How to Ask ‘Bloody Good Questions’ with Founder of Positive Momentum, Matt Crabtree #47

After all, all art is experience.

Hello and welcome to The Company Doctor. Today we're joined by the inimitable author, speaker, podcast host, and founder of Positive Momentum, Matt Crabtree. He'll be taking us through some of the techniques behind and the importance of asking bloody good questions. Matt was kind enough to have Gary on the first episode of his Full Time to Fulfilled podcast, available on all the usual platforms. So we're delighted to be able to return the favor and get his insight into mastering one of life's most important skills. Gary, Matt, take it away.

Please don't send me presents.

Matt Crabtree, welcome to The Company Doctor.

Thank you. I have been looking forward to this very, very much. I am an avid Company Doctor subscriber and I'm slightly nervous. I've been waiting in The Company Doctor's waiting room and here I am in the surgery.

Well, I'm a bit more nervous than you because I've waited 46 episodes to have you on so I could practice the topic that we're going to cover today, which is how to ask bloody good questions. So I'm pretty nervous that I'm under a lot of pressure to ask good questions throughout. So I've practiced and hopefully it will work well. So I have got a lot of questions for you, Mr. Crabtree. But first of all, I'll ask you a bloody bad question. Now we know each other pretty well, but tell people what makes Matt Matt and tell us about Positive Momentum.

Well, yes, thank you. It's a pleasure to be able to chat to you about Bloody Good Questions. Tell people about Matt. So, as most people who've met me will know, because I bang on about it a lot, I'm a farmer's son. I went into corporate life, into sales. I worked my way up into general management fairly quickly. I got lucky and got given jobs I probably should never have been allowed anywhere near. And then in the early years of the dot-com boom and bust. I was involved in, uh, helping to run a business for Barclays. It was a joint venture with Accenture. We sold the business back to Accenture, and that triggered a moment for me to leave corporate life. And so I thought I'd give consulting a bit of an experiment, but I'm not sure I ever really imagined it would turn into a sort of full-time thing. But that's 20 years ago now, and I couldn't get a job now if I wanted one, and so I better make sure this continues to work. And as you know very well, Mr. Gamp, we are a team of, of these days, about 40 consultants around the world, about 30 based in the UK and another 15 or so in India, all ex-leaders such as yourself and I, who provide what we call no-nonsense business expertise in a really wide range of different circumstances, lots of different industries. We're very privileged to be able to work with the clients that we do.

Yeah, and you're very humble because you have an amazing practice. And I like, you know, the no-nonsense business bit is really interesting because I'm going to link it back to some of the questions and the bloody good questions. So, you know, I am under a lot of pressure to ask you bloody good questions. And you are Mr. Bloody Good Questions, or as you call it, BGQs. So what are they and why do they matter?

That is a good question. Thanks. It occurred to me, it occurred to me I think quite a long time ago, but I didn't give a name to it until the first year or two of Positive Momentum's existence. But it occurred to me quite a long time ago that actually the people who seem to have the best outcomes in relationships, in business, seem to be the people who are most curious. And curiosity is a much talked about subject. I've heard lots of other people on The Company Doctor talking about the importance of curiosity. And I don't know, I was lucky enough to have some pretty decent bosses who asked me quite challenging questions from time to time. I was able to model other business people who I thought were particularly good at it. Frankly, I think you've always been great at it, Gary, asking questions that make other people think. And I think we like people like that. We don't like people who ask awkward questions that make us feel uncomfortable. If you think about, you know, who do you most like to go out for dinner with, it's generally somebody who asks you questions where they're genuinely interested in your viewpoint, but who actually make you think of it, where you have fresh thought. And so relatively early on in PM's existence, I don't know, I think it happened one day in a training session I was running for a bank, and I think I just sort of blurted out the phrase, you know, "That's a bloody good question," and people sort of laughed a bit, and I turned it into a daft acronym, and here we are 20 years later talking about it.

I think you're getting the hang of it now, I think. But you know what's interesting in what you just explained? My next question I kind of thought about was, where did it come from? I don't mean the term Bloody Good Questions, but the idea that questions are important. Did you wake up one morning and go, "That's a great idea," or did you read about it, or what's the origins of The question part rather than the acronym.

