SDS 274: Ask the Right Question

Hey everybody, welcome back to the SuperDataScience podcast. Super excited to have you back here on the show today. As you can probably tell my voice is a bit broken and that’s not because I went partying out last night or anything like that. It’s because I was attending or actually together with Hadelin we were attending the Tony Robbins’ Business Mastery number two in Amsterdam. So right now I’m still in Amsterdam and recording this audio for you. And yeah, it was a blast. Five days of very deep diving into business and how to create teams, motivate people, serve customers, create products, change the world, amazing experience. Five days.

It pretty much like full five days, or 12 hours per day. I honestly don’t know how he does it. There were days when Tony Robbins was on stage for like 10 hours or so. It’s really incredible, and if you are interested, if you’re looking for a business training, couldn’t recommend anything higher or better than this. I’ve been to Business Mastery number one in Las Vegas, this was Business Mastery number two. So if you’re a business owner, highly, highly recommend checking out Business Mastery or if you’re just interested in personal growth any Tony Robbins event is always a win.

So what are we talking about today? Today I wanted to talk about an interesting topic about asking questions and how to ask the right question. And I’ve had this on my mind for a while and just so coincides that this is right after Tony Robbins event. Because the idea I got this from is from my relationship with my business coach. So I have a business coach who I meet up with maybe like, I don’t know, twice a month, maybe three times a month. So not every week, kind of like a one time a week, but not every week. And so it’s a 30 minute phone call and why I’m saying coincided because this coach actually, I signed up for this coaching through a Tony Robbins event, I think it was like two years ago. And yeah, and it’s a coach through the Tony Robbins coaching system. My first coach that I got with Tony Robins, to be honest, it didn’t really click, we didn’t click, it was a lady who was in Perth and it just for some reason it didn’t go well and I was kind of discouraged about the whole thing.

I had a few coaching sessions and I felt like she was trying to mother me, like, you know, tried to give me motherly advice instead of what I was looking for. And so I stopped doing it. It was like two years ago. So I stopped attending or not attending stopped scheduling these calls and having these calls. But then I thought about it, try it again, decided to ask them to change my coach. And now I have a really cool epic coach and I feel like if you’re listening to this, my coach really huge shout out to you, love our conversations. And, but at the same time, it, it wasn’t always so smooth even with this epic person. And this is the reason for this podcast. Like I’ve gotten it to a stage where now every phone call is amazing and I want to share with you how to have these conversations whether if it’s a coach or a mentor or just somebody that you are admiring and you ask for advice occasionally.

And what I found in my experience is the key to having a productive conversation that you take something out of it. Like imagine you have a 30 minute phone call with Richard Branson or with Tony Robbins or with Barack Obama or with Michelle Obama or with Ellen Degeneres, like whoever you are aspiring and admiring, imagine you would have a 30 minute phone call with them. And that’s it. How you’re gonna get the most out of it. And you want to ask them for a piece of advice. They, of course you want to tell them how much you love their work and things like that, but you really want to ask them for a piece of advice. Well, what are you going to do about it? So what I found was at the start of my relationship with my current coach, it was kind of, even though this person is really incredible and very switched on, they have multiple businesses, they are really changing people’s lives and the world and I can learn a ton from them.

I found the phone calls were kind of like a mess and they were all over the place, but now they’re very, very useful to me. So what’s the difference? Well, the difference is about asking questions. I used to ask bad questions. I used to, like for instance, I would come to phone call and I wouldn’t really know what I want to get out of it. I wouldn’t have a clear question in mind and also ask like five questions or I have three questions or three things going on in my life that I wanted help with. Like some personal issues, some business issues, some relationship issue, all these different things, areas of my life that I wanted some advice on. And I went for many things, I got nothing in the end and nothing useful. So it was all very confusing and it’s up to the person that’s asking the question to lead this relationship.

Like imagine if you’re on the other side, if you are the person coaching. And by the way, speaking of coaching, like just quick, quick note on this, if you’re coaching someone or if you’re being coached by someone, let’s say you’re coaching someone, it doesn’t mean you’re better than that person. Doesn’t necessarily mean you have to be more successful or anything like that. There’s no relationship whatsoever like that. It just means you can see things that they can’t see. That’s all it means. That’s what coaching is about. Therefore, even when you’re selecting a coach, you or a mentor or somebody to go to advice for, you want to find someone who sees things from a different way, like sees things differently to yours, can see things that you can’t see because of their experience, because of their perspective, because of their background, because of their philosophy, psychology about life.

You want to find somebody, you want to identify, how is that person’s perspective different to yours and understand that that’s what you want, that’s what you don’t want. Sometimes people see the world the same way as you or sometimes people see things differently but not in a way that is going to be useful to you. So you need to find someone or many people that see the world or things in a different way to you that’s useful, that you appreciate their perspective and you learn from that. And that’s all it is. So if you see the world different than someone, you can be coaching somebody and has nothing to do with success or status or all these other things. It’s just about a matter of perspective and seeing things that other people don’t see and helping them see them.

