Episode 379 - Dr. J.R. Briggs, "The Art of Asking Better Questions"

Welcome to another episode of Restoring the Soul with Michael John Cusick. In today’s conversation, Michael is joined by Dr. J.R. Briggs, author of the book The Art of Asking Better Questions: Pursuing Stronger Relationships, Healthier Leadership and Deeper Faith. Together, they explore why the questions we ask—of God, ourselves, and each other—are so central to personal transformation, deep connection, and spiritual growth.

Drawing from years of research, lived experience, and insights from both ancient and modern sources, J.R. Briggs unpacks how better questions (not just more of them) shape the quality of our lives and relationships. They dig into why vulnerability, humility, curiosity, and wisdom are essentials for good questions, and how great question-askers build trust, intimacy, and growth.

The conversation is rich with practical tips, stories, and wisdom on becoming people who don’t just demand answers, but who pursue lives oriented around questions of substance and consequence. Whether you’re a leader, friend, partner, or simply someone seeking deeper relationships and faith, you’ll walk away inspired to ask, listen, and connect in new ways.

Transcript

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Hi, everybody. Welcome to the Restoring the Soul podcast. It's Michael, and today I am speaking with Dr. J.R. briggs. Hi, J.R. hi, Michael. Good to see you. And thanks for having me on the podcast. You're welcome. We were talking a little bit about this before we started, but we were both recently teachers at the Apprentice gathering, and though we knew of each other's time there, we never got to meet. So better late than never and better on video than not at all. But I've been a fan of your work and your influence. Today we're talking about your relatively brand new book, if that's not a contradiction, the Art of Asking Better Questions. I love the subtitle. Pursuing Stronger Relationships, Healthier Leadership and Deeper Faith. So the title itself is intriguing, the Art of Asking Better Questions. But you didn't write this book just so that people would have more information, really, for transformation and to help people encounter other people's hearts at the deepest level. And there's so much depth to the book as well as a lot of the practicality. So, first of all, as a writer, thank you for writing this book. I know that writing is a labor, and it's also the culmination of years and years of your study, so thank you. Oh, thanks. And Michael, you know that as well as I do, it's easy to say you want to write a book, but to actually do it is a lot of work. And it's not by yourself. There's a whole team of people around us, both professional and relational. And yeah, it was a Joy. But, yeah, 10 years of work going into this book. Let me open with a statement that you wrote in the book. You said, and I quote, I have a bone deep conviction that all of us need to ask more questions and better questions. So unpack some of the history. How did you get to that point to write that sentence in this book? It took me years to come to this. But this statement is why I stand by the importance of questions. That the quality of your life is determined by the quality of the questions that we ask God, ourselves, and others. And every relationship, every deep relationship we have in life is because there have been some sort of question that. Questions that have created connection and trust and vulnerability. Because as you know, Michael, in your field as well as I do, vulnerability has to precede growth. You know, it's only when we're vulnerable that we grow. And questions are a vulnerable act. They can be. And when we ask questions, we're admitting we don't know. We're also inviting people to join us in A conversation and to connect in, in our stories. And so that bone deep conviction, it was modeled, well, in my home by my parents, especially my father. But I just began to notice those that lived noble lives, those that were inspiring, those who are hopeful, those that I've just found myself drawn to and wanted to spend my time with, they were people who asked great questions. And I also noticed those people who were small, those were. They lived uninspiring, self centered lives. I noticed they didn't ask very many questions. And I began to notice there's a pattern here and maybe I need to pay attention to this, that the people that I admire and want to be like, those are the ones that are asking questions of substance and of consequence. And it led me on this journey then to study the questions found in Scripture. A whole bunch in the Old Testament by God and a whole bunch in the New Testament by Jesus. And I thought, ooh, we study his miracles, we study his parables, we study his healings, we study his teachings, we don't study his questions. But if we're to be followers of Jesus, maybe we can learn to ask questions like Jesus. Because so many of the transforming stories that we see in Scripture were preceded by a question that he asked. I love that. And you've made no small claim by what you just said that you know, the quality of your life is going to be determined by those questions. Have you heard of a book called Holy Curiosity by Wyn Collier? He's a, he's a friend. Win's a friend of mine. