your knowledge and wisdom. Therefore the expert hat is again a valid one to wear, but we should emphasise at the right time and in the right way, which will be explored later.