So I recently started volunteering at my church with the Youth Ministry there.  This is my first time working with this particular youth ministry.  There is something special that I want to tell you about these kids.  I'm not going to tell you any nitty-gritty details but it is in fact this: every week we play foursquare.

I'm not just talking about your momma's old fashioned foursquare where you are standing out on the street with four squares and you are bouncing a ball.  This is competitive and intense foursquare.  These guys have rules I've never even heard of!  But I intuitively know that they have to be foursquare rules just by the caliber and quality of rule that they have.

The king serves the ball by bouncing it first in his or her square and then pushing the ball in the air into another person's square.  It bounces there, and the person whose square it bounced in is now responsible for bouncing the ball back into somebody else's square without it bouncing in their own first.

I'm telling you about foursquare because I believe that foursquare and conversations have a lot in common.  Friendships and relationships develop around conversation.  It is the building blocks, the DNA, of our relationships.  Yes, we have shared experiences, but most of the time we grow through having conversations with one another.

And, just like a great volley in tennis happens when one person and the other are hitting the ball back and forth without ever missing a beat, a conversation is important to have that sort of flow too.

The reason I bring this up is because, more often than not, I find in conversations that I will ask a question and then it will not come back.  That is why I developed this technique that is the most simple kind of thing, the kind of thing that will make you scream, "that makes sense!"  It is called How About You.

If somebody asks you a question, you answer it and then you say, "how about you?"  It is something super simple that we completely forget to do.  We get so caught up in answering the question that we forget to ask the person back.  

Once we are done answering the questions that we have been given, we do not know what to do with ourselves and we often miss the opportunity to ask for the other person's input.

So, I want to talk about why it is so important that not only do we utilize How About You but that we make it routine, something that is a part of our DNA as an intentional friend.
Getting Other People Involved
Asking the question, "How about you?" invites other people into the conversation.  I was talking about how communities are these circles that we have to make our way into so that we can engage in the circle, making it new and larger and more shaped like the people in it but to be honest I suffer from social anxiety when I am outside of the circle.

When someone asks, "how about you," it is an invitation into the circle to share your own thoughts, feelings, and knowledge about what you are talking about.

When you ask somebody the question, 'how about you," you are implying that it is important, what they have to say.  And you are implying that you want to hear what it is that they have to say.

If you are like me, you do not jump in until somebody has asked you a question.  It just doesn't feel right.  It feels like you are imposing yourself on other people.  I get that there are a lot of people in this world that do not feel that way.  But just like in foursquare where hitting the ball before it bounces in your square gets you out, some people just feel that way.  They feel like they should not jump in until they have been asked.

That is one of the main reasons that it is so important that we ask the question, "How about you?"  It lets people know that they should feel free to talk.  Simply telling them to feel free does not work, but we can communicate that they should be free by asking these questions.
The Asker Wants to Answer