Author: Ak Sabbagh

How Do CEOs Navigate Culture While Scaling?

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Navigating Culture While Scaling: Insights from Alex Simmons, CEO of Inerva

Scaling a business is an exhilarating journey filled with opportunities, challenges, and pivotal decisions. One of the most critical aspects often overlooked during rapid growth is the company’s culture.

We recently got to spend some time with entrepreneur and CEO of Inerva Software, Alex Simmons.  Alex acquired Inerva in 2021 from the founders and is scaling up the business which provides a single platform for financial, management and admissions to the aged care sector in Australia.  His experience and perspective offers valuable insights into how leadership must intentionally adapt to preserve and evolve organizational culture amid expansion.

From a Family-Like Team to a Dispersed Workforce

When Alex took over Inerva in late 2021, the business was small, with just 12 staff members who knew each other well—a close-knit, family-like environment. Today, with a team of 30 across multiple locations and over 185 customers, the fabric of the company’s culture has transformed significantly. This shift from intimacy to dispersion poses headaches for maintaining the same foundational culture, yet Alex emphasizes that intentionality is key.

The Power of Clear Communication 

One of the primary challenges of scaling is communication. In a small team, Alex notes, it’s easy to have everyone around a whiteboard, working through ideas organically. As the team grows and disperses across different states, that organic flow becomes impossible. Leaders must be deliberate about how they communicate company values, vision, and expectations. Failing to do so can lead to misalignment and cultural drift.

 Alex highlights that in a larger organization, messaging needs to be super clear and consistent. “We have to be really intentional about how we see comms and culture develop,” he says. This might involve scheduled town halls, written communications, and leveraging external coaches to help craft and deliver messages effectively.

 Inherited vs. Developed Culture 

Another vital point Alex raises is the challenge of inheriting a culture. When acquiring a company, leadership often gets limited visibility into its history and underlying values. Unlike startups that craft their culture intentionally from day one, established businesses like Inerva inherit a pre-existing culture that may not align perfectly with the new leadership’s vision.

 To bridge this gap, Alex advocates for ongoing reflection and incremental cultural change—understanding where you are, clarifying where you want to be, and communicating that direction consistently. This process, though tough, is essential for future growth and employee engagement.

 Leadership in Transition

Alex admits that transitioning into a leadership role in an established organization demands humility and adaptability. His approach involved supporting the team during the early stages, fostering trust, and avoiding abrupt changes. He acknowledges that this transition is fluid—there’s no clear moment where a supportive, cautious approach shifts into a more directive leadership style.

He also emphasizes the importance of external perspectives, such as coaching, in navigating this transition. Working with coaches and peers enables leaders to identify blind spots, distill complex issues into actionable strategies, and build confidence in communicating with larger teams.

Building the Foundation for Growth 

As companies scale, the concept of a “platform” or “framework” becomes vital. Alex argues that in a constantly evolving business, a rigid foundation can be counterproductive. Instead, principles-based cultures—values and behaviors that guide decision-making—offer the flexibility needed for organic growth.

 He describes his leadership evolution from problem-solving in detail to stepping back and empowering managers to handle operational matters. This shift requires self-awareness and continuous learning. Alex points out that good leadership entails recognizing what must change, what can remain, and where to focus efforts.

 Embracing the “I Don’t Know” Mindset

One of the most insightful themes Alex shares is the necessity of comfort with uncertainty. As organizations grow, leaders must accept that they cannot have all the answers. Cultivating a mindset of “I don’t know” allows for greater agility and openness to new ideas. This approach also encourages transparency and fosters trust within teams.

The Value of External Support

Finally, Alex underscores the role of external advisors and coaches in managing cultural and leadership challenges. Their fresh perspectives help distill complex issues, highlight blind spots, and shape more effective communication strategies. He emphasizes that no leader is born with all the skills needed; continuous learning and external support are critical.

Key Takeaways for Leaders Scaling Up

  • Be intentional with communication to align your dispersed team with your cultural vision.
  • Recognize and manage inherited culture during acquisitions.
  • Support your team through transparent, incremental change.
  • Build principles-based frameworks rather than rigid foundations.
  • Embrace uncertainty and seek external perspectives to guide growth.

Growing a business is as much about nurturing culture as it is about scaling operations. Alex Simmons’ journey illustrates that with humility, clarity, and intentionality, leaders can steer their organizations through the complex waters of growth while maintaining a strong, cohesive culture.

