Behind The Status

It’s been over two months since I have been at business school. I can say it honestly took me a few weeks to feel comfortable and fully be the ‘Funke’ everyone before business school knew me to be. Not quite sure I am fully me yet but close enough.As time went by, I definitely went through what I call the superficial phase of meeting people where I went around asking what people’s names were, what they did prior to business school and what they hoped to do after graduation. To be honest, I got pretty bored asking these same questions to near 300 other classmates. I felt I knew people’s CVs in and out and nothing about who they were, what drove them, who they were outside that piece of paper. I knew nothing about their stories, their journeys.

My parents always said I was such a people person since I was a teenager. I loved the prospect of leaving home at 14 to move to another country simply because I always embraced any opportunity to explore all things culturally different and the chance to meet and get to know people. I don’t think I have ever been homesick. For me, exploring was simply a way of life.

Back to business school. Rather than resign to continuing asking such monotonous questions, I took a step back to ‘interviewing’ my classmates. When I say interviewing, I mean asking beneath the surface questions and really taking things a little bit more personal. I remember the first time I did this was at a party. Don’t get me wrong, I love partying more than the average person but over time I have used this medium to really take a step back and get to know people on a much deeper level in between showing off my dance moves of course. I have interviewed my classmates over the casual dinner, on the walks home, and over weekend trips (I really felt for my classmate who was stuck in a 9hr car trip with me with no way of escaping…let’s just say our friendship and bond has now been carved in stone). My questions are never scripted and have always been with the intent of truly getting to KNOW people.

I have been impressed by how people opened up and gave me a perspective of who they were, a perspective I may have not known if I didn’t ask those seemingly awkward, perhaps perceivably intruding questions at that party at 2am. I have definitely received the ‘wow, you are crazy’, ‘Did you really ask me that?’, ‘Thanks for asking’ and the ‘I am glad I got to know you’. My aim is never to make people feel uncomfortable but simply to develop truer relationships.

So what is the point behind my words this morning? It’s simply to say, behind every human being, every status, every CV, there is a person, a journey, a living book which we know nothing about but whose journey we could be outstanded by if we took to courage to step outside the norm and really make an effort to see beneath the surface.

“True vision is the ability to see in another more than they are showing you.” – Neale Donald Walsch