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he's a brilliant, brilliant writer. And I don't know if it was Holy Curiosity or another of his earlier books, but one of my endorsements was that Wynn writes, you know, at the level of Frederick Buechner, and he was embarrassed by that. But those, those early books kind of went under the radar until he started to become more popular. And then of course, he wrote Eugene Peterson's biography, what My Bones know or no, not what my bones Know. Something about the bones. Fire in my bones. Yeah. Yes. Fire in my bones. Thank you. But I bring up Win's book because I've, I've tried to read about quote, questions, and there's not a lot out there that's not in the academic. And you did a brilliant job of bringing together some of the research and some of the deep thinking about questions and theological implications with some real practicality as well. So first off, just a little bit of fun, what is your favorite quote, whether it's in the book or not? About questions. Because my favorite part of reading your book and any book is I go through and I look for those epigraphic quotes at the top of the chapter and I determine the quality of a book based on the quality of the quotes. You know what, Michael, I'm so glad to hear this because no one else I've talked to has ever said that. And to me, oftentimes my favorite part of the book is the beginning of each chapter where they've got two or three quotes. So I feel seen right now. Thank you for saying that. Right, yeah. And I think for me, the quote that I keep going back to is Peter Drucker, the organizational late organization guru in leadership. And one of the things he said is, you know, he said, the leader of the past will be the one who knew how to tell, but the leader of the future will be the one who knows how to ask. And that to me really sums it up. Well, whether we're capital L leader leading an organization or a church or a business, but also lowercase L, we're all lowercase L leaders in, you know, leading our family or leading a small group or leading ourselves. And so that to me, and what's ironic in that Michael is he said that decades ago, and I think it was pretty prescient of him. I think it's more relevant today than even when he said it. If we want information, we can Google it, but if we want connection, we're going to have to have questions with God, ourselves, and others. So the Peter Drucker quote is my favorite in the book. That's awesome. I have two. Can I share them? Sure, I'd love to hear them. And I'm curious if you've ever heard of these. One is an old one from a Michael Card album years ago called this Present Reality. And I have kind of a photographic memory for quotes and things, but I can never find my car keys. The whole lyric was, could it be you make your presence known most often through your absence? Could it be that questions tell us more than the answers ever do? I love that one. And then Ron Austin, who is, I believe, a non believer Hollywood film producer, was interviewed by Christianity Today back in the late 90s about the arts, when Christians were just starting to look at the intersection between arts. And I have this written down somewhere at home. He said, the problem with Christians is that they have the answer, but they don't live the questions. Which reminds me of the rope quote that you put at the end of the book about living the question. But there again, I think the beauty of what you've written about is that this is an art and you can learn how to do this. But the kinds of questions we ask and the importance of the question will be directly correlated to the depth of the answer and to what degree we internalize those answers. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. It isn't just asking and pumping out more and more questions. It can be more frequent in our question asking, but it's got to be about qualitative. It's got to be about depth, which is why wisdom is so important in asking questions. Yes, and I want to get to that, too. These things that are essentials to asking great questions. But first, what's the difference between. Between asking questions and questioning? Yeah, I made a point of that toward the beginning of the book because I think oftentimes when we hear questions, we often think, especially in a faith situation. Is this a book about deconstruction? Is this a book about faith? Sorry, about doubt. And it certainly is not. There are other books about that. But this is actually when we are asking other people questions, and, you know, there's a place for that of, you know, helping us think through our faith by, you know, questions. But this is not that kind of book. In fact, I knew I had to put that in the book because when people heard I was writing a book about questions, they're like, oh, questioning your faith? And I was like, nope. If anything, I want people to learn to have a posture and the skills to ask better questions to deepen their faith, not to question their faith in general. And so that's an important distinction that we need to make, because question asking can lead to doubting our faith in some ways that are unhelpful. And so I think learning the right posture and passion, as well as the skills can help us deepen our faith rather than erode it. And my observation is that for especially younger generations, that question questioning has become an end in and of itself. That, you know, the goal is to question everything. I remember years ago, when I was in college, question authority was the popular bumper sticker. And it's not an end in and of itself. It's a means to a greater end. Yes, yes, agreed. In fact, you talk about question everything. I saw there was a poster in a college that I was speaking at, and a big poster said, question everything. And then somebody had taken a pen and written underneath why. And I always have thought that was funny. And. And so, yeah, if. And we could get into, you know, sort of postmodern deconstruction but it's good to ask questions. But the goal, we have to be careful it doesn't lead us towards cynicism or arrogance. And that's question asking is so powerful that we have to see it like you would see sex or electricity or water. Is