by Paul Quinn
If a child is emotionally shamed or physically punished for asking for what they want or need, is it any wonder they'll have trouble asking as adults? We like to think a difficult childhood is "in the past." But without therapy—or a commitment to self-healing—our...
What happens when we trust our intuition and, despite obstacles, keep pursuing what it calls us to do? In my conversation with entrepreneur Sterling Lentz we explore that question—and the one "big ask" that carried him 8,000 miles from home. Sterling is the founder...
Arriving in Denver one spring day, I wheeled my suitcase to the cabstand. The fare to my hotel, I learned, would be $70, so I opted to save $30 and take a multi-passenger van instead, the kind that stops at each passenger’s hotel. A purely frugal decision,...
There are reasonable creative projects ... and then there are the ones that grow ten times their size and cause their cowering creators to ask, "What have we wrought?!" The Big Ask audiobook began with the innocent question: “Hey - what if we turned the paperback...
When could asking personal questions come across as nosy and intrusive ... and when could it take conversations into richer territory? Nobody wants to ask questions that could upset or offend a conversational partner. But because we don't always know what those...
Photo by Timur Weber In my book, The Big Ask, I devote a chapter to the art of conversation and how questions can connect us to each other. But what if it backfires? What if your thoughtfully engaging questions ensnare you in someone’s ponderous plot summaries of...
Can taking time to ask personal questions enrich our relationships—whether with friends, neighbors, family members, romantic partners, coworkers, or strangers in passing? That's one of the questions I pose in my book, The Big Ask. But the bigger question, the...
There’s a dramatic moment in the British film Living in which Mr. Williams, a soft-spoken public works employee played by Bill Nighy, approaches his superior, Sir James, who’s refused his requests to turn a sewage-filled abandoned lot into a children’s...
Oh, the possibilities are horrible. And endless. Your attempt at humor backfires and you're marked as an insensitive jerk. Someone you love catches you in a lie that hurts them and erodes their trust in you. You accidentally text “Just between us, I think Sam is a...
When it comes to making requests, we’re most persuasive face to face. Even when asking something of someone we don't know, we’re 34 times more likely to get a yes in person than by email (phone calls are the next most persuasive). Trouble is, in the worlds of...