David Brooks wrote Nine Nonobvious Ways to Have Deeper Conversations in a recent New York Times article.

• Ask open-ended questions (what was it like … tell me about a time …)
• Make them authors not witnesses (not what happened but what they experienced)
• Listen 100% present
• Don’t fear the pause (most of us stop listening to a comment halfway through so when a person stops talking take your time to digest what you heard and respond.

“Humans need to be heard before they will listen,” Amanda Ripley