Ask: “How Do You Do Your Job?” to Engage Someone in Conversation
Scary question: “What are you doing?” can be a little uncomfortable, but even worse, your conversation partner has little to answer. Instead, ask how they work.
As Business Blog Inc. notes, many people enjoy explaining how they do their job. If you ask what they do, they might say “I’m a graphic designer,” which is one sentence. However, ask them to explain what the work is like and they will give you an in-depth look at the life of a digital artist. The latter can make the conversation more engaging:
We all know to ask new acquaintances about their work, but the form these questions take tend to focus on the fact that in a person’s career – what kind of job do you have? or what are you doing? Unable to engage model Bar Rafeli in a 2009 interview, [Esquire editor Ross McCummon] came up with a better alternative. Don’t ask what someone is doing. Instead, ask how they do what they do.
“People love talking about what they really do for a living. Not their job, but their job, ”he explains in his Science of Us post. “There are so many technical things here – even if you don’t have a technical job, there are so many small technical things that even your partner or spouse may not know about, just these little triumphs or bursts of creativity, or setbacks, mistakes that go into one working day. And I’m kind of obsessed with these little things, these little mistakes. “
This strategy can be applied to more than just work. Asking someone about their hobbies will usually be less interesting than asking about the details of how it works. Hearing someone draw is not as exciting as hearing a person learn to draw or what techniques they use. Regardless of the topic, if you treat someone’s work or hobby as interesting, you are more likely to find that it is.