Well, the truth is there's an expression called Socratic questioning, right? So Socrates, a very, very long time ago, was early in philosophizing the significance of asking other people questions. And so BGQs is just a silly take on what's technically called Socratic questioning, which is just this ability to show deep interest in what the other party is saying, and to be able to ask questions that build on somebody's perspective but maybe take them to a different place in their heads. Now, honestly, I knew nothing about Socratic questioning when I first started to say BGQs. I mean, bloody good question is obviously just a cliché that lots of people use, but it just stuck with people. And I knew it had stuck actually about, about 10 years ago. I was in Skippool Airport, and somebody came up to me and said, "Oh, I know you, I know you, I've heard you speak." He had no idea where, when, no idea what my name was, but he said, "You're BGQ bloke, aren't you?" You're a celebrity, dude. No, I'm really not, because he had no idea who I was, but he remembered BGQs. And I thought, do you know what, that's pretty cool, you know, that if that has made just one conversation happened which has been a little bit electric, has been catalytic, because I think that's what BGQs are and they're catalytic in a conversation, then I'm a happy boy.

I think it's great. And you know, a lot of your background is you've done a lot of sales jobs in the past before you had your own business. And I can see how BGQs are really helpful and useful in sales situations. But do you think they're useful for other situations outside of sales?

Well, you know, you're very kind to tee me up because you know that the story I most like to tell is about asking my daughter, you know, "What did you do at school today?" when she was very young, my eldest, when she was very young and was first at school, and getting an answer back from her, which was, "Daddy, don't ever ask me that question again." Because I actually think as parents, right, as parents, we don't always ask the greatest questions of our offspring. We don't ask the greatest questions of our spouses. We don't ask the greatest questions of friends or other family members. So I would like to think that it has multi-application, and I am acutely aware that it's not remotely new. It's just the silly acronym that's kind of different and is, and is my thing. But I've just been always very, very passionate about helping people to be genuinely more interested. You know, what does Covey call it? You know, seek first to understand, then to be understood. You know, my version is be more interested than interesting, but it all means the same stuff. You know, Covey believed in it, Carnegie believed in it. You know, all of the greats, all of the business and life thinkers knew that and believed passionately that this was the path to great relationships, the path to great ideas, to innovation, to great business. You know, it has multi-application. And some people are just naturally very good at it, but a lot of people aren't. And we live in a world where people are, you know, increasingly self-interested. And I must, you know, this podcast, if anything, you know, me being self-interested in myself, you know, and I'm actually much more comfortable, as you know, in the role that you're in, asking the questions, than I am giving the answers, because I just, I love to hear what people have to say.

So I waited 2 and a half years to ask you this. So here's an interesting thing. Is there a formula then for formulating good questions? Again, thinking of people that are listening to this podcast that say business to business people, and let's go on the basis that they don't know how to do this and they're trying to learn. What is that formula, do you think?

So I don't think there's an equation. But I think there are some component parts. But let me start with the comparison that I don't know whether everyone will be able to relate to this. Let's see if George can relate to this because it's a slightly aged example. Lots of our listeners will remember Michael Parkinson. I mean, he's still alive, but you remember Michael Parkinson. I'm sure George knows who Parky is. And he was fantastic at interviewing people, with the exception of Meg Ryan, Grace Jones, and Rod Tollenini. But other than that, he was fantastic at it. And the reason he was fantastic at it was because he would ask questions based on somebody's answer. So somebody would say something, and he'd fashion a question out of their answer. So he would demonstrate in his question how much he'd listened. It's just a beautiful, beautiful thing to watch. Whereas if you compare that with a more modern example, like a Jonathan Ross. Jonathan Ross, hugely entertaining, very, very, very funny. But he's not a great interviewer, to be honest, because he's got his list of questions. And he's going to ask you questions. You see it sometimes with his guests, where his guests get a bit discombobulated because he's moved on subjects. I mean, the closest modern, probably, example, comparison to Parkinson would be someone like Graham Norton. Graham Norton just gives of himself to the conversation. You can see that guests are genuinely enjoying the experience with him. Not that he hasn't got a script, because of course he has, and they know what they're going to ask, and it's all very canned, but it feels natural. And so if there's any kind of formula to a BGQ, it's first build on what somebody said, use their own language. The sweetest music you can play to somebody is their own language. But secondly, the second— if there is a formula, second part of it is to take them somewhere in their head where they hadn't previously gone before. A BGQ in essence makes somebody think. You know, our brains are to bring it to a wildly oversimplistic sense, capable of two things: storage and retrieval, or new thoughts. And a BGQ is new thought. And you could literally measure somebody's new thought, you know, with an electroencephalograph. You can measure synaptic connections. And so, you know, I'm not an expert in neurology, and there might be some people listening who are, but I think that when you ask people questions that make them think— BGQs, as I would call them— you get an electrical charge. Whereas if you say to me, where did you grow up? Or how old are you? Or what did you have for lunch? Or whatever it was, that's just storage and retrieval. It's fine. It's important. I sometimes call them boring but important questions. You know, you do have to ask people boring but important questions, but it's not where the magic is. When I, when I have an appointment with a client, just like you, when I have an appointment with a client and the client says to me, 'that's a really good question,' I kind of want to high-five myself. I wish I could do— no, it would be embarrassing, but I wish I could do the— I think it always correlates to a positive outcome, either for the client or maybe for me too. It turns into an engagement. It's— I live for that.

