Are you asking a Soup Question?

I was taking a walk down Pondicherry Beach Road when I turned to a café that I frequent every now & then. This space is originally owned by the Aurobindo Society and had been handed to Gratitude Farms who ran the café from August 2020. This January morning however as I made my way up close, I saw that it wasn’t Gratitude Farms and rather Zuka’s Café that was the new manager of the space.

Upon seeing this, my first instinct was to reach inside my pocket for my phone and dial the gentleman from Gratitude Farms (someone I knew) and ask him what happened – how come he was no longer in-charge of the place anymore! Then I thought to myself

‘Is this really a soup question?’ 

The answer to that was a firm NO! and so I put my phone back inside my pocket and continued on my walk. 

Now you’re probable wondering if I made a typo above or if I fell down and hit my head on my walk, and I'd like to happily tell you that it is neither. The ‘soup question’ was very much intentional and if you haven’t watched the movie Finding Forrester, then allow me to expand on what it is all about.  

This particular scene in the movie comes up as William Forrester, a 70-year-old is looking out his window through his camcorder, asks 16-year-old Jamal to stir his soup before it firms up.  

Here’s how the conversation goes: 

Forrester: You better stir that soup. 

Jamal: What? 

Forrester: Stir the soup before it firms up. 

Jamal: Why doesn't ours get anything on it? 

Forrester (looking out of the window through his camcorder): Come on. Closer. Now. 

Jamal: You got someone doing that kind of yelling?

Forrester: What I have is an adult male. Quite pretty. Probably strayed from the park. (Jamal looks at him quizzically, until Forrester shows him the image on the camcorder - a close-up of a bird.) A Connecticut warbler. 

Jamal: You ever go outside to do any of this? 

Forrester (annoyed): You should have stayed with the soup question. The object of a question is to obtain information that matters only to us.  You were wondering why your soup doesn't firm up? Probably because your mother was brought up in a house that never wasted milk in soup. That question was a good one, in contrast to, "Do I ever go outside?", which fails to meet the criteria of obtaining information that matters to you. 

Jamal: All right, man. I guess I don't have any more soup questions. 

Here’s an excerpt from the movie. If you have the time, I’d highly recommend watching the full movie:  

Now this incident got me thinking

What are the questions we ask ourselves every day? And are those questions ‘soup questions’ or are merely asked to fulfil a certain curiosity?  

The Kardashian Konundrum 

Why are so many people are invested in the lives of Kim, Khloe, Kourtney and so many other Kardashians. We consume that content not because the information has anything that will add much value to our lives but the vicarious pleasure-seeking characteristics that we exhibit.. No disrespect intended to the Kardashians, of course.   

And it is not just the Kardashians though. A lot of what we consume throughout our day is not something that we have truly thought through. Think of this headline: ‘This is what Sharukh Khan had to say as he entered Karan Johar’s party!’. Without even knowing whether or not this information was vital for you you’ve clicked on it, most probably to realise a moment later you could’ve very easily done without this piece of ‘knowledge’. 

When clicking such clickbait titles, we don’t even think it through most times – the question isn’t even fully formulated in our own heads, let alone be qualified to be a soup question, when we try to answer it by clicking on the links that give us a chance to peak into the life of a Sharukh, Priyanka, or whoever else catches our attention. 

A recent conversation with someone I’ve known for a while confirmed that this was something all of us experienced. She went on to say that against better judgment she does consume such content every once in a while; and it is not always just for vicarious pleasures but so that they can stay relevant in regular conversations that they have with people on a day-to-day basis. You may call it staying relevant or participating in pop culture or just plain simple FOMO. The creators of reality TV base their entire livelihood on the fact that this need is present in all of us in varying degrees.  

So, the question is not that it is a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ thing to do. If consuming such kind of content is what you can leverage to be more relatable to your clients and use certain analogies to make a point hit harder & clearer without being too theoretical, then go all out. But if it doesn’t serve at all or come close to solving this, ask yourself if you could maybe do without such content in your life. 

Don’t Be in A Soup 

On a day-to-day basis, check with yourself and see – what kind of questions am I really asking? Asking mundane, ordinary question such as ‘What did you have for breakfast?’ - is it truly helpful to you in obtaining information about the other or is it just there to fill in space or make conversation for conversation’s sake? If you are more aware, then you can pause, reflect and make the effort to ask more soup questions - questions that can bring you information that would truly matter to you. 

Now if you wish to dig deeper there is a three-fold way you can do so: 

1. Are the questions you are asking yourself true soup questions? We most often neglect this. 
2. At the organisational level, check for corridor gossip masquerading as soup questions. While we may not have the liberty anymore to have an office setup which allows for those conversations but non-soup questions have a way of seeping into our lives in a multitude of ways. Be wary of those. 
3. Lastly, as a manager and a coach to your team, see how you can get those who are reporting to you to ask those soup questions. Help them truly think through what they’re asking and remind or even quiz them as to how the information they seek may be of value to them.  

And remember, everyone’s soup questions will be different, basis what is important to them, which may be absolutely irrelevant to another.

The idea is to truly understand in the process, what is of value to you and how much of your time are you spending consuming or seeking information that doesn’t serve you in any way. 

And with that I conclude this article. But not without my own soup question:  

‘Which soup shall I have for dinner tonight? Mushroom or tomato? Boy, this is going to be a long night!’