Join Shawna Rodrigues on The Grit Show and delve into the art of genuinely connecting with others. In this episode we will walk through three simple questions that you can easily remember and consistently use as a tool to get to know others better. These questions provide a gateway to explore someone's journey, celebrate the present, and ignite the imagination. Whether you're looking to strengthen your connections with colleagues, friends, or even family, the insights shared in this episode offer practical tools to cultivate deeper relationships. If you're ready to take your conversations to a new level and unlock the potential for meaningful human connections, this episode is your guide to fostering authentic and lasting relationships.

Other episodes of The Grit Show referenced-

Celebrating Time- The Anniversary of The Grit Show & How to Make/Keep Adult Friendships -54

Shawna Rodrigues left her award-winning career in the public sector in 2019 and after launching The Grit Show, soon learned the abysmal fact that women hosted only 27% of podcasts. This led to the founding of the Authentic Connections Podcast Network intent on raising that number by 10% in five years- 37 by 27. Because really, shouldn’t it be closer to 50%? She is the Director of Impact for the network, which offers full-service support for podcasting from mentoring to production. In September 2023 they are also launching the EPAC (Entrepreneurs and Podcasters Authentically Connected) community for those in early stages and wanting a place for weekly connection. She still finds a little time for her pursuits as a best-selling author and shares the hosting of Author Express, a podcast that features the voice behind the pages of your favorite book. Find her on Instagram- @ShawnaPodcasts and learn more about the network and other happenings at https://linktr.ee/37by27.

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Do you see the value in genuinely connecting with others? I certainly do. I love building relationships and really getting to know people. So today, to follow-up our previous conversations around relationships and the three things that it takes to really make them last, and our wonderful conversation around emotional intelligence, we're going to keep building on this vein, and we're going to talk about the 3 simple questions to ask on getting to know someone. Because sometimes it's valuable to have a tool to help you realize how you can deepen the connections and what it takes to get beyond idle conversations and gossip and ridiculous conversations to actually connect with others. So, we're going to give you some tools.

Welcome to The Grit Show, where our focus is growth on purpose. I'm your host, Shawna Rodrigues, and I'm honored to be part of this community as we journey together with our grit intact to learn more about how to thrive and how to get the most out of life. It means a lot that you are here today. As you listen, I encourage you to think of who may appreciate the tidbits of knowledge we are sharing and to take a moment to pass this along to them. Everyone appreciates the friend that thinks of them, and these conversations are meant to be shared and to spark even more connections.

The 3 simple questions. We talked this past summer about building adult friendships in our episode number 54. This time I looked up the exact number, with Lauri Leal, where we talked about adult friendships and how it can be different and challenging as adults to build friendships and relationships. An additional tool for this, as well as that episode which talked about how you meet and connect and build on common ground with other adults, this is an opportunity to have some tools of questions you can ask to deepen how you get to know someone. To be able to get to know them and not just talk about common circumstances, what's happening in the world, or what's happening in your immediate environment. To actually get to know them about deepening connections.

And the questions we're going to talk about revolve in 3 different areas. 1 is talking about the past. 1 is talking about the present. And 1 is reaching into the future to kind of get to know a well-rounded way of getting to know them.

The first question that I'm going to present to you is looking at the past. There are a bunch of different ways you can ask questions about someone's past and getting to know them and where they came from and all those different pieces. If you've ever listened to our Author Express podcast, the question that we ask our authors at the start of that show, every episode, every author is telling us something interesting about where you are from.

This is an example of a question to help you get to know someone that you could use. If you listen to that show, you might notice how authors who've moved around a lot have a hard time identifying what that might be, where they're from because they've lived a lot of places, and sometimes they answer quickly and easily. We're also trying to get a quick answer for that episode, so we kind of narrow it as something interesting about where you are from. So, if you're trying to have a short conversation, that might be a tool and question you can use. We're trying to, you know, get to know someone here. So, consequently, the question I recommend is, what were you like as a kid? There's lots of different ways we could ask this. You know, who is your best friend as a kid? Tell me about a trip you took as a kid you really enjoyed. Tell me about your favorite holiday growing up. Tell me about who the most influential person you knew was as a kid. Tell me about your favorite teacher. You could really dive into this and expand if you want to have a deeper conversation because you're getting to know about them. Tell me about the places you've lived. Tell me about the most interesting place you've lived. There's lots of different ways to do that. Right? But a simple place to start, most everyone was a kid. Right? So, just saying, what were you like as a kid? It's a great place to start because then they can insert in the part of their childhood and the place they lived, the people they related to, the story that they most connect to that they want to share.