it good or bad? It depends how it's used. You can burn down a whole house or you can warm your house with the fire in the fireplace and light a candle. Wonderful. And so we've got to be careful with questions because they're so powerful. In fact, the first question in the Bible was not asked by God. It was asked by the serpent. And I believe the serpent knew how powerful questions were and it led to the fall of humanity. So we need to be very, very careful with the motive behind our questions as well. Yeah, you used a number of different metaphors, but this idea that a question really opens a person up and when we do that, there's something very sacred about that and not to be taken lightly. So I love the phrase that you have about a question oriented life and you describe four levels to that. So first, can you unpack what a question oriented life is and then say a little bit about each of those four levels? Yes. We're wired to live in an answer oriented culture. Right. I mean, we're, we go to school, we're judged not by the quality of our questions, but the quality of our answers. And so I think it was Neil Postman that said children, they enter as question marks and graduate as exclamation points and periods. And I think that's a pretty good line. And I would love to see more tests and more. It'd be hard to measure the aptitude on some of these tests, but at least an effort by educational systems to say, can we actually evaluate a student's performance based on the quality of the questions they ask, not just regurgitating answers on the test? And so that to me is really important that we, that we think about that. But there are, I do sense that there are four levels at sort of tripped into this when it came to my research on the, on questions, there are technically five levels. And the bottom level, the level zero or the basement level is bad questions. You know, who do you think you are? What's wrong with you? And Michael, you probably see people in your practice who years ago had a loved one who asked them a really hurtful question that they just haven't been able to let go of and it's remained stuck in the shrapnels deeply embedded in their soul. But as far as good questions, there are four levels of good questions that we see. And so level one is often questions for simple interaction. You know, just simple facts. How are you? What's Your name? Level 2 are questions for interaction. Those are thoughts and emotions that we might have. You know, when did you become interested in running? Is that something you've been interested in your whole life? Is that a new Hobby? And Level 3 are questions for understanding where we. That's where we're getting to people's feelings and desires, hopes and dreams. But level four, which Michael, you and I see with the leaders we work with, are what I call questions for transformation. These are really vulnerable and intimate questions that we have with people and of, you know, when do you feel fully seen? What are you afraid to tell me? What do you truly long for? And so not every question is created equal. And so those four levels are really important. But it does require for us to ask good questions. A lot of curiosity, wisdom. We need to have humility and courage, because when we ask a question, we're basically admitting, I don't know. And in our culture, when we admit we don't know, that takes a lot of courage on our part to admit that. One of my core values, and listeners will be probably tired of hearing me say this on this podcast, I have a core value of vulnerability, and I try to, in every conversation, have some vulnerability. And I actually learned that from Andy Crouch, who every time he speaks and does his combination of speaking and wisdom and brilliance, he will sing or do music or something. And he said, every single time, I want to take a risk, and it's in that space of risk. So my vulnerability is a kind of confession. And that is, as I read those four ingredients that you just touched on the four essentials to asking great questions, I came across curiosity, wisdom, courage, and then, oh, humility. And, you know, we're both pretty educated guys. We've been to graduate school. We both taught in graduate school. But you wrote with humility, being comfortable with your ignorance, and I'm not comfortable with my ignorance. And, like, that's something I had to stop and go. And yet I want to be comfortable with my ignorance because I'm comfortable with my brokenness and my story of failure and redemption and trauma and all that. So why wouldn't I be comfortable with my ignorance? And it occurred to me that there's a kind of intellectual pride that I have, you know, that I always either have to be right. So in reading the book, just as a compliment to you, that it wasn't just informative, but the book itself has been transformational for me to press into. What is it that I'm uncomfortable with? My own ignorance, especially in certain settings. Right. So if you and I were talking and you started quoting a theologian, I'd probably pretend that I knew that theologian. Or if somebody says, hey, have you heard of this new hip hop star? And internally, I'm like, no, but I might be inclined to go, yeah, I've heard of them. Why? And it comes back to that idea that questions are about connection. If I say no, I might not have as much connection. Having said that, will you just comment on why humility is important and this idea of being comfortable with our own ignorance? Well, Michael, first of all, I want to say thanks for your vulnerability, and I appreciate that with me and with your listeners. And I think that's why so many people connect with you, because you're willing to be vulnerable in spaces like that. And so many people with Andy Crouch as well. But the