For the first episode of my podcast, I had a Moleskine full of questions for my guest.
I recorded the first episode with Markéta Hniličková. I researched her topic in detail and everything she shares, and went through her life story in our preparatory conversation. I spent long winter evenings preparing.
Then came D-Day - the recording. I was as nervous as a schoolgirl on her first day before walking into primary school. I pressed the record button and suddenly something inside me switched.
Within a few minutes of our conversation, it clicked: my preparation mattered for my own sense of safety, but it must not kill the humanity, the naturalness and the flow we create together. The good stuff grows in a conversation between two people.
Since then, I keep my preparation lighter. A few milestone boulders, as I like to call them (the key topics I want to explore with my guest), and a handful of questions I don't want to forget.
My own podcast, Na vlnách změny, is teaching me how to talk with people.
A friend of mine recently told me on a walk: "Wow, I feel like I'm on your podcast right now. Haha."
Because a conversation, whether on a podcast, on a walk or at a networking event, rests on curiosity about the person. On the eagerness to know why, at an imaginary crossroads of life, they took the street everyone told them not to take. Or what the silence before the leap into something new felt like for them.
It's a lovely thing when someone lets you peek for a moment through the window into the home of their life. It nudges us to look at our own lives differently and to open up the boxes in our heads.
For me, what makes a good conversation in the end are the questions that never crossed your mind while preparing, and that open doors you never even thought of.
And then, to my surprise, the podcast opened up ways for me to talk with people better, anytime and anywhere:
- Sometimes a person can capture the essence of their story as clearly as Frida Kahlo did when she painted her self-portraits.
- Sometimes a person circles around something, searching for how to name it. I help give their story a frame.
- And sometimes I cut in. This took me a long time to learn: to catch the moment and step in. So that it's not a monologue, but a dialogue.
And when guests ask me whether they'll get the questions in advance?
No. Because the best things are born from natural, spontaneous answers, not from a prepared list.
This is how I learn, and in half a year I'll be a bit further along again. In a way, it's an art, leading a conversation with people. So I'm sharing a piece of my art.