'Emergency Questions!'
Tom Marshall ??
Innovator in Residence for digital and creative sectors. Video Production specialist and Digital Skills Trainer.
How many questions do you ask on a daily basis?
Forget step-counts. Instead, what number would pop up on your question-counter? … 10, 100, 1000 … 10,000?
Questions are great conversation starters and they can take you into some interesting territories.
Last Christmas, my colleague gave me a gift. It’s a book called ‘Emergency Questions’ and it contains 1000 conversation starters, virtually guaranteed to remove social anxiety. Some of the questions are silly, others are just outrageous but most of them have one thing in common ...
… They are designed to create stories and even prompt memories and ideas that the person telling them won’t have thought to tell before.
Righto! In the spirit of having a little fun, I would like to challenge you with 20 questions that I dare say, you may never have been asked before.
Are you ready? Question number one …
If you got this far, well done!
Sometimes we have to dig deep to find a response. The willingness to search for an answer can rely on a number of things, ranging from mood to who is actually asking the question.
When I interview people, it’s important that ...
- I establish a comfortable connection with the other person.
- I start easy and then develop the sophistication and subtlety of my questions.
- I never settle for mundane or cliche.
I like to ask Who, What, Where, When, Why and How. When I catch a bite of something interesting, I keep going. That’s when you stumble on the hidden gems.
Have a go at this … take one of the questions from this article and pose it to somebody today. Test your own journalistic skills and see if you can uncover a hidden gem.
For more interesting questions, check out 'Emergency Questions' by Richard Herring.
If you would like to know more about what I do, then I encourage you to connect and drop me a message. I am a storyteller at heart and I work mostly with businesses, helping them to develop their own brand of engaging content.
Thanks for reading. Have a great day!
Tom Marshall
Creative Director, Captive North