We too often think that deep conversations have to be painful or vulnerable conversations. I try to compensate for that by asking questions about the positive sides of life:

• “Tell me about a time you adapted to change.”

• “What’s working really well in your life?”

• “What are you most self-confident about?”

• “Which of your five senses is strongest?”

• “Have you ever been solitary without feeling lonely?” or

• “What has become clearer to you as you have aged?

Once you’ve got a good set of people, it’s time to ask: What is the character of these relationships?

Help—Both Informational and Practical

Who do you turn to if you need some expertise or help solving a practical problem (e.g., you need to plant a tree, fix your WiFi connection, apply for health insurance)?

Fun and Relaxation

Who makes you laugh?

Who do you call to see a movie or go on a road trip?

Who makes you feel relaxed, connected, at ease?

That same question—What’s here that I’m not noticing?—can be extraordinarily powerful when we apply it to people: What about this person have I not noticed before? Or: What is this person feeling that I’ve been missing? This is part of that radical curiosity we talked about in Chapter Four.

More often than not, when we are in the presence of other people, we are missing a lot about their experience. In any interaction, and in any relationship (even our closest), there is an enormous amount of feeling and information that goes right over our heads. But in the end, which matters more: How right we are about what another person is experiencing, or how curious we are about their experience in the first place?

So tomorrow when you get up and go to work, consider a few questions:

• Who are the people I most enjoy and value at work, and what is it about them that is valuable? Am I appreciating them?

• Who is different from me in some way (who thinks differently, comes from a different background, has different expertise), and what can I learn from that person?

• If I’m having a conflict with another worker, what can I do to alleviate it? Would the W.I.S.E.R. model be useful?

• What kinds of connections am I missing at work that I might want more of? Could I imagine a way to make these connections more likely, or richer?

• Do I really know my workmates? Is there someone I’d like to know better? How can I reach out to them? You might even pick that person with whom you seem to have the least in common, and make a point to be curious and ask about something that they’ve displayed, like pictures of family or pets or a T-shirt they wear at work.