Geeez, It's 3 a.m. let me sleep!

It never fails that your greatest ideas, thoughts, solutions or abstract visions happen right when you are at your REM (rapid eye movement) stage of sleeping. Adults have at least 6 of these cycles of REM an hour or two into their sleep.

So it's 3 a.m. and my thoughts decide to wake me and make my eyes pop open because what I think is a brilliant discovery has just occurred.

I wondered why people don't answer questions descriptively or with substance.

Why do kids always ask Why and then are frustrated when they don't like what they hear? Why do meetings go on and on and the questions asked and answers given never provide a solution to a problem or clarify much of anything? What kind of questions should I be asking?

So at 3 a.m. this is what my brain came up with. One simple thought that all goes back to soft skills and how we are made to feel when we participate.

Ask the question in a relate-able way.

Pretty simple I say!

So what do I do with this information now?

Every time you decide to engage with someone, listen to what they are saying and ask your question in such a way that everyone in hearing distance will be able to relate to the topic, will be interested in participating and adding a full on discourse on the topic, because they feel they can contribute.