What do you want to be when you grow up shifts into what do you do. It’s a transition with prominent stages: what do you want to be when you grow up, to where do you want to go to school, to what is your major, and ending at what do you do. At each juncture, the asker is more confident of who you are.
At the final step, what do you, the asker expects a job in response. For example, I’m a teacher, a waiter, a customer service representative. Those answers fit the box, and the asker can categorize the person as such.
In particular, it’s the American question of choice. Meet someone new, and see how long it takes to ask what someone does.
I’ve spent a lot of time answering this question. I attended networking event after event, where the purpose was to ask what others did and exchange business cards. I refined my answer from finance, to banking, to source, evaluate, and execute credit transactions for venture-backed technology and life science businesses. I worked on what I wanted to tell people and how I wanted to impress them.
But I got further away from the question I wanted to answer – who are you?
I was at a wedding the week after I left my corporate position, and soon enough, someone asked what I did. It was my first time answering the question, and I went into a – welllllll, I am working on a few things . . . Thankfully, a friend stepped in and told my story better. Lucky for me, someone asked again the following day, and I responded better after the trial run.
I was walking with someone I had met, and they asked me where I spent my time. I loved that question. It gets at what’s important to me instead of my job. And for most people, their job says little about who they are and their dreams.
I’m thinking about what questions can reveal who people are: Where do you spend your time, what are you passionate about, what makes you come alive? I care about those answers more than what your job is. And I hope they let us connect in ways – oh, you love walking and basketball too – that talking about someone’s work doesn’t.
What do you do is a safe question, and people are used to answering it. But keeping up our safety shields discourages what we should be after – building a genuine connection with someone.
So next time you meet someone new, I challenge you to break that barrier. For example, ask a different question to find out what’s important to someone, or answer the question with what you’re passionate about instead of your job title.
I still get asked what I do a lot. Right now, I’m saying I work on telling stories and building businesses. Sometimes people will say, “Oh, so you’re an entrepreneur.” And that’s fine. But often, it shakes them out of the routine conversation. And when it doesn’t, I talk about my stories and the things I’m creating. I practice my pitch for my company and my novel. And I’ve gotten fantastic feedback from strangers on both.
And that’s something about which I’m excited to talk with people.
