Student T was very frustrated and wrote this in her reflection form:
“Some stories are complicated in the client’s head too? I wonder how to keep that on track…”
Here’s part of what we answered in the reply email, and she was very thankful:
You’re right that many stories are complicated in the client’s head too. It is our job to help them clear their mind and get to what is most relevant and most important to work on.
You do that by asking all the time, in different ways, if this is the most urgent thing to talk about.
Questions like:
🔹 So what’s most urgent that we deal with?
🔹From a scale from 1-10, what is the least important to you that we work on and what’s the most?
🔹 You’ve mentioned X, Y and Z: Which one is it most important that we deal with?
🔹You’re telling me something which does not sound so connected to what you’ve spoken about so far, and I wonder how is that connected (id at all?) to what we talk about? [You might find that it’s very important or that it’s indeed a diversity].
🔹If you had 1 hour to solve the most important issue in your life, and I would tell you that I have a magic wand to repair all that’s challenging, what would you tell me to go “Abracadabra” and fix for you?
All these questions will help you help the client focus.
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Our former student Gillian McDonnell, reacted to this and wrote:
“Oooo, I like that last question. I use the lottery question with my clients – if you won 5 million euros to do any training/schooling and you could set up your business, what would you do? but I really like the magic wand question!”
Well done Gillian. It’s great to learn from former students.
