Getting to know your professional colleagues at a personal level is risky. I regularly read advice to avoid it. That’s a reasonable strategy to avoid some of the lows of gainful employment, but it also hamstrings the chance to achieve truly beautiful successes, not to mention it forfeits a potent antidote to loneliness.

So yeah, not only am I going to ignore that advice, I’m doubling down on getting better at being a student of other people. To that end, last week I started reading How to Know a Person, from which I extracted the following list of conversation starters:

• Which of your five senses is strongest?
• What are you most self-confident about?
• What’s working really well in your life?
• What is the “no” you keep postponing?
• What have you said “yes” to that you no longer really believe in?
• What forgiveness are you withholding?
• Tell me about a time you adapted to change?
• Have you ever been solitary without feeling lonely?
• Can you be yourself where you are and still fit in?
• What crossroads are you at?
• What would you do if you weren’t afraid?
• If we meet a year from now, what will we be celebrating?
• If the next 5 years is a chapter in your life, what is that chapter about?
• What has become clearer to you as you have aged?
• What is the best way to grow old?
• If you died tonight, what would you regret not doing?

Full credit to David Brooks here, I’m just repeating his excellent ideas. Keep learning, friends!