I live for people saying, 'That's a good question.' Yeah, I mean, Matt, part of what you've said is, you know, you were talking about being a good listener as the kind of raw material. Is there a technique for getting something good to listen to?

Better questions. But, you know, this is the problem. So, I think listening is an overrated skill, to be honest, right? So, I mean, you and I are old enough to remember, you know, on sort of early days training courses, I don't know, maybe it still does get trained, active listening. I've never understood what active listening is. Like, do you have to move around a lot when you're active listening or something like that? I don't, I never really, I mean, slightly fatuous answer, but I I never really got it, because if you're frustrated that somebody is not telling you something interesting, well, ask them a better question. Be more genuinely interested. I sometimes say to people, you probably need to tell your face that you're interested in what that person is saying, because it doesn't look like you are. People say, "I got sat next to this really boring person at some sort of industry dinner or something." I don't really meet boring people. In the sense that some people are a bit inhibited, of course, and are not necessarily extroverted and want to tell you everything about themselves without you asking. I think a lot of people think, well, if you're not going to ask me anything, I'm going to assume you're not interested. When I meet people at those sorts of events, I have in my mind 6 categories of information. So I have in my mind past, present, and future, personal and professional. I know you know this well, Gary Gamp. The past, present, and future, personal and professional, 6 categories of information. I will never run out of questions to ask somebody about their past, present, and future, personal, professional. It doesn't matter how old they are. If they're 20, they've still had trillions of past, present, and future experiences, opinions, evaluations. But what happens is people haven't got the energy to ask questions. They just run out. They just can't be bothered anymore.

Do you think they're being lazy, or is it a skill problem?

Lazy? I think it's insulting to call people lazy. I think it is a skill. I don't think it's a complex skill, right? So I just think it's a habit more than anything else. I think it's just people get out of the habit. People are used to doing exactly what I'm doing now, which is spouting their own opinion and not turning the tables the way that you and George are and getting people to share their points of view. I just think people are out of the habit of it. And I think, you know, We live in the world of the influencer, right? What do influencers do? Share their point of view.

Influence.

Yeah, they do. Correct.

Yeah, what was on my mind, someone said to me recently, it's all very well asking good questions, but sometimes it feels like a bit of an interrogation. I've been on the end of that where someone keeps asking me questions I can't be bothered with it. It's a bit too, you know, what's your master tips on that? How do you deal with that? How do you stop being like that?