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What Does “Scale” Really Mean in Business?

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What Does “Scale” Really Mean in Business?

In business, the term “scale” is frequently used — often as an ambitious aspiration rather than a well-defined objective. But what does it truly mean to scale a business? Does it imply growth? Consolidation? Market expansion? Or simply increased efficiency?

A recent discussion in our Team at Beckon Business explored these questions.  It’s multifaceted, and multidimensional. And leaders who approach it in a strategic and structured way can leverage the investments made in every commercial and cultural stage of their scale-up.

Defining Scale: More Than Just Growth

Is “scale” simply a business bingo buzzword? Too often, the call to scale is made without a clear understanding of what that entails. For some, it may mean planning for succession; for others, it’s about preparing for future expansion or enhancing what already exists.

Context is critical. Scaling varies depending on the business model, leadership vision, and stage of development.

Scale conversations and planning often surfaces deeper strategic considerations: Is the business scaling up or scaling down? Is consolidation a necessary precursor to growth? Team member Ton Wickham, an Olympic athlete draws on his experience as a high performance athlete when he observes that, “just as athletes need time to recover and build strength between competitions, businesses need solid foundations to support expansion. Without this groundwork, growth initiatives are unlikely to succeed.”

Platform First, then Growth

The principle of “platform before growth” is a central theme in any successfully scaled (and sustainable) business. Before scaling, businesses must first define what scale actually means for their specific context. Does it involve a nationwide presence? Or a specialised operation with a strong local following? Once that vision is clear, leaders can reverse-engineer the necessary systems, teams, and infrastructure required to support it.

Too often, growth is pursued before these foundational elements are established — leading to burnout, inefficiency, or cultural fragmentation. The absence of a strong platform can cause even the most ambitious growth strategy to falter.

Fundamentally, “Scale” is an interplay in the relationships between platform, growth, and sustainability thinking as well as the balancing of commercial and cultural considerations.

Scale Is Not One-Size-Fits-All

Different businesses define and experience scale in diverse ways. For example, a small, highly specialised team will approach scale very differently from a mid-sized enterprise seeking to diversify across sectors.

For smaller organisations, the word “growth” can sometimes feel intimidating or irrelevant. However, when reframed as “scaling” — with a focus on internal systems, team development, or personal capacity — it can become more accessible and empowering.

Safeguarding Culture While Scaling

An important concern that arises with scaling is its potential impact on company culture. There’s often a fear that growth will dilute or disrupt core values.

But culture doesn’t have to be sacrificed in the process. With intentionality, businesses can grow while maintaining — or even strengthening — their cultural integrity.

Culture, should be treated as a strategic platform. Neglecting it can destabilise the entire business model. The key is to align cultural development with scaling efforts, ensuring it remains a central pillar of the organisation.

Strategic Scale: An Holistic Approach

So, how should businesses approach scaling?

Start by clearly defining what scale means in the specific context of the organisation. Then, build a robust platform — encompassing systems, people, and structure – i.e. the “stuff” that can support that vision. Once these foundations are in place, growth initiatives like marketing, market expansion, product innovation can be unleashed.

Scaling is not merely about expansion. It’s about strategic growth — deliberate, contextual, and grounded in strong foundations.

What does scale mean for your business?

 

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Reflection: The overlooked & underrated tool for growth

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Self-reflection is a process that is often avoided for fear of having to ‘dwell’ on unfavourable or unbecoming situations in the past.  However, I have come to understand that act of reflection is an overlooked and underrated tool for both personal and business growth.

Of late, I have heard the phrase ‘hustle culture’ time and time again and I have consciously observed the aspects of this ‘hustle culture’.  Essentially, ‘hustle culture’ promotes the idea of working long hours and sacrificing other aspects of personal life in order to succeed, with the embedded promise that if you give work all your time and attention, you can achieve anything and everything.

As a business owner or people leader, it is easy to unintentionally subscribe to the ‘hustle culture’ because you’re trying to do it all for the benefit of the business.  I for one have unintentionally subscribed to this culture for longer than I realised because I like to just ‘get stuff done’ – as I’m sure many  business owners and people leaders do.  The danger of the hustle culture is that we give our time and energy to the wrong parts of the business.  We do what we need to do, to get it all done however, we are blind to the bigger picture.

The process of reflection can assist you in taking stock of how your time has been spent and what proportion of your time in the past month or past quarter was spent providing non-revenue generating support, generating revenue or creating growth and future revenue i.e. the bigger picture!

