(upbeat music) - First use case I thought about this, that an average person might be preparing for an interview is in a job setting, right? I'm looking for a job, I'm going in. I know at some point someone's gonna say, "All right, what questions do you have for me?" You know, my initial advice after reading your book was, well, you should try to get to that point at the end with never having, you know, you have such a good conversation that you don't even leave time for the questions.

How would you advise someone thinking about that kind of professional setting where they have time to prepare? - Okay, let me give you one. What questions do you have for me? The natural next step might be to say, how many hours do we work here, right? Now you're coming across as a needy person trying to understand, it makes you, it's hard for me to say this, but if you keep asking questions, you come across as an inferior.

Versus saying, now tell me about the hours at work here. Talk a little bit about what's expected from us in our off hours. Talk a little bit about how we connect to each other in the company instead of, so how do we connect to each other? So what you're doing, and this is one example, is directing the person.

Directing gives them the confidence that you can lead them, that you could lead them through the conversation and also that you can lead at the job. And so that's a good example of me saying, shouldn't be a question. Sometimes you just need to make a statement, take control. In my book, "Stop Asking Questions," I gave the example of how Olivia and my wife and my family went on these tours of national parks.

And if we would ever have a tour guide who would walk around and go, do you wanna turn right or left? What do you like to see? Do you like to see this track or that? And it's too much. You're the expert. Say, and now we're gonna turn left because when we turn left, you're gonna see what the bears have done here.

And if we turn right after that, you're gonna see what's happened because we haven't had enough water here in California. Boom, now you got somebody who knows you, who you feel confident that they could lead you. That's the way you need to be as an interviewer, as a conversationalist.

And yes, like you said, somebody is about to get a job and they're being asked, do you have any questions for me? You don't have to specifically give a question. Start directing them. - So if you're not asking as many questions, talk about how someone should prepare for kind of conversations when they have advanced notice of who they're talking about in the topic.

- The best thing is to go deep. This is gonna be a little bit woo. Go deep in your heart and say, what the hell do I need to get out of this person? What do I need to get out of this conversation? Not, what does some imaginary audience member need to know and I need to get?

We don't need that imaginary audience member anymore. It's, I have a problem. What do I want to understand from this person that I can't get from anywhere else? Go deep and say, ah, that's the thing that I need. That's the thing that I need. And if it's for your audience, the only way I think to get to your audience is to have a drink with your audience members or a meal or dinner with a few of them.

One at a time, ideally. In small groups, if you can, do one at a time and as often as you can and then have them tell you their problems. Let them find ways to get it out. Have them tell you their problems and specifically the ones you can't answer.

Feel that pain of having somebody come to you as the expert interviewer or as the expert business person, as the expert whatever. And they're asking you a question you don't have the answer. And then you say, be humble. I don't know. I'm gonna do interviews and now I'm gonna find out.

And now when you ask that question of somebody else, you're gonna have a deep need to get the answer because you couldn't answer it. Because somebody you cared about who you had a meal with or a drink with asked you a question that you can't answer. That's where it comes from.

And so the first thing to do is not to do research. And I believe in doing research and I know you do too. The first thing to do is not to write out a list of questions and a lot of interviewers do that. We don't wanna do that. The first thing is to say, what do I need?

- I just thought of an idea of what you just said, which is, let's say I'm using this job interview example, but start asking, talking to your friend, talking to your spouse, talking to your family members about this job you're getting and see which questions that they have for you about the company that you can't answer and you wish you knew as a way to kind of generate ideas of what could be interesting.