Huddle library → The two-question opener
Introductions · 10 minutes
The two-question opener
Skip "tell us about yourself." Ask two questions instead, and the room tells you what it is actually like to work there.
The two questions
- What's a shift you're still proud of?
- What's something you're terrible at outside of work?
Why these two
The first question gets you competence without a performance review — people describe the night that went badly and they held it together, which tells you what they think good work is. The second question gets you a person. Both answers tell you more than a résumé ever could, and neither one asks anybody to be vulnerable about work in front of their manager.
How to run it
- Answer both yourself, first, and answer the second one honestly. If you say "oh, I'm bad at golf," everyone else will give you a non-answer too.
- One round, no cross-talk, no follow-up questions until everyone has gone.
- Let people pass. Someone passing on day one and answering in week three is a normal outcome, not a failure.
Where it goes wrong
Asking it in a room where somebody's answer to question one is a shift a patient died on. If you have had a bad week on the unit, run the five-minute round instead and save this for a calmer day.