On Asking Good Questions

Nasos Papadopoulos runs MetaLearn, a podcast (and much more) about the business of learning.

“Asking questions is an essential skill that few of us learn to do properly,” Nasos argues (and I agree), “but it’s of vital importance in all areas of our life because asking the right question at the right time can make all the difference.”

He invited me to record this interview, in 2016, because I had spent a large portion of my career asking questions as a journalist and subsequently helped individuals and groups of people improve their communication skills.

We discuss a wide range of topics including:

– The key to asking insightful questions
– Understanding how to have better conversations
– How to think about and deal with failure



If you have looked around at this website much, you may know that I got myself admitted to psychiatric hospital at the start of 2018 – ie, about 18 months after this interview.

I was in a really bad way.

This fact seems to cast a bit of a shadow over the idea that I know how to handle failure. But hey, I’m only human.