humility piece is, before I try to open my mouth to ask a question, I try to ask myself, JR what is your motive? Because we know we can try to ask a question to sound brilliant or funny, or we can try to mask something. Sometimes people stall so they don't have to answer. They ask a question, well, I don't know, what do you think about that? And so even just if I can say, what is my motive? Am I trying to trap somebody or am I trying to draw something out of them? Am I trying to highlight myself or am I trying to highlight them and value and honor them? And so that humility piece, in addition to, like I mentioned, with courage of admitting you don't know. But it takes humility to also ask a question and say, I don't know. And the trap of expertise is one of the main obstacles or barriers that keeps us from asking questions. The more of an expert we are in a particular field or subject, the less inclined we are to ask questions. I love the story of Peter Drucker. Back to Drucker again, when people said, what is your job? He said, my job is to ask dumb questions. And people laughed and he said, no, I'm serious. My job is to ask the question that we all think we know the answer to, but instead, by the time you ask, you go, huh? I thought it was obvious, but maybe it's not. And I just really appreciated the way he was confident enough in his own identity that he didn't need to be seen as the brilliant guy. In fact, what his superpower Was, was actually asking the dumb questions and not worrying about the consequences of looking dumb. It led to some great things. So humility is a huge part of that. I mean, here's God who knows everything and yet God still asks questions. I think that's an immense expression of God's humility. And how about Jesus the way, the truth and the life. If anybody had the right to just give answers that ended with periods and exclamation points, it would be the savior of the world. And yet Jesus humbled himself to ask questions like can I have something to drink? To a woman that shouldn't be talked to in that culture. In that particular context, he lowers himself to a place of humility. And I'm just amazed if we can see Jesus's humility through his questions. It will take us to another level of gratitude and wonder of who Jesus is. Yeah, I think of at least two different times in the Gospels where he says to blind BARTIMAUSEUS In Mark 10, I think, and then in John 1, what do you want? Right. And for the God of the universe who should be like, presumably we should be asking God, what do you want? But he stops and considers and attends to their heart. And in that it's not about the answer, it's about the revelation of the person and the connection. Will you tell the story? Because I thought this was beautiful and I just delighted in the story of Tarek the shuttle driver at the airport and the way that questions played out there. Yeah. So I live here in the Philadelphia area and I do quite a bit of traveling for my, my work. And so I park at the same shuttle spot, the parking spot, and I park there and it's about an eight minute drive from the people mover shuttle from my parking spot to the, the door of the Philadelphia International Airport. And on that, you know, you kind of see the common people that are there and, and sometimes when it's full, there's an extra seat right next to the driver in the passenger seat. And I happen to be sitting up there and, and I had had Tarek, who's from the Middle east, and Tarek was there, a very wonderful man, middle aged man, and a very thick Middle Eastern accent. And I just began to just make small talk with him, what I thought was small talk and just tell me about, you know, your life and do you have a family? And, and he said, yeah, I have two sons. And, and I said, you've been driving here for a while? And he said, yeah, I've been driving for years and years. And, and he Said I was able to put my sons through Temple University because of driving here. And he just started. His voice started to crack. And I said, well, you must be really proud. And in a very thick. I mean, I get choked up even thinking about it. In a very thick Middle Eastern accent and very broken English, he said, yes, one of proudest moments of my life. And he just started crying. And I just thought, wow, as I got off the bus and I tipped him, grabbed my bag, and I thought, how did that happen in eight minutes that he and I shared this tearful moment together, just driving to the airport when most people are quiet, just scrolling on their phone in their seat. And I thought it just started with me just trying to be a little bit intentional, a little bit more intentional than normal with what I often call the invisibles that exist, especially at places like the airport. You know, the shuttle drivers, those that clean the bathrooms, those that take the trash out, those that are kiosk workers. They're often invisible. And I just try to make it a point to just value them, get to know them, ask them a few questions about their lives. And it was just such a gift. Here I was trying to just get to know Tarek a little bit and honor him, but I felt so honored by that story, and I walked away and went, man, the sacrifice, the love for his family. They get up in the middle of the night to collect all these tips and to see his sons graduate from college. First in his family, first in their family. I was so moved by that. So it's amazing what questions can open up if we just are willing to be a little bit intentional about them. Yeah, yeah. There's something sacred about that. And a person doesn't need to go to seminary and get trained in how to exegete the Bible or lead a church. A person doesn't need to get a master's in counseling. It's just curiosity, but it does require attention. And it