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Let’s now go to the other end of our line – you are now in the ‘asker’ or ‘questioner’ space. We invite you for a moment to think about what is different now that you are at the other end of the line. Whilst we could argue that there are many things that are different in the ‘asker’ role, we believe that there are two things that fundamentally set it apart from the ‘teller’. One is to do with what you believe about the person you converse with, and the second concerns what you, in theory, need to bring to the table.

Having thought about it for a few seconds, we hope that you can see that firstly we believe the person with whom we are interacting, in this case your client, has knowledge, wisdom and expertise – it is our role as the ‘asker’ 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 the sharing of your knowledge and expertise. At the ‘asking’ end of the line, please imagine your hands moving in the opposite direction – a movement rolling towards you, which we think beautifully represents the role here as a Potentialiser to draw out that knowledge, wisdom and expertise in your clients.

This imagery has been shared with thousands of people in our workshops, and many people have said that the image of one of us standing there using our hands to represent the ‘asking’ to draw 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.

You will note that in the ‘asking’ space you bring a different belief about clients; seeing them as being more resourceful, creative, knowledgeable and wise – that they are more amazing than even they realise. Remember, when you are at the ‘telling’ end of our line, your standpoint (often unconsciously) is that you don’t believe these things about them; in fact, you probably believe (or at least infer) that they know less or know nothing. Another perspective that we often share here is that at the ‘telling’ end of the line it is all about you, whilst at the ‘asking’ end of the line it is all about them.

Now let’s look at the second thing that is different at the ‘asking’ end of the line. In theory, you don’t need a solution to the problem or issue or to be the expert, because the assumption is made that they have the answer and therefore your role is just to draw it out. Now, you may say, “What if they don’t know the answer? This could 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 will have some ideas. 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’ll explore the way you can respond to various scenarios, such as when they appear not to know something, but we felt we had to address this point early on as we know objections come up quickly in people’s minds that are best dealt with straight away.

So, if in theory you accept that you don’t need to have the answer, and that your clients do have the answer (or at least some ideas to bring to the table), then we 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 always convey information or provide answers. If you see this ‘drawing out’ as the way to approach conversations, rather than being the font of all knowledge, you’ll immediately start to tap into the potential of clients and the dynamics of your relationship will shift to a more empowering and engaging one.

Let’s explore this a little further, by sharing an example of when Lindsay was able to support a client with a goal she had. You will see that Lindsay 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 wanted to make a number of changes in her life – and one of these changes was that she wanted to get fit and run a marathon. What was interesting for Lindsay to acknowledge was that she was unable to stand in the ‘telling’ space because she had never run a marathon, had no personal experience of having to train for a marathon, and couldn’t draw on expertise from experiences of friends or family as they had never run a marathon either. We hope you can see that she couldn’t be teacher, trainer, educator, expert or mentor – she could only be an ‘asker’.

This was one of Lindsay’s first conscious experiences of being an ‘asker’ rather than a ‘teller’, and whilst she confessed to feeling a little apprehensive because she wasn’t able to help in the traditional way by giving advice, she stuck to the principles she knew about asking Better Questions. She was amazed by how resourceful her client was and how she was able to find her own solution. It wasn’t that she was incapable of finding answers to achieve her goal; 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 we’re going to share throughout this book, she was not only able to identify her success strategy, but within a few months she was able to successfully run her first 13 kilometres.

We share this story so that you can see that when you can’t provide answers to problems, you can still help your clients to find answers themselves by asking Better Questions. Indeed, we’ll make the point that we will revisit later: when we don’t have the answer to something, it’s often easier to be an ‘asker’ because then we cannot be tempted to jump in and give advice that inhibits a person’s own resourcefulness.

It’s not often that we can make a case for not having all the answers, but in our experience being an ‘asker’ rather than a ‘teller’ frequently enables us to be better Health & Wellbeing Professionals. When we always have an answer to something or play the ‘expert’ we’re often tempted to be ‘tellers’, which inhibits, and it’s this issue that is the greatest challenge to becoming more of an ‘asker’ and a true Potentialiser.