Now, reflecting on some of my busiest periods (in a former life), I can very clearly see that at times (actually most of the time), I only focussed on getting through the revenue of today with no consideration for the growth or revenue of tomorrow.  In hindsight, had I implemented a process or set time per month or per quarter to reflect on each period, I may have identified that next to none of my time was actively spent working on future growth and then rectified this.

Taking the time to reflect on the business and recognise where time and energy is spent will allow you to reset and identify what is lacking in the business and where time and energy is needed.

As business coaches, we work with clients to ensure the business is fully functional by taking time to stop, reflect and then map out the business workflows and allocate these to the costs, the revenue of today and the revenue of the future (or as we categorise them – the ‘Red’, ‘Blue’ and ‘Black’ of the business).

What Beckon Business loves about this –  we get a front row seat to witnessing our clients unlock growth in their business.

~ Stephanie Toutountzis

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Creating Certainty in an Uncertain World

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Increasingly, coaching conversations with our clients turn to introspection on ‘what can I do about the issues we encounter in the workplace?’ As business coaches working in many different businesses and organisational structures, we pick up trends and flows on the ‘issues’ discussed, and in the post Covid environment, leaders’ uncertainty about how to go about creating a connected workplace seems to be trending high.

In one way, this is not much different to pre-2019 coaching work. Leadership have always been aware of the role they play in connecting teams and engaging the workforce and keen to build on this. Our ‘most in-demand’ workshop is creating an environment for high performance, where teams are willing to have the difficult conversations and commit to one another. So why the uncertainty in leaders now?

Workplaces have a new level of complexity for leadership to contend with. There are additional layers, to how organisations and teams work together:

  • WFH: ‘working-from-home’ for 2 of 5 days, has become a normal part of the working week, which creates a disconnect, both systemically and intra-team – the hybrid workplace, as we now know it.
  • All-change: There is also a significant movement of staff – from one company to another, and/or one team or cohort to another which started when the Covid lockdowns and mandates were introduced but has continued to increase as we return to ‘normal’.
  • Uncertainty: With a changing and unpredictable workplace, the focus has moved to efficiency and covering the gaps – trying to ‘read-the-tea-leaves’ whilst building for tomorrow and keeping a streamlined organisation together.

How leaders manage this is not a simple, one-size fits all answer. There is however a common coaching technique we apply, when the answer isn’t clear or certain – it is called ‘the overview effect’. My business partner Ak Sabbagh introduced me to this concept a while ago. He explains it this way:

“It is about stepping back and taking an unfamiliar perspective. In many ways the role of a business coach is to help business owners and leadership teams gain ‘the overview effect’.  We regularly get comments like “I’ve never seen my business from this angle before.” “It’s like the fog’s been cleared…”

How do we do this? We use a coaching style to help our clients sit above it all and consider the context of their situation – rather than sitting in the situation itself.  We use proven frameworks and tools to engage in discussions that elevate our client’s perspective of their ‘fixed workplace’, or the limitations of the team, to look at processes, leadership and communication styles, people, goals and aspirations.  We are always innovating new approaches to help our clients get the “overview effect”, to see a solution that was there, but they couldn’t see it because they were standing too close to see it.

Why do we do this? Because, regardless of the size or style of their business, we love working with leadership to build resilient relationships and innovative workplaces, that retain staff, get the right people in the right job and connect the passion of the individual to the purpose of the organisation.

~ Margaret Armitage

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An Aha Moment on Winning

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Over the last month or so I have been listening to and discussing what the hidden depth of high performance is and what part winning plays in that. A part of me rejects the desire to grade performance and yet another part recognizes the true value in measuring something to give it meaning. This is the ‘aha’ moment for me – that to feel I have performed well, to get that ‘winning well’ kind of feeling, I need to experience a light bulb moment of clarity about why or how I performed well.

It is a topic that intrigues me – I am curious, in a scientific kind of way, about what other elements and machanitions are there that move us into high performance and create that ‘winning’ feeling, especially in this ‘brave new world’ of post-pandemic business-life.

If performance is a measured thing to make it high or low, then it should be simply a matter of putting all the skills and competencies in the right place and letting them distill into high performance. However, we know it is not as simple as this.There is another side to the high performance coin that comes from the energy and commitment. So one side of high performance could be skills and competencies (tools of the trade) and the other side could be the energy and commitment (inner purpose) we are feeling. What I have noticed when working with teams and high performing indiviudals is that they balance these elements around their closely held values. I am still left wondering what else there is in the formula that turns a performance into a feeling of ‘winning well’.