was just a beautiful story that in many ways, I aspire to. To be that engaged. So thank you for sharing that. And may God's blessings be upon Tarek and his family today. Yes. And about every fourth or fifth trip, I see Tarek, and we still talk about, how are your sons doing? So I kind of pick up on the conversation and continue to connect with him. So. He's such a wonderful man. That's sweet. You talk about obstacles that keep us from asking good questions. And I think there were seven or maybe eight of them, so you don't have to go through all of them. But I thought this was also not just informative, but instructive to. Oh, there's reasons these obstacles are internal, not just that I haven't learned or had it modeled. Yes, and we've talked about some of those already, you know, like the trap of expertise. But you know, the most important one is we just live in an age that's a, it's an attention seeking age. It's a self centered age. And so to ask questions is to take the attention off of ourselves and put it on someone else. Charles Durber, the sociologist, says that we, we succumb to conversational narcissism and the joke is enough about me. What do you think about me? And so because we live in this attention seeking age, it's hard to ask questions, but it's also perceived as inefficient. You know, we live in a world that, that worships at the altar of productivity and efficiency. And when we ask questions, it sometimes feels like we've slowed something down or interrupted. It can be perceived as insubordination or disrespect. It may feel awkward of what we might learn. We might be fearful of what we might learn if we ask a question. And it does take practice. I mean, anything worth doing well is worth doing poorly, as the adage says, including asking questions. So we say, I'm not very good at it. Okay, we'll just start. We can always improve just as if we're learning to play the violin or learn a sport is you, you just have to put the reps in. And, and it can be fun learning too. It does take some intentional, deliberate effort. But question asking and learning to be better question askers can be a lot of fun too. Talk about JR next level questions. And as a therapist, this was helpful to me. Right. So I was trained as a therapist in how to ask questions and how to do that in a way that is not simply for information but to open people up. And I thought this was super helpful and super simple as well. So let's start with the, let's start with if we will. The common question would be how are you? And then the next level question, sure. So if we could just be 10 or 15% more intentional and thoughtful than just what I would often call vanilla questions or lazy questions. You know, what's up? How are you? What's new, how are things? I know we mean that sometimes as like, howdy, hello, good to see you. But if we can be more intentional when we see people. So instead of how are you? Could we say, you know, so what's the most interesting thing that's happened to you today or since we last spoke? What are some of the highlights in your life, some of the headlines, or what do you have coming up in the next week you're looking forward to? Those sorts of questions lead to better answers. I like to say that, you know, one of the fundamental principles of question asking is if you ask a generic, thoughtless question, you will get a generic, thoughtless answer. But if you ask a specific, engaging and thoughtful question, you will get a specific, engaging and thoughtful answer. It's as predictable as a communist election. And so one of the things we want to do is to be able to just ask questions in a way that just, can I be 10 or 15%, a little more intentional? So you could say, how was your Christmas? Or, you know, how was your vacation? What if it was, oh, I know you went on vacation to whatever, you know, where, wherever, location. What's one snapshot where you said, man, this is one of my favorite things. Could be a meal, it could be an event, an experience. Or if someone were going to spend vacation next summer where you just got back from, where would you recommend they go? Or how did you connect with your family or your, or your kids in a special way because you went on that vacation or you had them over for the holidays, that is gonna bring about. Or another one could be, so where do you live? I think a better question can be, so what's the most interesting part about where you live? That's an entirely different question that leads to an entirely different conversation. So 10 or 15%, that's what I encourage. People just push a little bit more and, and you're going to get some more interesting conversations. So as we're talking about next level questions, JR it brings up this question that I have, and that is, do you ever find as you're talking about questions that people have said that they feel uncomfortable or that it's almost too intimate, when you ask something as simple as how was your Christmas versus what was the best part of your Christmas? And what's one snapshot? I, I have found, and maybe it's geographical, like in certain cities that it's like, ooh, that's we just met, you know, or we, that's we don't have that level of a relationship. Have you experienced that? Yes. In fact, I share a couple in the book where I, I made some mistakes where I didn't read the room. My, my motive was good. I just didn't read the situation and the context in which I was in and oops. And that's why I think the different levels are really important, because not every question is created equal. So I could ask, I mentioned level one. I could ask someone

