Dawn Morrow, an MBA candidate at the UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School, wrote this to me after I spoke there recently. Great observations about the surface chats that happen at B-school and everywhere else.

Since I've arrived at b-school I've noticed the plethora of surface chats, which really hinder my ability to build relationships of any depth at all. We stand at a happy hour with a glass in our hands, and ask the same questions: How are you; How are classes; What presentations have you been to? Do this for a few weeks and your eyes begin to glaze over. Even outside of the school, the questions I'm asked are predictible: How are you (fine) and How's school (busy.) That's been frustrating to me, and I haven't been able to figure out why. Until this past week.

Sunday, after church, one of my friends came up and said, "I'd ask you how school was, but then you'll just tell me about your classes. I want to know how school really is for you. Is it transforming? Affirming? Challenging?" Suddenly, there was this whole open area of conversation to explore, simply because of the way he asked the question.

So, I am learning that the burden is partly on me to invite the people I'm talking with into a conversation that is deeper than "fine" and "busy" by asking better questions and to create a safe arena for relationship to be built by sharing more openly about myself. (Like we saw in the introduction exercise during your talk) My goal for the next week is to not ask the questions "How are you" or "How is school" or any of the 600 variations of that type of question that we use on a daily basis. I am going to try to engage people by asking questions that invite them to go deeper.

People often ask me to tell them what the "right" or "best" questions are for getting others to open up and have a deeper conversations. No doubt some questions are "deeper" than others, but I think you can make greater improvements in how you ask questions than in the quality of words with which you ask them. Sometimes all it takes to get someone to give you a real answer is to really ask the question. Don't accept the ho-hum answer. Stop them and let them know that you know it's an old hat question, but that you really want to know their real answer. Stop them and let them know you really care. Because the way people say "How are you?" and "How is work?" or "How is school?" has trained us to think that most people really don't care at all.



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