When I reflect on this, what stands out to me is that it is our feelings that inspires us and our feelings that we use to measure how well we have performed. Whether it is a ‘ho-hum’ performance or quite fulfilling, our feelings are the guide! Hence, my curiosiness has lead me to conclude that as high performers we are searching for an immeasurable measure to confirm our high performance, to give us that ‘winning well’ feeling.

As a leadership coach, I have discovered that a feeling of ‘winning well’ is a very individual thing because the ‘well’ part of the phrase comes from the measure of the individual or the team I am working with. It’s not something that can be arbitrarily applied or externally measured to claim the ‘winning well’ title.

On a personal level, I need to experience an ‘aha moment’ to give me the ‘winnng well’ feeling. My ‘aha moment’ is when there is a sudden understanding of what is behind a knarly issue or the different perspective I can take to unlock the next steps for me or my client. So this is my measure of ‘winning well’. No matter what anyone else tells me or explains to me, unless I experience an ‘aha moment’ I feel like an underperformer.

In William B Irvine’s book Aha!: The Moments of Insight that Shape Our World, he explores the many varieties of ‘aha moments’ that have resulted in significant wins for humankind and the world we live in. The ‘aha moment’ could be a moral revelation or a scientific revelation or simply a small trigger that changes the way we approach something. They don’t all have to change the entire world, but they do have to result in new insight and will make an impact on us. Something we easily remember and recall over and over.

My insight or ‘aha moment’ when pondering on ‘winning well’ and high performance, is that a key element of the formula is to discover something and share it. It can be to reveal a truth that hasn’t seemed relevant, or it can be a new perspective on an old issue, or it can be an awareness of why everything worked well and knowing how we can repeat it.

So the fundamental nature of ‘winning well’ for me is in the sharing of the win to make high performance sustainable – it’s in my response to the experience. What is it for you?  I would love to hear your thoughts.

~ Margaret Armitage

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A Reason to Win

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Recently a conversation came about with a few colleagues regarding winning. I used the word winning as a metaphor to achieve something, gaining something we aspired to and for a deeper meaning to one’s purpose. Without explaining this first I felt a little push back when I kept using the word. At first, I couldn’t understand why. It became apparent that winning was my metaphor or an easy way to explain what brings me purpose or fulfillment, but not everyone aligned with this. The word ‘winning’ has a different meaning for each of us, created by our different experiences and associations with the word. 

 This then took me on a journey over the past couple of weeks and brought me to asking the question, “can you win without competing?” Depends on how you define winning right? After asking this question to people from sport, business, friends, and colleagues, one gem of a comment that took me deeper was “winning is a data point, no less or no more important than other data points.” This makes sense, picking up data or information based on the processes we are undertaking. 

 To me, seeing it as a data point takes emotion out of it. It gives me the result of a process without the attachment and gives information to plan my next move. So why can we get so attached to certain results if it is “simply a data point, no more no less”? Are we attached to the work that goes into the process to get to a desired outcome (the blood, sweat and tears)? Maybe even loved ones or others are involved. Is the attachment to another, deeper meaning we value? If we get the desired outcome to a certain process, is that a win? If so, did we have to compete in some way, shape or form to put ourselves in the best possible position to get the desired result? 

 I don’t know. However, I feel knowing when to win and knowing when to fall back and not become overly attached allows for clearer thinking, better decision making and to put energy where needed to allow me to be in the best possible position to win. It may also allow us to make better decisions by not becoming overly attached to those data points and allowing emotion to take over. 

 Taking it a step further, does this mean there are personalized data points and depersonalized data points? Data points, no more no less (depersonalized) and data points attached with a desired want of a result or preconceived outcome (personalized). If that preconceived result is along the lines of gain, obtain, achieve something by effort can you get it without competing? And if it doesn’t mean enough, is it winning? Sure, you can gain something by not competing. For instance, if someone knocks on your door and gifts you $1000 you could say that’s a win. But if we are talking in the context of preconceived gain, obtain or achieve something by effort, is it winning? Not in that context (being gifted $1000) as you applied no effort and had no preconceived expectation. But yes, in the context of a depersonalized, non-emotional data point you could say it is a win. 

