The Charming Art of Asking Stupid Questions
Have you ever smiled at someone just to avoid asking for the third time what they were saying?
Well, I have not (at least in the last 24 hours).
This IMHO is the ideal situation for body language sleuthin’. Not that you want to smile at them at all times, but rather you should perform the both beautiful and lost art of... redundancy.
And it has everything to do with asking for the upteenth time if the chicken is being defrosted or not.
But let’s move away from the kitchen and into a cold, marble lobby.
The Anatomy of an Idiot
Making his way through what looks like hundreds of people, a random guy comes in. He briefly stops, spots a security guard who looks like a man who has seen too many Mondays and not enough Sundays, and walks in his direction.
“Good morning.” Are all these people here for the talk?
“Mornin’.” The guard spoke in the tone of a soul clocked out hours ago. He turned and glanced at the darkened empty spaces that filled the place. There was only one classroom with the lights on, and it was the one destined for the talk. Is this guy serious?, the guard thought to himself. Then turned back at the man.
“Yessir, that’s the one.”
“Nice. Do those doors over there… do they lead to the inside of that room?”
The guard literally exhaled all his lost dreams.
“Uh, Yeah... doors generally lead to entrances. This is generally how doors work, sir.”
“Brilliant. And tell me, once I finish giving the talk, where am I supposed to go?”
The guard froze. The realization hit him like 2001’s Monolith.
“Oh, Are you... the speaker!?”
“Yes. Speakers are generally the ones that give the talks. This is generally how we speakers work, sir.”
There was a time in which people used to attend physical classrooms to be part of conferences and all that. Yes, I am old. None of this zooming in a Zoom meeting (no pun intended) to make out what is written in the top corner of a whiteboard.
That day, it was not a classroom but a hall, packed with around 300 people.
Anyway, this guy rushes in, sets up his laptop and gives the lecture of his life. Little more than half an hour. But he was not the only one addressing the room that night. He was like the roast beef in a sandwich of speakers.
And I say ‘roast beef’ because well, that guy was yours truly, and I made sure to make an impression. If I remember correctly, the speech was about persuasion and marketing. The good ol’ days when social media was not a battleground!
So what was the point of bombarding that poor security guard with stupid questions?
Could I have any control over 300 strangers sitting in a room I had never seen? Negative. Could I have prepared beforehand for those circumstances? Also negative. There was no carousel of photos to see how the place would be.
So I did the only thing I could. I asked. And asked. And asked again.
Not because I cared about the answers. I cared about what the answers REVEALED. The guard’s body language when he pointed to the doors told me more about the layout than any floor plan. His reaction when I asked about the audience told me what energy to expect. His face when he realized I was the speaker told me everything I needed to know about how the crowd would receive me.
Stupid questions are not stupid. They build up momentum. When you ask someone something obvious, they lower their guard completely. And THAT is when you read them.
This was not a simple task for an introvert like me.
Maybe you are familiar with this. You are watching those distant nights sleeping under the same roof and in the same bed. Wanting to ask the one question that matters but holding back because the silence that follows might confirm what you already suspect.
Asking the obvious is the only way to verify if the floor beneath you is solid or if you are just walking on a memory of what used to be there.
Don’t be afraid to be the “idiot” in the lobby. Playing dumb has massive perks.
Sometimes, asking if the chicken is being defrosted is the only thing standing between you and a very uncomfortable dinner.
Much Love and Bliss,
Jesús.
The Body Language Guy