A few years ago I started noticing something.

What people ask for is almost never what they actually need.

I’ve seen presentations created to bring clarity, while nobody had really figured out what was causing the confusion in the first place.

I’ve seen workshops built around collaboration, while everybody carefully avoided the conversation at the heart of the problem.

I’ve seen communication plans created to align around a direction that seemed to change every time it was discussed.

That’s why the longer I work, the more suspicious I’ve become of communication requests.

Is a presentation really what the audience needs? Or is it what we think we need because we’re trying to create clarity?

Is the workshop solving something? Or are we hoping the workshop will help us figure out what the real problem is?

Is communication the problem? Or are we trying to communicate our way around a lack of direction?

Over the years, I’ve started noticing a pattern.

People rarely bring you the problem.

They bring you their best guess at the solution.

“We need a presentation.”

“Let’s run a workshop.”

“Can we put together a communication plan?”

And for the longest time, I didn’t question any of it.

Someone needs help? You help.

Someone needs a message? You write it.

Someone needs a presentation? You build it.

Simple. Professional. Very efficient.

The funny thing is that nobody hires a communicator to make things more complicated.

When somebody asks for something, your instinct is to be helpful and get moving.

So that’s exactly what I did.

But somewhere along the way, I realised that the moments when I added the most value didn’t involve me simply executing the thing that had been requested.

They usually started with me asking a bunch of questions.

Not big, dramatic questions. Just the kind that make somebody stare out of the window for a few seconds.

Or refill their coffee.

Or start their answer with: “Hmm, that’s actually a good intake…”

Those became my favourite moments.

Because that’s usually where the real conversation starts.

And often, that’s what leadership actually needed from me.

Not another communication product.

A thinking partner.

The funny thing is that children do this naturally.

You tell a five-year-old something and they’re completely unimpressed by the fact that you’ve already moved on.

They just keep poking at the part that doesn’t make sense yet.

Why?

What happened then?

Okay, but why?

And why do you care?

At some point the adults in the room start looking slightly uncomfortable.

Because the child is still asking questions while everybody else has already moved on to discussing solutions.

Maybe communicators should spend a little more time in that space.

Not over-analysing everything.

Just staying with the question a little longer.

Looking underneath the request instead of immediately responding to it.

In fact, I’ve started using what I privately think of as the five-year-old Q&A.

When somebody asks for a presentation, a workshop or a communication plan, I try to ask “why?” a few times before discussing the deliverable itself.

“We need a presentation.”

Why?

“Because people aren’t aligned.”

Why?

“Because they’re interpreting the strategy differently.”

Why?

“Because leadership hasn’t actually agreed on what it means.”

At that point, we’re no longer talking about a presentation. We’re talking about something much more useful.

After nearly ten years in communication and leadership support, I’ve become less interested in being the person with all the answers.

I’m much more interested in being the person who helps uncover the real question.

On top of that I’ve started to look at curiosity differently.

We often talk about it as if it’s a personality trait. Something you’re either born with or you’re not.

But the longer I’ve worked in communication, the less I believe that.

I think it’s a skill.

Journalists use it every day.

They’re trained to question assumptions, look for what’s missing and keep asking “why?” when a story doesn’t quite add up.

Internal communicators face a different challenge, but the skill feels surprisingly similar.

We often find ourselves in the middle of situations that aren’t fully formed yet.

A strategy that means different things to different people.

A decision that isn’t really a decision.

A disagreement that everyone is politely pretending isn’t there.

Which means our job isn’t always to communicate.

Sometimes it’s to help people figure out what they’re actually trying to say before any communication happens at all.

And that can feel slightly counterintuitive in organisations that tend to reward certainty.

The expert.

The person with the answer.

The person who can move fastest.

Meanwhile, some of the most useful conversations I’ve been part of started in exactly the opposite way.

Somebody slowing things down.

Somebody asking one more question.

Somebody saying, “Okay, but what’s actually going on here?”

That’s where good communication begins.

Not with a slide deck.

But at the moment somebody pauses and asks:

What problem are we actually trying to solve?