 At the end of the day, I have put more questions on the table than answers. For me the most important question is what is your reason to win? Does it align with your purpose? Your values? And if so to what extent before it becomes toxic, is winning unhealthy? And if winning becomes unhealthy, is it really winning? I believe the question “what is your reason to win?”, holds the answer for each of us. If winning becomes unhealthy to your values and purpose and driven by ego, is it really winning? We all define winning differently, taking small losses in the grand scheme of your purpose and vision could be winning, it’s the awareness around these data points and the decisions we make from them which allow us to move forward. 

 So, what’s your reason to win? Do you have a reason to win? 

~ Tom Wickham

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Getting coffee when all you want is tea – the importance of effective communication in the workplace.

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assortment of tea and coffee on a table

You ask for a cup of tea and all you seem to get is coffee!

We’ve all been there. No matter how many times you think you’re being clear and spell out – “T. E. A.” – you keep getting the stuff you don’t want.

You’ve been clear. You’ve been direct. Right? Well, maybe not!

Sometimes communicating is just a little more challenging than expected.

Today I was with the owners of a thriving business in Perth, chewing the fat over a cup of tea (yes, I got tea!), when the subject of employees came up. One of the owners rolled her eyes and shared the challenge of communicating with one employee in particular.

“He never seems to be able to follow instructions. You spell it out – steps 1 through 7- in detail, and he misses out step 4. And then when we get the outcome, he’s missed step 4 and argues that I never went through it with him”.

When we communicate in the workplace – or anywhere for that matter, we make assumptions along the way. We assume we are communicating clearly (I understood what I was saying), we assume the message has “landed,” has been heard, and interpreted correctly, in the way we intended.

Lots of assumptions, lots of filters for the communication to go through along the way. Coffee instead of tea.

So how do we ensure we are communicating effectively?

Step 1 – Awareness: Become aware of your differing style and language when communicating. Some people prefer to give and receive the Detail (“I spelt out steps 1-7…”), and expect others to hear it and process it literally, when in fact the recipient may not ‘process’ the world in the same way.

Others may give and receive their communication in a more Interpretive style – using more visual or illustrative language to deliver their message. You’ll typically hear these people tell stories or ‘walk through’ a scenario as an experience rather than as a list of steps to follow.

And others prefer a more concise way of communicating. They want the Gist. They don’t need/want the detail, assuming the recipient doesn’t either, and expect the other party to fill in the blanks. They tend to get that ‘eyes glazed over’ look a few short minutes into a conversation. They’re onto the next topic already!

We all have and use each of the above ‘styles’ to differing levels, tending to prefer one over the other in different situations.

Are you aware of how this is playing out in your workplace? Build awareness at work by having this conversation with your work mates. How do they prefer to give and receive their communication?

Step 2 – Choice: Once we are aware of how we communicate, we can make choices. We can choose to change how we deliver a message, depending on the varying styles of those receiving it. If we know how other people receive and process a communication, we can choose to tailor the message accordingly.

We can also choose to receive communication, ‘open’ to the style it is being delivered in.

Step 3 – Action: Manage the moment. Ask for feedback there and then. Did the other party receive the communication as intended? How did they hear it? Ask them to feed it back to you.

Does it come back as tea or coffee?

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Leadership – When ‘rolling up your sleeves’ can send the wrong message

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Oil pump at sunset

The business of oil and gas is, arguably, one of the most complex environments to operate in. The challenging global economic and market situation, together with having to maintain safety, drive cost efficient operations, and focus on innovation puts more demands on leaders than ever before. With all of these internal and external factors happening faster than ever, it can be difficult for the modern leader to not act reactively to what is going on.

To meet these complex challenges head on, the majority of leaders look to build their capability by amassing more ‘tools’ and ‘skills.’ Ironically there is a growing body of evidence to suggest that the evolution of leadership lies on focusing ‘internally’ rather than on externally. To go within and explore the realm of ‘mindset.’

The theory goes that leaders need to understand more fully their own internal ‘operating system’ and how this system shapes the view of the world they live and work in. To use an analogy, it has been likened to equating the complexity of the industry to the full functionality of the latest Microsoft program being run with the skill-set of the leader running a DOS based operating system. You just cannot run today’s applications on old operating systems.

So to ‘upgrade’ the leadership operating system, one has to take a deep dive, and upgrade what lies within. Most importantly, that deep dive needs to focus on a leader’s awareness of themselves, their behaviours and the language that they use and bring into work every day.

Aware leaders know that it is the ‘small things’ they do which creates the climate and culture of an organisation. They also know that it is what is NOT done or said that gets noticed.

