How to tap into hidden wisdom by asking the people around you, leading to smarter decisions, more creative solutions, and deeper relationships with guest Jeff Wetzler.

Learn how the insights you need, to make smarter decisions, develop more creative solutions, faster improvements, and deeper connections, are hidden in plain sight. The insights we need live in the heads and hearts of people right around you. Yet too often, people don’t tell you what you most need to hear.

Jeff Wetzler has been on a quarter-century quest to transform learning opportunities. Blending a unique set of leadership experiences in the fields of business and education, he’s pursued this quest as a management consultant to the world’s top corporations, as a learning facilitator for leaders around the world, as Chief Learning Officer at Teach For America, and most recently, as co-CEO of Transcend, a nationally recognized innovation organization.

Jeff is the author of the new book “Ask: Tap Into the Hidden Wisdom of People Around You for Unexpected Breakthroughs In Leadership and Life.”

Jeff earned a Doctorate in Adult Learning and Leadership from Columbia University and a Bachelor’s in Psychology from Brown University. He is a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network and is an Edmund Hillary Fellow. He lives in New York with his wife, two children, and their puppy.

Tap Into Hidden Wisdom:

• “Ask: Tap Into the Hidden Wisdom of People Around You for Unexpected Breakthroughs In Leadership and Life.”
  • Why did you write the book and who is it for?
• “My hypothesis is that the people in our lives — whether co-workers, clients, family, friends, neighbors, etc. — have knowledge, views, ideas and feelings that that could be really beneficial for us to learn about….but that we too often, we simply don’t find them out.”
• How do we “Ask” better?
  • The Ask Approach:
    The Ask Approach™ is a research-backed method for learning from people around you, with five key steps: (Please share examples from a small business owner’s perspective.)
• Choose curiosity, so you are genuinely interested in what others think, feel, and know.
• Make it safe, so it’s more comfortable and appealing for others to tell you the truth.
• Pose quality questions, which uncover what’s most important to people.
• Listen to learn, so you are truly hearing what matters most to them.
• Reflect and reconnect, to translate what you hear into the right insights and actions.
• How can we apply this from a business owner’s perspective?
• To better understand our customer, peers, competitors, teams?

More About the Book: Ask: Tap Into the Hidden Wisdom of People Around You for Unexpected Breakthroughs In Leadership and Life.

Globally recognized expert on learning and leadership, Jeff Wetzler offers a hands-on, surprisingly effective way to find out what others really think, know, and feel. Ask leads to smarter decisions, more creative solutions, and deeper relationships.

Too often, we don’t find out what’s truly on others’ hearts and minds because we don’t know how to ask the right questions in the right ways. Co-founder of Transcend and former international business consultant and Teach for America executive Jeff Wetzler wants to show you how to fix that. In Ask, he brings you a powerful method called The Ask Approach™, based on a simple premise: that tapping into what other people truly think, know, and feel is a game-changing superpower.

In Section I, Wetzler reveals the most common things that people think and feel but often keep to themselves, as well as the key reasons why they choose to withhold information that could be valuable to you and your organization.

Section II delves into the five steps of the Ask Approach, each answering an essential question.

1. Choose Curiosity: How can you awaken your curiosity to make new discoveries and unexpected connections?
2. Make it Safe: How do you make it easier for people to tell you hard things?
3. Pose Quality Questions: What questions will best tap into the wisdom of anyone you ask?
4. Listen to Learn: How can you hear what someone is really trying to tell you?
5. Reflect & Reconnect: How do you turn talk into action?

Section III helps you make asking an everyday superpower – not only for yourself but also for your team and organization, as well as for the next generation and society at large.

The skills and messages of Ask could not be more timely. In a fast-changing world where AI is supplanting an increasing range of skills, the ability to learn from and connect with other people is one of the most important, fulfilling and uniquely human capabilities to master.

[Source: Amazon]

Episode Host: Henry Lopez is a serial entrepreneur, small business coach, and the host of this episode of The How of Business podcast show – dedicated to helping you start, run and grow your small business.

Resources:

Books mentioned in this episode:
[We receive commissions for purchases made through these links (more info)].

• Ask: Tap Into the Hidden Wisdom of People Around You for Unexpected Breakthroughs In Leadership and Life by Jeff Wetzler
• 10x Is Easier Than 2x: How World-Class Entrepreneurs Achieve More by Doing Less by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy

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