Asking the right questions

Yesterday I was with some colleagues discussing the design of a Creative Thinking course that a client has asked for. After much debate and discussion about our own backgrounds in media and arts we concluded that creative thinking was really just about asking questions that other people might ask and then attempting to answer them. This process makes you think about issues from different perspectives and often means arriving at decisions different from where you started.

Today I had lunch with a friend who works with vulnerable young people and she told me the story of a young girl that has found herself in my friend's place of work. The girl, let's call her, Abby, was an average pupil at school until she developed a fear of large crowds of people, which led to panic attacks. Abby didn't really understand that she was having panic attacks just that she didn't like the experience of being among a large number of people, particularly the school assembly.

Abby didn't get any sympathy from her teachers or parents because she couldn't really articulate the problem, so she resolved it herself by behaving in a way that meant she was excluded from assembly. However, because she was excluded from assembly she was then treated differently, excluded from other areas of school, which changed her behaviour and ultimately she was excluded from school altogether.

The course of Abby's life has been altered these past couple of years because nobody asked the right questions. An adult with the same affliction would be given sympathy and help, so why not a child?

Last week I met Lord Andrew Mawson a social entrepreneur and the founder of the Bromley By Bow Centre. At the heart of Andrew's philosophy for effective and sustainable social purpose  initiatives, is relationships. Forget policy, forget focus groups, forget working parties, just build relationships.

And how do any of us build relationships? We ask each other questions.