Better Aged Care Professionals Ask Better Questions: Join the Aged Care Revolution...Become a Potentialiser and Bring Out the Amazingness In Your Clients!

By Lindsay Tighe

The Person-Centred Approach Made Easy!

Learn how to enable your clients by using this simple-to-apply questioning technique that gets amazing results!

Aged Care Professionals typically do too much TELLING and not enough ASKING! . . . . . . and this is widely recognised as being one of the biggest inhibitors of 'enabling' our aged population to make their own choices on how they want to live within their community.

At Better Questions we are passionate about educating Aged Care Professionals to have more 'person-centred conversations' with their clients by recognising when and how to ask (the right) questions as opposed to advice-giving or telling.

This 'easy read' book will help you recognise unconscious patterns of advice-giving and telling that may not be the best response for your clients and will inspire you to build the skill of asking Better Questions and bring out their potential.

Featuring real case studies, this informative and inspirational book is the 'must have' handbook for all Assessment Officers, Case Managers, Nurses, Care Workers and all providers of professional services in aged care.

Some comments from Aged Care Professionals who have used Better Questions:

"I put the brakes on telling and started asking better questions."
Assessment Officer

"I reminded myself not to get sucked into keep giving advice and fixing things."
Community Nurse

"It was truly wonderful to hear the clients express their aspirations . . . it was divine."
Health Professional

"It truly is inspiring to watch people come to their own decisions, thoughts and choices."
Care Worker

Start reading today and learn our tried and tested, easy-to-follow Better Questions framework that has the power to change your clients' lives (and your life!) in ways you may never have thought possible!

POTENTIALISER -- po·ten·ti·a·li·ser
Meaning: Releaser of amazingness in others

Join the Aged Care Revolution, become a Potentialiser and bring out the Amazingness in your clients!

• Language: English
• Publisher: eBookIt.com
• Release date: Apr 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9781456609610

Book preview

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About the Author

Lindsay Tighe is a successful coach, trainer, mentor, public speaker and a published author. Growing up in the UK, she was inspired to travel by her uncle who lived and worked overseas, resulting in her settling in Australia in 1996.

Lindsay’s first career in financial services spanned 22 years, during which time she developed a real passion for working with, motivating and developing people. In 2002, Lindsay was awarded an MBA; she considers herself a life-long learner, maintaining a philosophy that the results you get in life start with you.

It was around this time that Lindsay decided that she wanted to spread her wings and make a bigger contribution in the world, so she gave up the corporate life to start her own business – which, she says, was one of the best decisions she ever made. Work for Lindsay is a real joy and a pleasure, and she feels extremely fortunate and privileged to work with so many amazing people.

Lindsay attributes her success to listening to her intuition and following her inner guidance, something she has done from a very young age. When, at age 17, she met her husband-to-be, Michael, she had no hesitation in marrying him at age 18, trusting that he was absolutely the man of her dreams. Thirty years later she is still extremely happily married and describes Michael as the ‘love of her life’. They love to spend as much time together as they can, and adore their two cocker spaniel dogs, Wilson and Becky.

Note from the Author

If you are reading this book, there is a good chance that either your workplace has suggested it or provided it as a resource for you, or you are interested in your own self-development and see this as a resource to enable you to learn new skills or improve your existing skills. Alternatively, you may have attended one of our Better Aged Care Professionals Ask Better Questions workshops, in which case you will have already heard the key messages in this book, and this is now a resource to enable you to embed and be reminded of these key messages as you put what you have learnt into practice.

Whatever the reason, I feel humbled to be able to share some insights and wisdom from my journey of working with some amazing Aged Care Professionals over the past three years, in the hope that there will be something meaningful in the book that enables you to be even better than you are already. I have come to learn what a fantastic job people who work in Aged Care do, and what a significant difference they make in the lives of people that they work with. My intention in writing this book is to honour this and share my passion for asking Better Questions in the hope that it will inspire you to want to use the skill in your professional practice, in the knowledge that it will enable you to make an even bigger difference in people’s lives.