It's a really common challenge, and you know this, you've probably trained nearly as many people as I have on this, that people go, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it feels like some sort of interrogation. I'm not going to do that." But that's just absurd. It's not what you do. So I meet you for the first time, and I say, "Where do you live?" And you go, "Oh, I live in North London." "Oh, North London? Oh, yeah, I've got family who lives in North London as well. Whereabouts are you?" "Oh, I'm in..." I won't say where you live exactly, I don't want a line of people at the company doctor's house. And suddenly you go, "Oh, that's really..." And you find commonality, but more than anything else, you find enthusiasm. If I said to you, how old are you? Where do you live? How long have you lived there? What sort of car do you drive? What did you do yesterday? What's your favorite drink? What's your best holiday? Of course, it feels like an interrogation, but nobody talks to each other like that. That's just stupid. Like, it's just— you just don't do that. Maybe doing a police interview or something, I don't know. But in the normal course of events, you just have It's called a conversation. But what slightly bamboozles me is some people don't seem to show interest in what the other person is saying, even the banalities of life. They don't show interest in it. And frankly, that's because they don't feel it. And I understand that. But as I often say to people, have you ever pretended to be more interested in something than you genuinely felt? And the answer from every adult human being is yes. Why do we do it? We do it at first dates. We do it in appointments with potential clients. We do it in conversations with people who have significance in our lives. Why do we do it? We do it because it's an investment in the relationship. And the minute we stop doing it, by the way, is when that all starts to fracture. And we know that's what leads to the dissolution of relationships, be they business or personal, is when people just can't be bothered to show any interest in each other. And it is a question of being bothered.

That's why I told you I liked Britney Spears when I met you, by the way, because I wanted you to feel it.

And I don't believe you to this day.

No, but I agree with what you're saying, Matt. But are there any bloody annoying questions then?

I was just going to say, go on, hit me, baby, one more time. Sorry, are there bloody annoying questions?

Because it can go the other way, can't it? Like, what keeps you awake at night or something like that?

Oh, God. You know, in an interview, what are your major strengths? What are your weaknesses? Where do you see yourself in 5 years' time? Oh, God, kill me now. Hasn't every young person been taught how to answer that question? You know, at the beginning of a business meeting, how's business? Oh, my goodness me, do you not have access to the internet? Can you not ask me something more informed than that? I often say to people, it's the equivalent of, you know, going to a nightclub and saying, do you come here often? You know, it's just awful. It's awful and lazy. And it, you know, it's just a lack of preparation and a lack of thought. I mean, you know, you and I have spent a long time teaching our teams to do their homework before they go to an appointment with a customer.— in order that you can start the conversation, or at some point in the conversation, be able to say, "Yeah, I was reading, actually, about your organization, and I see that you are expanding in Eastern Europe, and I wondered why, and I wondered how, you know, product XYZ is doing." So that you confer some respect with the question, and you show that you've done a little bit of homework, and you've thought about that person. So, "Oh my God, are there—" You know, the question, you know, "What did you do at school today?" to our kids, it's just a horribly terrible question. What's a better one? Well, so the story, you know, goes— thanks for teeing me up— the story goes that I said to her, you know, what did you do at school today? Daddy, don't ever ask me that question again. So I thought about it for a moment. I thought, okay, Charlotte, what was the best thing that happened at school today? And she thought about it for a minute and she gave me a cool little answer and we had a laugh about something. The problem was that I then thought that was a really good question. And so I kept using that for another 2 weeks until she said, what? Don't ever ask me that question again, right? So the point is, actually, as she grew older, my other daughter grew older, what I had to do was remember that, oh, today you did show and tell, or today was preparation for SATs, or today was GCSE mock paper, or whatever it was. How did that go? Situational, timely, relevant questions are the ones that make the difference. Now, they're not necessarily bloody good. Right? The bloody good ones take them to a different place in their heads. They're more the what if, they're more the imagine that questions. But at least make them relevant.

Yeah, one of the things I wanted to— I was going to ask you a question about, can you remember a time when you were in the zone and you asked a bloody good question that saved the day? But I was actually with you when you did one of those. And I'm going to mention it to you. I won't say the customer name, just see if you remember it, because I think it'd be a useful one to share or something else. But We went to do a pitch for a financial institution where they were a bit skeptical about what we were going to offer. And you came out with a silver-blazing, bloody good question at the start, and that just turned the whole pitch around. Do you remember that?

I do. I don't remember what the question was.

Nor do I, but it was something to do— it was basically you got them speaking for half an hour on what they wanted.