Self-aware leaders know that the standard they ‘walk by’ becomes the new standard. For example, we know that safety is a core value and focus within the industry. Let’s say that the safety rule on-site is to work with ‘sleeves rolled down and buttoned’ and the leader (unconsciously) appears on site – even for a moment – with sleeves rolled up. It can send the wrong message that it is ‘ok’ to be relaxed on that rule.

The need for this level of awareness requires a conscious and mindful commitment by the leader to act, talk, and behave in the same way that he or she expects everyone around them to.

Armed with a deeper understanding of self, the leader is able to use his or her energy to create a climate for staff to excel and to be connected to the vision and outcomes of the business. And that builds a culture of engagement, success and innovation.

The links between a leader’s mindset, culture and overall employee engagement (engagement being defined by the Corporate Leadership Council as ‘the extent to which employees commit both rationally and emotionally to something or someone in their organisation’ – i.e. discretionary effort), is the focus of a five year longitudinal research project in Australia and New Zealand. The “Thank God it’s Monday” Project measures the links between “employee engagement scores” and the capabilities of the management and leadership within organisations. The research seeks to find the answer to two questions: “What organisational capability reinforces a highly engaged workforce?” and “What role does the leadership team play in determining engagement?”

Given that recent Gallup research in the USA found that only 30% of workers and 35% of managers considered themselves engaged (all this despite the fact that the annual spend on traditional employee engagement initiatives tops $1 Billion in the USA alone), the research set out to identify what was missing.

Year – on – year the research results show conclusively that leader behaviours and the belief in the leadership team makes a huge difference in employee engagement.

Leadership mindset matters. Where leaders were perceived to be ‘reactive,’ less than 10% of employees were highly engaged. Conversely where leaders were perceived as being ‘connected to purpose,’ effective, and more fully aware of their impact, 72% of employees were highly engaged.

And the Number ONE capability that highly engaged organisations focus on to gain and maintain high engagement? – ‘Culture and Values.’ Importantly the research also reveals that this only occurs where engagement, culture and ‘living the values’ strategies are owned by the leadership team and not outsourced to HR to ‘fix.’

In the trying times that face the oil and gas industry, the challenge for leaders is to broaden their understanding of ‘self’ and how their personal awareness can profoundly impact commercial outcomes. Today, ‘mindset’ needs to be added to the mix in order to augment the ‘tool-set’ and ‘skill-set’ that any great leader brings to the industry.

The aware leader consciously and mindfully knows when to roll their sleeves up and when to keep them firmly buttoned down.

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Family Time – Business Time

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It’s dinner time. The TV is off, food is on. The family gathers.

But it’s more than just eating. Meal time is a time for the family to come together after our respective busy days. It is a time to connect, tell the stories of the day, and share our thoughts feelings and experiences. It is a ritual and rhythm.

Some years ago, I took a lesson from my business and brought it home. What I knew in business was that – to communicate well – I had to have a process and a regular way in which to disseminate the information that needed to go up and down the line. This meant having simple tools like 1- regular times scheduled to convene and share, 2- agendas to guide our conversations, 3 – the right people in attendance and 4 – a time limit to the meeting.

Basically, we had a rhythm and flow – we all knew when we met, who was meeting and for what purpose.

Taking that ‘board room discipline’ home has been a fantastic and enriching experience for all of us in the family.

It began some years ago with my wife and I having a set of 4 questions. We asked these questions to each member of the family, and each answer opened up a wealth of sharing, stories, life lessons and laughter.

We originally felt concerned that the kids and my good wife would think it rather odd, stilted and contrived. Yes it certainly felt that way at first but, over time, this changed.

As the questions became ingrained into our nightly family dinner ritual and rhythm, what we noticed was that it felt natural – for all of us. So on the nights I was feeling tired, another member of the family would automatically initiate the conversation by asking the questions. Even more impressive was when my teenagers had friends over for dinner, they included their mates in the questions and conversations – without feeling embarrassed by it all.

So the transformation that occurred sounded like the difference between a monosyllabic “good” when asked how the day had been, to a fully rich conversation about aspects of the day that mattered the most to each member of the family.

The questions?

  1. Tell me about the best part of your day
  2. What was the most challenging part of your day?
  3. What did you learn from that? About the situation? Yourself?
  4. What or who are you most grateful for today?

So, could you ask these or similar questions in your businesses too? And if we are not getting the right answers from our staff and managers, perhaps we need to change the questions.

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