By way of background, in October 2009 I published my first book – THE ANSWER, Improve Your Life By Asking Better Questions. The book had been written because my absolute passion in life is to ask people Better Questions, in the knowledge that when I ask people Better Questions I know that this will enable them to find better answers. This passion has led me to have a desire to share the wisdom in using this skill that I have learnt over the years with as many people as possible, given that it is such an amazing life skill and a real gift to bring to the table in so many contexts.

My first personal experience of asking Better Questions came about when I took on a leadership role in the corporate world, where I was technically incompetent but had a real interest and passion for turning around underperforming teams. It was a very interesting challenge for me personally, in that I was unable to fulfil the role in any way other than to ask Better Questions, and I have to say that this first experience of questioning more and telling less was quite magical for me – not only in terms of my own growth, but also in terms of what it facilitated in my team.

As a result of having quite literally ‘fallen in’ to a more questioning way of approaching things, I soon learnt that this was something that I wanted to learn more about as well as do more of, and about 10 years ago I left the corporate world to further develop my skills and passion for asking those Better Questions. Since then I have not only become more practiced in the skill itself, but I have also developed an absolute passion for training others in the skill, given that I know how much of a profound difference it makes in the world.

About one month after I published my first book, I received a phone call from a lady who was a client who worked in aged care and disability services. She advised me that in the aged care sector there was a new approach to working with clients being advocated called the Active Service Model. The main philosophy of the model, she advised me at a subsequent meeting, was to work with clients rather than to do for clients, to help support them in the achievement of identified goals, and to involve and empower them to make choices about what they wanted rather than make assumptions or take over the decision-making for them. Overall it was about empowering and supporting elderly clients to remain living more independently in their communities, if that is what they chose to do.

I was very excited to learn about this philosophy, in absolute certainty that the skill of asking Better Questions would facilitate its implementation in practice, as well as create clients who were more engaged, empowered and ultimately fulfilled in their lives. So we developed a pilot training program, which was rolled out initially to about thirty staff, on the basis that we would review the results achieved to ascertain if the training was effective and staff felt that they now had more skills to enable them to carry out the new approach in practice.

I have to say that I have been completely overwhelmed by what has happened following this pilot training program, not only with the success that has been achieved by Aged Care Professionals using the skill of asking Better Questions, but also by how quickly word spread about the program and the results that were being achieved. I have had to train other people to deliver the training program to meet the demand, and between us we have now trained thousands of managers, nurses, aged care staff, community health professionals and case managers in the skill of asking Better Questions across Australia.

I have to say that I have been humbled by the preparedness of the staff that work in this sector to take on board the training and change their current practice, which had often been in use for many years. Indeed, I have been in tears when I have received written or verbal updates from staff who have used the skill in practice with quite profound results. There is nothing more rewarding than knowing that the ideas I have shared around the skill of asking Better Questions have been embraced and utilised in practice, which ultimately has then benefited the wonderful clients in the sector and enabled them to shine.

I cannot promise that the approach I share will be the ‘magic wand’ and be an approach that will work in all situations. There is an assumption made that using the skill of asking Better Questions will work best with clients who have the cognitive ability to respond to questions, and with those who have the capability of making decisions and taking responsibility. That doesn’t mean that you cannot use the skill with clients with some cognitive impairment, but I must stress that the results achieved and the impact you have will likely be less significant due to these presenting issues.

Thank you for choosing to read this book. I trust that by learning the skill of asking Better Questions you will be inspired to support and enable your clients by taking a more person-centred and empowered approach with them, which inevitably will lead to better outcomes for all. Through asking Better Questions there is a greater sense of truly making a difference in the world, which then supports the reasons you are probably working in this sector in the first place!

As a final thought for my introduction, I trust that you will recognise that whilst this book is written in the context of your role as an Aged Care Professional, by the time you have read it you will realise that being a Better Questioner in any aspect of your life, friendships, partnerships, parenting and work, will be a great thing to do. Indeed, everyone we interact with is far more amazing than they realise, and having the skill to release their amazingness is a beautiful life skill to bring to all contexts of your life!