Yeah, but that's my goal, right? It's my goal. As you know, I'm about to fly to Dubai for 24 hours, it's kind of ridiculous, and go to a meeting with somebody I've never met before, in an industry I know virtually nothing about, with a very specific need. But it's a meeting with, you know, a relatively senior person. And I know that my job is to get that person talking. My job is not to pitch. I've never understood this pitching thing. Where people, you know, get invited to propose their solution, and they turn up, and then they just bang on about themselves. And then they sort of get to the end of, you know, 35 dreary slides, and go, "So, any questions?" You know, by which time the person is practically catatonic with boredom. And they kind of go, "Oh, yeah, I don't know." Because they've just lost them. As you know, in Positive Momentum, our goal is always, if we get invited for pitches, which we do periodically, we open with this, and we slave over what that question will be, and we think about it endlessly, and worry, and try to make it, you know, thought-provoking, and engaging, and helpful to both the potential client and to us. And as you know, because you've been part of it for so long, you know, often we'll find ourselves with 45 minutes for a pitch, and after 40 minutes, the client's still answering the first question and debating amongst themselves, and we haven't shown a single slide. And you and I are sort of looking at each other with a glint in our eyes going, "That's a result. Good." Who wants to see our boring slides? They want to talk about themselves and their challenges and their context, and get really deep into their context, and then have a proper conversation.

So, so let's switch. That's fantastic. So let's switch gears a bit and get some of the how-tos in now so that people can get into your head a bit and get some of that amazing knowledge. And by the way, just as an aside, this is completely random, but I remember hearing that you went and did a presentation once, and I'm not going to say where you did it, where they had people queuing up to have a picture of you on the vase. Do you remember that?

Yes. Like, how could I forget?

And so basically, you know, Matt was a celebrity in this presentation. She could buy the buy a vase or maybe a placemat. I can't remember what else it was. Was it a plate?

It was a plate. There's a plate in a vase. It's not— I mean, it's not a secret where I was. I was in Iran a long time ago, 10 years ago, when it was a slightly easier place to be in. And by the way, for anybody who's listening, Iran is, despite a slightly unusual leadership regime, is an incredible place with wonderful people. Brilliantly educated, and I had a fantastic few days there. But yes, there was a weird moment with about 1,500 people in the audience when in the foyer they are selling vases and plates with pictures not only of me, but there were other speakers. No, no, of course. But yes, it was one of the odder moments of my last 20 years.

Yeah. My question was going to be, what have you done with them? But let's not go there. Let's move on to some of the how-tos now. I don't have one. I'll just let you know that. Yeah, Matt. So let's get into some tips. So I've got 2, 2 questions where 3 tips would be very handy. The first one is sell me on what's the main advantages of being good at asking particularly bloody good questions? Give me 3, 3 things off the top of your head that you think would really help people. You're on the spot.

Well, one, the first is actually in alignment with your question, which is they help people. So enabling people to be independent rather than dependent. You know, for those people who are listening, who are leading teams, I know lots of your listeners to The Company Doctor are senior leaders of teams. Our job as leaders is to make our teams independent, not dependent. Not a new idea. So how do you make people independent? Well, you get them to think for themselves. And so I spoke to a guy actually this morning, and he was saying, you know, I think my biggest talent is the fact that I'm a problem solver. And it's another thing, a skill I think is overrated, because he's a leader of a large number of people. And I said, so tell me what happens when somebody sends you an email with a problem or calls you with a problem, what do you do? And he says, well, I solve it. And I went, are you quite busy? And he went, so busy, you wouldn't believe it, I get so many emails. Of course you do.

Why do you think I'm called the company doctor?

Indeed, indeed so. So, you know, first of all, you are you are laying a legacy, you are genuinely helping people. Second, and you really are putting me on the spot, you learn. And, you know, Carol Dweck's book on mindset, you know, is one of the best things that I think has been written in the last 10 years or so. And this whole idea of a growth mindset, this whole inherent attitude of knowing that you don't know it all, and therefore just wanting to learn more. And so asking questions, as much as I hope it helps that person, To be quite frank, it also helps me enormously. What I've learned in the last 20 years in consulting by, you know, periodically asking a decent question here and there, I would never have learned in a conventional career, partly probably because I would have believed my own BS too much to ask enough decent questions. Third up, you know, in my world, it correlates with positive business outcomes. So I know tomorrow when I have this meeting I'm heading to, I will get chosen if I ask the best questions. Certainly in consulting, it's true. Right? So the consultants you want to hire are the ones who ask the best questions, not necessarily have some magical answer, because most of what we deal with doesn't have a magical answer.

But is there a kind of a danger that you can be a bit of a smart aleck if you ask too smart questions?

I mean, I don't think anybody's ever said that about me, Gary, but you know— No, I guess not. You are pretty smart. Definitely.

