Over the last few years I’ve been on a huge learning journey, both in terms of gaining a bunch of practical experience and in consuming knowledge from books and courses. Often however, rather than leaving me with confidence and clarity, there’s feelings of insecurity (about the amount of stuff I still don’t know) and uncertainty about what skills to use in a given situation.
Partner this with having a role where I’m approached often during the day by different people wanting different things, I often spend the first few minutes of a conversation trying to suss out what ‘mode’ to go into (coach, mentor, teacher, friend, relationship councillor etc…), until this week at least…
Last week I shared my confusion with the wonderful Olaf Lewitz who excitedly told me of a solution he’d seen previously to this exact problem.
“If you are having trouble figuring out what people want, why not just ask them and let them choose?”
Doh! Too easy! But to make this fun there’s an extra element. The menu.
In the example that Olaf gave the guy wrote down the options / services he could offer on a post it and asked people to pick. I went for a physical card that lists the options available. Here it is:
Sometimes we overthink problems when a simple solution is staring us straight in the face.
As well as creating some laughter, it does exactly what I hoped for – provide clarity, both for the approacher, it gives them space to pause and be clear on what they want to ask for, and for the approachee (me) as to which mode to switch to. I also got a lot more hugs last week :-).
If you’re wondering about the ‘Stationery’ option, then yes, I still have a thing for stationery…
So – what would be on your menu?