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11, hey, what's the time? Or do you know how to get to this location? That's not a problem, but I would never ask that person. So what are some of your fears that you have? I mean, it's just like, what? Who are you? It's just creepy. And so that's where we need an incredible amount of wisdom to be able to say, is there enough trust? Is there enough context of relationship that we have here where I can actually go to that next level and take a little bit of a risk? And so it takes some emotional intelligence to be able to read people and say, ooh, are they getting uncomfortable? Or to even preface this and say, hey, this may be a little bit of a risk. You don't have to answer this if you don't want to, but I'm curious about that way it gives them an out if they say, thanks for asking, but I think I'm going to pass. Or sometimes people say, I don't know, let me think about it. And so I think if we can just have the sensitivity relationally to say, as long as my motive is right and I want to honor them, I still, you know, questions can be a form of hospitality. Of course, we get our word hospital. So we want it to be a form of connection and also healing. We don't ever want it to be wounding or awkward for others, but we still have to take risks. And even though I'm aware of this and I develop these four levels, I still don't get it right all the time. And sometimes in my eagerness and curiosity to ask good questions, I can sometimes miss the wisdom of going, you know, maybe they don't want to be asked questions right now. You want to ask it, Jer? They may not want to be asked right now. Yeah, I could really relate to what you said about conversational narcissism. I'm 61 and hopefully I'm different than I was when I was 21 and 31 1. But I remember very acutely when I was much younger having conversations where I would ask questions to try to engage and then I would have this hidden agenda of making it self referential and coming back to me. So I appreciated that you said that. And I'm wondering about the role of listening, therefore. So your book is all about questions, but questions imply that I'm going to be Listening. But we live in a culture, whether it is some kind of narcissism or brokenness or just the nature of our short attention spans. What can we do to be better listeners? It's a great question, and there is a term that I came across. Thank you, J.R. thank you for telling me. It's a great question. I wasn't good at questions until I read your book, so that's very kind of you saying that. Well, one of the things that's fascinating is in the research that I did, there's a term that is being used more and more called boomer asking. And it does not mean asking questions of boomers, but boomer asking, just like a boomerang, is where we ask a question, and maybe we've been in these situations or maybe we've been guilty of it ourselves. We ask a question, but before someone can answer it, we answer our own question. And what we're basically doing is like saying, I want to tell you something. But we try to kind of mask it by asking a question. Hey, what are you doing this weekend? Well, our families, we're doing this. And you just go, ooh. It can be very demeaning. And we think they're about to listen to us, but instead they interrupt and answer their own questions. So we want to avoid boomer asking, but there is a connection between listening and question asking. I know people who are great at asking questions and terrible at listening. I know people who are good listeners. They're not great question askers. I think we need to understand the connection between the two of them. I love that the Chinese symbol for listening incorporates the eyes, the ears, and the heart. And I think in many ways, if we can ask questions with the eyes, the ears, and the heart, amazing things can happen. And so one of the. In the practical elements in the latter half of the book that I talk about is if you ask a question, shut up and let them answer. And that can be really hard because, again, we. We. We can fall into the cultural norm of. Of conversational narcissism. And in fact, there was one research piece I came across, Michael, that was fascinating. I mentioned Charles Durber. He's the conversational narcissist idea came from him. But in the 70s, he launched something called the Attention Interaction Project. And he listened to hundreds and hundreds of conversations, and he found that there are two types of conversations that existed. There were shift responses, and there were support responses. Shift responses are what he called competitive interactions, and support responses were cooperative interactions. So he'd see people, you know, they did verbatims, you know, reading about the dialogues people had and someone would say, oh, so do you like movies? Good question. Yes, I like horror movies. Well, a shift response would say, oh, I don't like horror movies. I really like rom coms. I just shifted the attention off of the person and onto myself. That's a shift response. But a support response would say, do you like movies? Yes, I like horror movies. A support response would say, oh, wow, horror movies. Have you always been into horror movies? I'm still keeping the focus on them. And I think we've all been in conversations where people try to steer the conversation away from others and back onto themselves. And the best question askers are those that keep the spotlight firmly on the other person in front of them. And that's when we feel really honored. Reminds me of the story of Lady Randolph Churchill, which was Winston Churchill's mother. She once dined with the British politician Benjamin Disraeli. And Disraeli, on a. On a separate occasion, she also was able to have a meal with the political rival, William Gladstone. So Disraeli for a meal one time, William Gladstone for dinner another time. And she wrote in her journal later, she