But is there a danger genuinely that you can be too smart?

There is. There absolutely is. There's no question that people— I suspect there might be some people listening to this who know me, who think I'm a right blooming smart aleck with some of my questions. And obviously, I don't want people to feel like that. But there is an inherent element to it where if you are well informed— so The example I used a bit earlier, if you do your research on an organization, and then you ask a question to the person that you're meeting about that organization, there is a risk that they don't know the information you've researched. We have that quite a lot. We quite often look at people's investor relations decks. And we'll ask a clever question, or even maybe have a copy of the slide from the deck with us, and the person you're meeting has no clue about those things. That's risky, and that's irritating for people. And so positioning it in the right way and remembering to be empathetic and to not be a smart aleck is a big deal. And I don't think it's something I get right all the time. Frankly, I think you're better at that bit than I am.

You're probably true. No, not so. I think it's a fair reflection, isn't it? Because, you know, it can be kind of off-putting if you're too smart. But I've never had that problem, to be honest. I've got two more questions and then we're going to get your musical taste. One of my questions is, I'm thinking back to you being a farmer— on a farm, sorry, growing up on a farm, not being a farmer. I think you were a farmer, but you grew up on a farm. And I'm just trying to work out how you ask bloody good questions on a farm. But anyway, don't worry about that. And then hindsight is an amazing thing. So looking back, knowing what you know now, and you know a lot, I've seen you in action, you definitely know a lot. What would you advise young Matt who grew up on a farm in relation to questions and bloody good questions.

Well, here's the thing. Yes, I'll give you two answers to that question. And nobody's ever asked me anything like that before.

That's a bloody good question right there, isn't it?

It is. It is. And it takes me back because, you know, I grew up on a fairly big farm, right? So big in UK circumstances, in US circumstances, tiny, but 20,000 acres, big complicated farm, large, complicated, dangerous equipment. Farms are dangerous places to be around. And I was a kid. And worse than that, I was the boss's kid, not the owner. Landowners were different. My dad worked for the landowners. I was a kid, I was the boss's kid. And farm workers are, you know, they like to have a bit of fun with youngsters. And so if you don't ask the right questions in dangerous circumstances, anybody listening to this who works in a dangerous industry, you know, where health and safety is a big deal, they'll know that if you don't ask the right questions, you find yourself in difficult circumstances very, very quickly. And so, I think, I never injured myself badly, but also, I built relationships with people who were congenitally probably not inclined to build relationships with me. I was the boss's kid. You're out on a farm all day, and you're miles from anywhere, And all sorts of weird and wonderful things go on. And I could very easily have been, you know, Dad's mole, you know, sending information back. And I just learned to ask questions, I think, if I look back on it and make a comparison. What would I tell young Matt? Oh my goodness, mate. I would probably tell him not to worry about the future so much, that the future will be all right. I didn't grow up on a family farm. I went to agricultural college, you know, because that's the only qualifications I was, you know, the only higher education I was able to go to because of my relatively poor qualifications. And I went into sales because I didn't know what else to do. I mean, genuinely didn't know what else to do. And I worried, I worried about the future. And I now know I didn't need to do that, although I suspect part of the worry, fear of failure, equipped me to do some of the things that I did. But yeah, probably don't worry so much.

And why do you say don't worry so much? That's a big thing to say. What gets you to that point?

Fear of failure, I think, probably. I was a worrier as a guy. I'm still a bit of a worrier. And I think there's a degree of— worry maybe isn't the right word because it tends to have links with anxiety and stress. And I've been very fortunate in my life not to have suffered from that. But I think that performance pressure has sometimes not been as healthy as it might have been. And, you know, there's a confidence that probably, you know, anybody listening to this probably perceives that I'm this sort of uber-confident person. But as I tell people often, you know, in the school plays, I was the kid doing the curtains, you know, I had my own stool, you know, wasn't going to get me on the stage when I was a kid. And yet, you know, these days, you know, I'm in front of hundreds of thousands of people. It's a weird, really weird eventuality. But yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's all worked out.

