How Well Do You Really Know Your People?

Kia ora, welcome to Nurtured with Naketa. It’s my two-weekly newsletter, updating you on cool things around leadership, coaching and facilitation.

For those that actually don’t know me, I whakapapa, I descend from Ngāpuhi, Te Pū o te Where in Kaikohe and Rarotonga in the Cook Islands.

Born and raised in South Auckland, grew up in Ōtara.

So my role in Nurtured with Naketa and Cultivating Culture is really to create space for leaders to take a beat, to think for a minute.

And today I’m going to offer you some questions.

Like:

How well do you know your people?

How well do you know the people in your team?

Sometimes, you know, people have ideas: “Yeah, I know them. Yep, I know them.”

What I want to do today is actually offer you some easy questions that help you figure out a little bit more about your people and what we could add to our kete of knowledge about our people.

They’re pretty low-lying.

What I mean by that is they’re not too deep and personal.

I always say:

Please just share what you’re comfortable sharing. If you’re not comfortable sharing something with me, you don’t need to tell me.

So I’m going to share with you the questions that I think will be really helpful for you to open up a meeting, open up a family meeting, open up a team meeting, open up a workshop, open up a facilitation.

Here we go.

One I just used yesterday, actually, with a bunch of leaders was:

There’s an open ticket at the airport.

You can fly anywhere in the world, right?

The airport has got the domestic terminal and the international terminal.

There is an open ticket for you waiting at the airport.

Where are you flying to?

That’s question number one.

Use that to open up a meeting. It gets everyone’s voice in the room, to warm up that everyone has a voice here.

Another one:

If you could swap with anyone for the day, who would you choose?

I have had the funniest answers to this one. The funniest answers.

I remember in a centre, people would say, “Oh, Taylor Swift,” or this person and that person.

But the funniest one was from a lady who said:

“I would swap with my husband because he says, ‘I’m too busy, I’m too busy, I’m too busy,’ and I want to know why he’s too busy.”

Another question:

If you could have dinner with a historical figure, who would you choose?

Or:

What is your favourite childhood memory?

Again, people can only share what they’re comfortable sharing.

And:

If you had a whole day with absolutely nothing you had to do, how would you spend it?

Right, there’s a koha for you.

Use any of those at the beginning of your next meeting, at your next conversation.

Ask the next person one of these questions and see what you get back.

Mauri ora e te whānau.

And if you’re around next week in The Facilitation Garden,

I’ll pop the link below. We are doing a live coaching demo.

Kia ora.