What people say about our workshops

The inspirational and profound messages contained in this book have been delivered to thousands of people in our workshops. Here are some comments from people who have attended them:

• I have taken so much from your training that has been very valuable in recent weeks.

• I personally got a lot out of it and have had some great success with the strategies, not only on an everyday basis at work but also at a family level with our 16-year-old son!

• I have seen change with one of the staff that I manage, in that instead of asking how she should resolve a problem, she indicates now what she suggests would resolve it.

• You have inspired me to look very closely at the questions I ask people, not only in my workplace but also at home. It has been a wonderful experience and I can see how someone can become more empowered and also gain confidence to become a better listener.

• Thank you very much for making me understand that Better Questions are definitely the right answers, and I’m going to try hard to enhance these skills in everyday use.

• I have a tendency to jump in and recommend without listening to a staff member’s opinion. The Better Questions approach is the only way that staff can learn and develop in their practice.

• Thank you for sharing this amazing tool and for inspiring me to look at all people in a way they deserve to be treated.

• If I hadn’t listened and used Better Questions well, I would have just accepted it when one of our staff members resigned and we as an organisation would have lost a dynamic, highly skilled person, not to mention all the wasted time, effort and expense of orientating someone to the organisation.

• You have changed my life and I thank you.

• I was totally blown away by your insights.

• Just wanting to let you know that I have been inspired by many people in my life, but you are up there with the best. I have a long way to go to get the questions right but am now aware of what I am doing wrong so will continue to work on getting it right. Thank you so very much and keep up the fantastic work. Everyone needs to hear you speak.

• Thank you for the opportunity to become more aware of myself, and of things I can do to enjoy my work and life more!

• I have heard such a positive buzz around the office in response to your Better Questions training, which is just wonderful!

Prologue

Once upon a time there was a humble and boring question mark. He had been described as ‘boring’ because his role in life was to simply sit at the end of a sentence. Indeed, the role of the question mark was simply to make a sentence into a question. BIG DEAL!

What this little question mark found sad was that in the past great scholars had recognised the amazing qualities of his ancestor question marks, and people like Socrates and Plato had hailed them as heroes. But here he is today, living his life in the 21st century, unrecognised and unappreciated, and he feels sad that so few people appreciate his potential.

One day, a lady came along who saw his potential, and she used his abilities for many years with her clients with life-changing results. He became great friends with this lady, and she started to get so excited about his potential to make the world a better place that she asked his permission to write a book and a website about him.

This lady was aware that if more people knew about him, they would be able to tap into the potential of other people by empowering these people to make decisions that are right for them. She also knew that they could use him to enable them to be more reflective in making better decisions about their own lives and, ultimately, the choices they were making about the way they were living.

Whilst he was still a little shy and very humble, he liked the idea of being able to share his potential with the world through this lady and, sure enough, his fame started to spread far and wide.

In this book you are going to be introduced to and be inspired by the humble question mark – he really does change lives and can make aged care professionals into even better aged care professionals.

Introduction

From a very young age most of us have been told what to do. During my formative years I was surrounded by people who were excellent at providing much-needed advice and guidance, particularly my parents and schoolteachers, and so I learnt early in life to be a more natural ‘teller’. This ‘telling’ style continued to develop as I became an adult, in part because it was ‘role modelled’ to me in the various workplace settings of which I was part. By way of clarification, what I mean by the word ‘teller’ is someone who does some or all of the following: directs, advises, suggests, educates, problem-solves, informs.

As ‘telling’ was the most common way of being ‘role modelled’ to me, I became practiced at taking this on as a natural response when I was presented with a problem by others or was asked for advice. Indeed, I unconsciously related this way to people for many years and had never contemplated that there could be another way to respond to people. I believed that I was being helpful when I was in this ‘telling’ role.

I must stress that I am not saying that it is wrong to tell someone what to do. I can already hear many of you justifying