What We're Reading Now

Listen, Ask Questions, and Listen Some More

17 March 2026

Barbara read David Brooks’ new book, How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen, and appreciated affirmation that her practice of asking questions is the pathway to deeper connections.

Tags: barbara read, coaching, communication, empathy, listening

David Brooks is a PBS NewsHour contributor, and earlier this year retired after 22 years as an opinion columnist for The New York Times. He describes himself as someone who changed from being a person who didn’t even know he had feelings to one who allowed himself to feel deeply. He explains his journey with fabulous examples and humor that I think will help people learn to experience their own feelings more fully and give them inspiration to ask bigger, better questions.

His junior year in high school he wanted to date a woman. Brooks said, "After doing some intel, I discovered she wanted to go out with another guy. I was shocked. I remember telling myself, 'What is she thinking? I write way better than that guy!' It’s quite possible I had a somewhat constrained view of how social life worked for most people."

Brooks grew up in an intellectual family that was loving but reserved and did not express feelings. He came to realize you can only know a person if you know what they feel as well as what they think. To learn to recognize feelings in others, he first had to recognize them in himself. It was not an easy process. He read books, he interviewed people, he searched for feelings in others and himself even when it made him uncomfortable, and most of all he tried harder to listen more.

As he set about to make changes he said, "I had these novel experiences: 'What are these tinglings in my chest? Oh, they’re feelings!' One day, I’m dancing at a concert: 'Feelings are great!' Another day, I’m sad that my wife is away on a trip: 'Feelings suck!'"

Even so, he continued to learn how to recognize his feelings and gave many examples of questions to ask people to learn how they feel. They do not call for simple yes or no answers. They are big questions, but he said if you ask with a gentle face and no judgment, people will answer. Some examples: "What would you do if you weren’t afraid? If you died tonight, what would you regret not doing? Can you be yourself where you are and still fit in?"

Among the numerous questions he listed, he also included some easier ones that address the positive side of life: "What’s working really well in your life? What are you most self-confident about? What has become clearer to you as you have aged?" If you read some of our favorite books and articles on coaching, you’ll discover these are the kinds of questions professional coaches ask, too.

I also included several sets of self-discovery questions in my book, Turn Your Face: How to Be Heard and Get What You Want Most of the Time. I used them when I was coaching physicians. They helped the physicians to get to know themselves and helped me to get to know the physicians.

In Chapter Three of my book, I list 10 Now Moment questions from my 1982 Master’s Thesis, The Chosen Self Dances in a Writing Class. Our coaches at Allison Partners use these questions when they begin working with a new client.

In addition to asking powerful questions, Brooks also explains that getting to know someone requires a conversation where you truly listen. You sit up, turn your face toward the person, put down or get away from all screens, ask questions that show you’ve heard what they have said so far, and  encourage them to continue their story. The best listening is in-person, but it can be done on the phone or on video if you are truly paying attention as though the other person was in the room with you.

Brooks said, "Over the course of my career as a journalist I...have found that if you respectfully ask people about themselves, they will answer with a candor that takes your breath away. Studs Terkel was a journalist who collected oral histories over his long career in Chicago. He’d ask people big questions and then sit back and let their answers unfold. 'Listen, listen, listen, listen, and if you do, people will talk,' he once observed. 'They always talk. Why? Because no one has ever listened to them before in all their lives. Perhaps they’ve not ever even listened to themselves.'"

The stories I’ve shared so far are my favorites from Part 1 of his book and serve as instruction for how to implement his lessons. But I was even more moved by the stories in Part 2 where Brooks explains that the things he recommends work in normal times, but we are not living in normal times.

He wrote, "Our failure to treat each other well in the small encounters of everyday life metastasized and I believe, led to the horrific social breakdown we see all around us. This is a massive civilizational failure. We need to rediscover ways to teach moral and social skills. This crisis helped motivate me to write this book."

People are lonely and less connected. Loneliness leads to meanness and anger. "Angry people are always in search of others they can be angry at….A person who is perpetually angry….misperceives what the other person said so he can have a pretext to go on the vicious attack."

However, he reiterates that all emotions can be useful. "Unless they are out of control, emotions are supple mental faculties that help you steer through life. Emotions assign value to things. They tell you want you want and don’t want."

Brooks shares so many examples of how to learn how to become more empathetic, kind, and capable of understanding your own and others’ emotions. He recommneded reading "...biographies or complex, character driven novels and plays like Beloved or Macbeth." Search out friends, get them to tell you their stories with positive and negative emotions. Be with them when they are suffering in the way that they need, not the way you would need.

Throughout the book he gives reports on his own personal progress of getting in touch with feelings and seeing them in others. He modeled what he was teaching by telling stories about how he improved, but also how he could backslide. He said, "I go into a dinner party determined to listen deeply, but then I have a glass of wine and start telling stories about myself." His honesty about how he stumbled made it easier for me to forgive myself for past listening mistakes.

Sometimes I worry that my questions might invade someone’s privacy or take us into a difficult topic I’m not ready to talk about. But Brooks reminded me that the risk of asking too many questions is worth taking and as long as I watch to see if the questions are being well received, everything will probably be okay.

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