That's amazing. By the way, I watched your showreel. Anyone who doesn't know Matt should watch his showreel. And you're, you know, on stage is a motivational environment, but your questions are incredible. But in a motivational way, you get people to question themselves. So anyone who hasn't seen them should see those. Okay. Got last question. I'm going to music. Basically, you're the king of BGQs. And you're also the king of takeaways. You're very good at synthesizing things in bite-sized chunks. And as men, we can only do 3 things anyway.

You don't mean Chinese and Indian and Thai?

I mean Chinese takeaways. Okay. You might do that as well. So as the topic is how to ask bloody good questions, just to finish off, give us 3 takeaways for being amazing at asking bloody good questions.

Be more interested than interesting. Just devote yourself to what someone else is saying. And use their language, therefore, because you've been devoted, use their language, play it back to them. Secondly, take somebody to a place in their head they haven't been before. Ask them the what-if questions. So, but just imagine that the circumstances with this, I had this in a conversation with somebody yesterday, coaching session yesterday. So just imagine that you were not in this role, that someone else was in this role and you were in this role. What would that be like? And he just sat there looking away. He just sat there looking away, thinking. He said, "I've never really thought about that before." I'm like, "Yeah, that's me earning my money." And a third, don't put yourself under performance pressure to ask a good question. Build up a head of steam, build up a balance sheet of information, past, present, and future, personal, professional. I mean, it's not very sophisticated, right? But just ask stuff, be interested in somebody's business, their life, their hobbies, their sports, their family, whatever it is. Just be interested, because people are interested, right? They've got fascinating things to say. And so just curate information, gather data, not in an interrogatory way, but just gather data, and you'll find things that you can build, you know, the stream of a BGQ from. Fantastic.

Matt Crabtree, you are bloody awesome. Thank you so much for being on this episode. I'm going to pass you on to George in a second, but honestly, anyone who wants to get inside Matt's head a little bit more, follow him on LinkedIn, look him up. He's written a book. We're going to talk about that in a second. But thank you so much, Matt, for being on the podcast. That was really amazing. Bless you.

Thank you so much, Gary.

George, let's see what music we can find.

Yes, indeed. Yeah, well, thank you so much again, Matt. And I think we're going to have to come up with some sort of competition for Company Doctor listeners to win a limited edition Matt Crabtree vase or plate. I don't know what that'll be, but I'm going to start thinking about it. It's my job to ask the potentially boring, but I think very important question about your music taste. We have the Company Doctor playlist and we ask our guests to contribute a couple of tunes into it. So my question, my killer question to you is, what would you like to what would it be?

You know, I'm having listened to every episode of The Company Doctor, I, I, you naturally do sit and think, what would I, what would my choice be? And so I have thought quite a lot about this. I've got two. Am I allowed two? Yeah, Britney Spears. I feel this is like Desert Island Discs where you're only allowed one, but you know, if I can have two, you can stretch to three if you like, but two. No, I can only do two. So my first is Happy by Pharrell Williams. So, you know, Don't Worry, Be Happy, right? I just— it's not necessarily the Despicable Me thing, but, you know, I just— it makes me smile. And it— I'd like to think that's the persona that I give to the world. And my other, who I think is a favorite of Gary's, Paolo Nuttini, New Shoes. Because I just— A, I love the track, but B, I just do love a new pair of shoes, as I know my friend, the company doctor, Mr. Gary Gamp, does. So, uh, yeah, New Shoes by Paolo Nuttini, please.

What about Britney Spears?

Leave it alone. Leave it. Leave the Britney Spears thing. Just leave it alone.

We can put that in as a bonus. We can put Britney Spears in as a bonus track as well. Thank you so much. Great choices. Great information. Really excellent and fascinating to hear you speak. So thank you so much. And thank you to you, Gary, obviously, for asking such excellent questions. And thank you to everybody for listening.

Thank you.

Thanks, Gary. Thanks, George. Thank you so much.

See you soon.

Thanks for listening to this episode of The Company Doctor, and a massive thank you to Matt for joining us and providing some genuinely fascinating insight. Matt's book, Full Time to Fulfilled: The Blueprint to Success as an Independent Consultant, is available in all good online and analog bookstores. And his Full Time to Fulfilled podcast can be found and consumed wherever you listen to your podcasts. We hope you've enjoyed this episode. You can find plenty more on a whole galaxy of different topics over at thecompanydoctor.com, where you can also subscribe and download our episode extras. Thanks again, and we'll see you next time.