I Know the Subject. I Never Know the Question.

Before a podcast, I usually know what we are going to talk about.

Performance.

Pressure.

Leadership.

Sport.

Control.

Adaptability.

The way we think and perform when things become demanding.

Those are familiar territories to me.

What I never know is the question.

And I think that is one of the reasons I continue to enjoy these conversations so much.

I don’t prepare answers.

I wouldn’t even know how.

Because knowing the subject is very different from knowing how another person will approach it.

One host might ask me about pressure through sport.

Another through business.

Someone else might take the same idea and ask what it means when confidence disappears, when control is impossible, or when a decision has to be made quickly.

The subject may be familiar.

The angle isn’t.

And suddenly you have to think.

Not remember something you prepared.

Think.

Right there.

I have discovered that I really enjoy that.

There is a particular moment in a conversation when someone asks a question and, for a second, I don’t immediately know how I want to answer it.

Not because I don’t know the subject.

But because I have never looked at it in quite that way before.

Those are often my favourite questions.

They force me to go beyond the sentence I already know.

To connect experiences I had never connected.

To explain something I may have understood instinctively for years but never actually put into words.

And sometimes I realise something while I am saying it.

That still fascinates me.

We tend to imagine that first we form our ideas and then we explain them.

I am not sure it always works like that.

Sometimes explaining an idea is part of discovering exactly what you think about it.

A good question doesn’t only ask for what you know.
It can show you what you haven’t articulated yet.

Maybe that is what I keep learning from podcasting.

Not a new lesson every week.

Not a collection of clever quotes.

Something much more useful.

How to look again at subjects I know very well.

How to make an instinct understandable.

How to separate what I really believe from something that simply sounds good.

And how much one question can change the depth of an answer.

There is another part I enjoy.

Two hosts can invite me to discuss almost exactly the same subject and the conversations can feel completely different.

Because questions reveal what someone finds interesting.

One person wants to know how.

Another wants to know why.

Another asks what happens when it doesn’t work.

And suddenly the same experience has several different sides.

I have spent years in environments where performance matters.

I know what pressure feels like.

I know what it means to train something until it becomes part of you.

I know what it means to make decisions while things are moving.

But knowing those things and being asked to explain them are not the same experience.

The second one keeps making me examine the first.

Perhaps that is why I still find these conversations interesting.

I know the territory.

I know the experiences I am bringing with me.

But I don’t know which door someone is going to open.

And every now and then, a question opens one I hadn’t noticed before.

I know the subject.

I never know the question.

And that is exactly what keeps the conversation interesting.

Silvia