So going back to our conversation, imagine you are the coach and somebody comes to like, and they have a ton of questions. They’re confused about what they want. They don’t have clarity, lack clarity in understanding of what they don’t know and understanding of what they actually want from this conversation. You’re not going to really be able to help them, right? And to me at the time it looked like, oh, I’m not really getting any value and that means my coach is bad. But really no, it just meant I had the wrong questions. And so basically summary: bad question, bad answer. Good question to the right person, you get a good answer, helpful answer.

And so a couple of examples of questions. For instance, that I ask now. So what I do now, so this is the key, right? So if you basically, if you find that your relationship with your mentor or your coach or somebody you admire and you ask questions about, it’s not going really well and getting that much value.

This is what I did. Every time before our call, during the week I’ll write down things that are bothering me things let’s say mostly business questions. So it’s also important to identify as we discussed where their perspective is going to be valuable to you. You might want to have one person for business advice or one person for your career advice. If you’re like growing a career in data science, one person for career advice or two people for career advice, a person for relationship advice, a person for personal growth advice, a person for, I don’t know, travel advice whenever you want. Once you find a person that their perspective is valuable to you in a certain area, it might not be all areas. Just identify that area and ask them more questions about that.

So throughout the week I sit like if something’s bothering me in my business, I’m like, oh, this is strange. You know, this is not going as I wanted to. What could have I done better or what can I do better? How do I solve this problem? I write it down. So I write it down on my computer, in a notebook and throughout the week months, I keep writing these down and when my coaching call comes up with my coach, I go and read these maybe like a half an hour in advance, 15 minutes in advance, maybe a day in advance. I read through them and I find one, I don’t find two or three. I’ve tried that, doesn’t really work well. You just find one. And the thing is like from these conversations, if you can get absolute clarity on one thing that is going to be a thousand times more valuable than if you get, you know, 50% clarity on two things or 50% clarity on three things. You want to get clarity on one thing.

Even if there’s like three things that are really bothering you, in a 30 minute phone call, you really have just enough time to clarify one thing and dive deep into it and sort it out so you don’t have that question anymore. So I figured out one thing I want to know and when the call starts, of course we chat about like recent events. It’s always interesting what were we doing with our businesses, where are we going and things like that. But then I usually what my coach is: All right Kirill, great. How can I serve you today? How can I help you in your career, business, whatever it is, how can I help you today? How can I add value? How can I add massive, this is what he says: how can I serve you today? How can I add massive value to you today?

And then I ask the question, so then I’ll say, the question I have for today is how do I structure my team? We’re growing, we want to introduce a new department. What kind of person do I need to hire? What kind of psychology should they have, what skills should they have, background, how do I structure the interdepartmental relationships in the team and so on. And then he’ll give me some advice. Recently we spent two weeks talking about, two sessions and came with a really cool plan on how to do that. Or for instance, I’ll say we have a conflict in the workplace. You know, these two people are not meshing well, they’ve had an issue. How do I help them resolve it? Or for instance, how do I grow professionally in terms of joining networks? What networks can I join? What are some very valuable networks around there in the world that I can participate in and I can bring value to, and also meet exciting, interesting people there.

So things like that. But basically bottom line is identify asking the right question. Also must be combined with finding the right person to ask the question, identifying who you’re going to ask the question. So identify who the person is that you want to be coached by in this specific question or area. Identify one question that you want, but it has to be very clear. Even though you don’t know the answer, you at least need to know very well what you don’t know. Have to have absolute clarity on that and then go and ask that one question. Don’t ask two, don’t ask three, just get clarity on one question and go and action it.

And next week ask the next question. So that’s my 2 cents on asking the right questions. My call to action for you this weekend would be think about something that has happened recently or it will happen in the next couple of days that you really would appreciate or could benefit from some external somebody else’s advice on where you could use a different perspective, some advice from a person who sees things differently. Is there something that you are not seeing in that specific question? It might be a conflict that you might have with your spouse or some way that you’re educating your children that they’re not listening or it’s not effective or you’re not sure if it’s the right approach. It might be something about personal growth, something about your sports, about your health. Something where you are kind of maybe stuck in one perception, one mentality, one blueprint that you’ve been doing all your life or just that’s the way you know things, but you feel that maybe, that if somebody gave you a different perspective, and if somebody came along who sees things differently, that might spark an idea or might change the way you do things, it might add value, massive value to your life. So think of an idea of an area like that and then go ahead and find a person that matches to that area. Somebody who’s perspective you respect and appreciate in that specific area.

And by the way, what is respect? Well respect is when somebody brings to the table something that you don’t have. Some skill, knowledge, connections, whatever else. When somebody brings value that’s different to your value, that’s when respected. And basically so who’s somebody you respect, who could add massive value to your life in that specific area? And then go and try ask them and see if you can pose the question, identify the question very clearly, pose it and get full clarity in that question. And maybe that will actually change your perspective.

There we go. On that note, hope you enjoyed todays quick episode and I look forward to seeing you back here next time. Until then, happy analyzing.