said, when I left the dining room after sitting with Gladstone, I thought he was the cleverest man in England. But when I sat next to Disraeli, I left feeling I was the cleverest woman. And I thought, yes, that's the difference of a shift response and a support response. If I can keep the support on other people and ask questions and be interested, then I really illuminate and highlight other people. That's beautiful. So can we expect a new J.R. briggs book coming soon called the Art of Better Listening? Well, I always try to live my books first, and I will have a lot more work in my own life to become a better listener before I think I would ever be qualified to get to that point. So who knows, Maybe down the road. But there are other better listeners more qualified than me to write that, for sure. Well, let's close with this, if you will. Will you share the story of Back Row Guy? Because that was a beautiful story. Yeah, yeah. I was leading a training down in Florida and it was in the spring. It was a beautiful time and I was leading a training on questions and really grateful everyone was there with their notebook and they were excited and telling, you know, listening and engaging and asking good questions of me during the interaction. But there was one guy in the back. I can still picture him, he was sitting in the back row. He just had one Soda in front of him, no notes, no backpack, no. No nothing. But he just kind of had that. He leaned back and had his arms crossed and did kind of the slow gum chew, kind of like, what do you got to do for me? What are you going to do for me? And he just kept looking out the window. And I imagined him thinking, you know, I'd rather be out on the golf course today than hear this guy. And I was engaging with everybody. And, you know, as a speaker, Michael, it's great when people are engaging, but you're always aware of those people that just feel checked out. And this guy just wasn't having it. It wasn't disrespectful, but it was clear I was not getting through to him. And at the end of the day, I. I happened. I just. I was so curious. I made a beeline to him and talked to him, and I said, you're not convinced of this, are you? And he kind of chuckled a little bit, like, yeah, I guess not. I didn't. I wasn't trying to embarrass him, but I just. I think it caught him off guard. And I said, why not tell me a little bit more? And he said, I'm just not convinced. I mean, questions are good, but I'm just not convinced it can be as transformative as you say they are. And I just said, here's a challenge. Let me just challenge you with this. Would you just go home and would you just try it? Just try it for, you know, a week. Just try and see what happens. And if not, you know, and he. He kind of said, all right, sure, whatever. I'll try it. You know, he was being polite, but I thought, he's not going to do it. And I grabbed my bag and walked to the car and thought, man, back row Guy. That was tough. Well, I was speaking at a conference maybe a year or so later, and Guy came up to me. He goes, remember me? And at first, walking off a stage, I'm sorry, I don't. And he said, I was. I was at that training, and you challenged me to do this. And I went, oh. I didn't tell him. I'm like, it's back row Guy. I remember this guy now, the back row guy. He. He began to tell me. He said, you know, I drove away and said, what the heck? What's the worst that can happen? I'll try it. I'll. I'll try this little social experiment, this challenge that JR Gave me. And so he started just asking questions at work, and in these Meetings that were just easily skippable and boring. He just kind of mentally check out. But he thought, well, I've got to be here anyway. I'm required to be here by my boss. What if I ask better questions? And he just started asking questions that made the conversation better and made them force themselves to make clearer decisions and on time. And then he began to ask his wife and his daughters questions at home. And then his wife just turned him one day and just said, you're different. Thank you. I feel seen and loved by your questions. And as he's telling me this, people are milling out of this big lecture hall. He's, he's tearing up and, and he just said, I'm convinced now. Questions really do matter. And it's one of my favorite stories of seeing someone so adamantly against it to then experiencing the beauty of questions in his context at, at work and with his own family. And may there be more, you know, even in our own lives. God, God, may, May you allow for more lives to be changed because of our questions. Yeah, you know, we haven't touched on this. That was a beautiful story. Thank you. We haven't touched on the parts of the book where you talk about asking questions of ourselves in relation to existential questions, spiritual questions, and some of those you suggest, you know, that we need to sit with for a long time. So I just want to say to anybody listening, I can't recommend this book enough. If you want, as the subtitle says, stronger relationships. Of course you do. Deeper relationships. Of course you do. Deeper faith, healthier leadership. This book is for you. The Art of asking better questions. J.R. briggs, it's great to meet you. Thank you for your wisdom. This has been a fun conversation and I hope that sometime in the not too distant future that our paths cross physically. It'd be great to spend time with you. Yes, thanks. This has been such an enjoyable conversation. Michael, thanks for the important work you do and for the great questions you ask so many leaders to help them move toward restoring their soul and seeing them grow and thrive as God would have them be. So it's always good to be around other question askers. Thanks for your good work as well.