So, it's a very open door, very generic entry that people can interpret and enter as they would like. And you can take it from there and insert the other pieces to get to know them a little bit better, to see them in a different phase, in a different place, and add that depth of your awareness of them and get to know them a little bit better. So, that's the question that I propose you use as a way to get to know somebody a little bit better. The first one, looking at their past is simply, what were you like as a kid?

The second question is focusing more on the present. Do you want to guess what it is? If you've listened to this podcast, you might be able just to guess that knowing what I love to focus on. Yep. It involves gratitude. It's simply asking them, what's something you're grateful for? What is something you are grateful for? You could also identify another positive emotion that you'd like for them to share with you. Because talking about positive emotions and positive times is a great place to start. But this question is focused on the present. So, what is something you're grateful for? What is something that brings you joy? What is the last thing that made you laugh, or what is something recently that’s made you laugh? What is something that you found funny? Those are type of present moment things that help you get to know somebody and get to know what they find funny, get to know what they're grateful for, get to know what brings them joy, and it will bring stories about what's going on in their present life and what's going on with them now. It allows you the opportunity to get to know them a little bit deeper and a little bit better. So, it's a great way to bring up positive emotions and bring up things that are happening for them in their current life.

Which brings us to the 3rd thing, which would be looking to the future. This is a fun one to kind of introduce imagination and get an idea of things that are important to them and how they envision their future without restrictions or frustrations of what challenges might be, but to kind of get a sense of who they really are and what they really appreciate and value.

So, our third question, what would you do if someone gifted you $200,000? Isn't that an exciting question to be asked or to ask someone? It opens the door for them to be able to let you know what's important to them, where their focus would be if money was just an object that they got to invest in and spend on whatever they please. You might find out that they really love animals, or there's a goal they have for their family they'd be able to fulfill. Or there's something else really important to them that you've never gotten to learn about or know about before. I love to have conversations with my partner about what would happen if we win the lottery. That's millions of dollars. And you could easily substitute any amount you want. You could easily substitute winning the lottery versus being gifted the $200,000. So, feel free to change either of those.

I try to keep our questions very neutral so anyone could use them, and gifting might be easier than winning if somebody doesn't like to gamble, doesn't play the lottery, they might get stuck on that. Right? So, gifting is a little easier to say that, but someone might get hung up on the gifting as well. So, it might be easier to say, what would you do if you won the lottery? But that allows an opportunity for you to find out, really, what their bigger goals and dreams are, what the future might be like for them if they were untethered from restrictions. Having large amounts is fun because that's a whole different type of dreams. Right? What I would do if I won the lottery and it's $5,000,000 is very different than what I would do if I was gifted $200,000. So, you can have completely different conversations with both of those, and it could open up the door for you to share that information as well. But it's a wonderful way for you to really get to know someone and what's important to them and what they care about and what's at the core of what they would do with those things.

So those are your 3 questions that you can take into team building exercises, conversations you even have with your kids to get to know what type of things they'd be excited about or important to them. You might not start with the $200,000 for the 7-year-old. They might be very overwhelmed and confused by that. You might start it with $100, right, or $500, or $1,000. But these are great tools for you to actually get to know someone and have conversations be about the past, the present, or the future, and imaginative ways of actually getting to know someone beyond what they did today, beyond small talk on what's happening, to be able to think bigger and differently and get to know the essence and the worth of individuals that they don't often get to share. So, you really get to know them.

So, the 3 questions and again, so many ways you can build on them and take them and twist them. For the first question is, what were you like as a kid? Second question, what is one thing that you are grateful for? Third question, what would you do if someone gifted you $200,000? So, the next time you're meeting somebody or if there's somebody that you already know and spent time with but haven't really gotten to know, you didn't know that much about them, you just see them once in a while at the office and would like to get to know them a little bit better and have deeper conversations, or someone that you've met at a sporting event for one of your kids and would like to get to know, try asking one of those questions.

Tell them, I listen to this podcast. She gave us some ideas about how to connect and have different conversations, and I'm testing them out. Give it a whirl. I would love to hear from you what becomes those conversations and if you have other ideas of other questions you've used or that you think of or that come out of these conversations that really helps you get to know somebody and have deeper connections because we love that in The Grit Show. Deeper connections are a good thing. Thanks for being here, and I hope to see you again next week.

Thank you for joining us today. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Be sure to jump on over to Instagram and follow us at the.grit.show. And if you aren't already following Authentic Connections Podcast Network at 37by27, you should definitely be doing that as well. Don't forget. You are the only one of you that this world has got, and that means something. I'll be here next Tuesday. I hope you are, too.