Questions vs. Answers

First off, welcome to the two new "Roomies" over the past week, excited to have you along for the ride! Thanks for the great feedback over the past week on last week's email and posts. I really appreciate hearing from each of you and hope you'll continue to let me know what you're thinking about and how our discussion this month on curiosity is landing with you and your own experiences.

Today is the first day of my birthday month, my 40th birthday month. I am a little behind on my #40for40 blog post challenge, but hoping to still finish on time. I'll be honest, one of the posts took me four days and a full therapy session to really understand the lesson that I'd learned and how it still impacts parts of my life. Being curious about what lessons I've learned over the past 40 years has been great as a reminder of how far I've come by a challenge when I look to see how far I still have to go.

But today, on February 1st, I am writing to you from Neckar Island, a place that young Andy has dreamt about for decades. I am writing to you from the view you see in the photo above. It is truly unlike any place I've ever been in the entire world and has already exceeded all expectations that my over-active imagination could have come up with.

I am writing to you after having had lunch seated across the table from Sir Richard Branson. We are very fortunate that he has joined us for every meal so far on this trip and today, he picked the seat at the long table across from me. He is as incredible as you've heard, but there was one thing that I observed today up close that I hadn't known before: he is the most curious person at the table.

He asks very specific questions of each person seated near him and always has a follow-up question to take their answer a little deeper. Most of the people that were at the table were very happy to just keep answering his questions and he seemed contented to keep the information flow moving in that direction for the duration of the meal. But I had a hunch: he would respect great question as much, if not more, than great answers.

And it turned out to be true.

I dropped into "Coach Andy" mode and did my best to ask powerful questions that were opened ended but pointed enough to signal I had understood the situation or the previous part of the conversation. He and I ended up having a really interesting conversation for about half an hour and at the end of the conversation he said, "It is clear that you read quite a bit, at dinner tonight, will you bring me your list of the top 5 books you've read in the past year?"

I think it worked.

So thank you to you all for getting me thinking about curiosity, contributing to the questions that inspire curiosity, and getting me thinking about the best books I've read recently as I prepared for these weekly dispatches.