there is a young man i visit with once a month. i met him through my former employer where he is a rising star. this ascension, by my estimation, is largely connected to a number of things: he is capable at his craft, his has a very likable nature, a unique upbringing, an obsession for improvement, and possibly most of all, he has a wildly energetic and engaging way of communicating. if you picked at it a bit you'd find he and i share some common roots and interests--namely, we both work in technology and we both want a better tomorrow for ourselves--which likely explains why we get on as well as we do.

given my twenty-year head start on john, when he began getting promoted he reached out to me to talk about some of his new responsibilities and challenges. liking him as i do, i happily agreed. this is how our monthly visits came to be.

he usually arrives with a question or two written in his notebook. they are mostly typical enough: reducing communication issues. helping under-performing projects. vision-setting for a group, project or self. dealing with new superiors. shouldering changing expectations, and so on.

through our talks on these various matters, we found one subject kept resurfacing--the import and power of questions, that is, asking the right question of others and of yourself. noticing this was aided by the latest tim ferris book/tome which is nothing but him, tim, asking the same nine (or so) questions to a ton of people. ferris confessed to spending a lot of time crafting those questions and even discussed some of the fine-tuning he went through in attempt to get more return from them.

on a recent visit with john, i asked him how things were going, and we were off, as always, into our easy conversational current. during the update, he shared a story with me. he said that there was an executive in his office who had just been promoted. she was a respected colleague who lots of folks looked up to. as he passed her office, he noticed that she had set several stacks of books outside her door with a note above them that said FREE BOOKS. john stopped and studied the titles. there were many in there that he had already read and some that he had hopes of reading.

as he told me this story, my mind walked ahead predicting the next lines (an annoying personal habit i'm trying to correct). i expected john to say he rounded out his to-be-read collection with free books and he was excited to be able to mark their margins up with his notes and thoughts. but this was not how his story unfolded. instead, he stepped past the books and knocked on the door. the woman looked up from her packing to greet him. john looked into the mussed room and apologized for the interruption. she said it was fine but in a tone that implied she wanted to return to her work. john said ...

"It's great you're giving all these books away. There are some really great titles out there, but I was wondering if I could ask a favor and see the books you are keeping."

as he finished, he motioned towards her bookshelf and the subset of books still lining the shelves. she looked at her pruned collection, and her countenance and demeanor fully shifted. she broke from her work and invited him in. john moved across the room and began to make note of the titles. the woman's reaction to this question was like my own. struck. charmed. impressed. and possibly most importantly, remembered.

through questions like that and the spirit that fuels them, i predict john's future will see its own share of office-moves. and this moment also succinctly marks the point where i begin learning more from john than he ever can from me.