A rich, deep conversation can be wonderful, yet feels rare in day-to-day life. Whether it’s with your partner, family or a colleague, it’s easy to find yourself talking at cross-purposes or unintentionally falling into pointless disputes, without ever understanding one another.
When any of us communicate, our bodies and our brains become entrained. The pupils of our eyes are beginning to dilate at basically the same rate, and our breathing patterns are starting to match each other. And most importantly, our neural activity is becoming more and more alike, as we are beginning to think the same way. The point of communication is that I can describe feeling an emotion or experiencing an idea, and you then feel some version of that. Our brains would become more and more similar.
Deep questions ask someone about their values, beliefs or experiences. When we talk about those things, we talk about who we really are. And they’re really easy questions to ask, right? If you’ve met someone who’s a doctor, you could ask: “What made you decide to go to medical school?” Or “what do you love about practising medicine?” Those are both deep questions, because they invite the other person to say something real and meaningful about themselves. And they make it easy for us to reciprocate to tell them why we decided to do our job.
Paul Agonda
Public Relations Officer
PR specialist with 8+ years of experience in media relations, strategic communications, and brand management across East Africa.
