Teaching Students to be Interesting and Interested

Regular readers of this newsletter know that a staple project in the first year of entrepreneurial mindset education is the networking mixer. We invite 20-25 adults from a variety of industries onto the campus and, after adequate preparation and training, we ask our students to “network” with these adults.

We, in effect, create a sample mix and mingle (complete with coffee and bagels) so that students can truly learn how to effectively communicate in real time.

While this project absolutely terrifies our students, it is ALWAYS the project they point to as the most valuable in the first semester of entrepreneurship. As a result, we keep doing it (even though it is a bit of a lift in terms of planning and preparation).

Throughout the experience, there are five key questions we teach our students to both be prepared to ask and to answer. The key reasoning here is we want the students to be both interested in other people as well as to come across as an interesting person. The best way to do this is through asking great questions.

Here are the five questions:

1. What’s your story?
2. What makes you smile when you wake up in the morning?
3. What is the one book/movie/song that has influenced you the most?
4. What is the most exciting thing you have going on in your life right now?
5. What is the most important thing I should know about you?

This is effective not just for students but for all of us. If we are prepared with engaging answers to these kinds of questions and if we have questions like these in our toolbox, we will not only come across as interesting and interested, we will also have increased confidence in events that push us out of our comfort zone.

The future of education is bright indeed!

Check Out This Podcast Episode

In case you missed it, this episode of The Entrepreneurial Mindset Podcast is especially effective at getting to the root difference of what it means to think like an entrepreneur–when we think with an entrepreneurial mindset, we are biased for action. This means we act, we move, we do. It means planning can become its own form of procrastination and we have to stay in movement in order to reap the benefits of momentum.

GIVE IT A LISTEN HERE