If you have avoided the common pitfalls of social insecurity and are becoming more tuned in to reading your social barometer, you are primed to focus on a single skill that the socially competent continually master. This single skill may be the most important thing you can do for making meaningful connections and for understanding and carrying out the principles of self-giving love. 

Its simplicity, if not studied, causes it to go unnoticed.  But once you recognize its power, you will never approach a relationship without it.  The skill?  Asking a string of quality questions.

In 1937 the grandfather of all people-skills books was published.  It was an overnight hit, eventually selling 15 million copies.  And today that book, How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, is just as useful as it was when it was first published.  Why?  Because Dale Carnegie had an understanding of human nature that will never be outdated and he knew how to ask quality questions.  The skills he teaches in this classic book are undergirded by a pervasive principle: People crave to be known and appreciated.

Quality questions are intentionally designed to open up a person’s spirit.  They aren’t throwaway questions, like, “How about those Red Sox?” or “Can you believe this weather?” though those types of questions certainly have their place.

Quality questions invite vulnerability, but are not invasive.  They are personal, but respect privacy.  They are asked out of genuine interest, but are never blunt.  A quality question conveys kindness, warmth, concern, and interest.  It is couched in affirmation and appreciation.