"Boomerasking" and How it Can Ruin Your Conversations

🪃"Boomerasking" 🪃 - I saw this used recently and it's becoming one of my favorite terms of 2025! But what is it?

Ever had someone ask you a question, only to hijack the conversation after you respond?

🤨 What'd you do this weekend? Oh, that's nice, I had the most amazing weekend ever, let me tell you all about it.

🤨 How'd your son's recital go? That's great...my daughter's soccer team won the league championship, and she scored the winning goal, and got MVP! I gotta tell you the story.

Were they really curious about you, or did they just want a polite way to talk about themselves? That’s "boomerasking", and it's one of the best ways to demonstrate lack of emotional intelligence, ruin a conversation, and if you do it often enough, potentially a relationship. 🤦‍♂️

How do you avoid boomerasking? 🔥 Be interestED, not interestING. 🔥

💡 Ask follow-up questions and show genuine curiosity about their perspective.

💡 Use active listening skills to demonstrate you truly hear them.

💡 Resist the urge to talk about yourself, no matter how tempting it is.

That last one is important! We often try to demonstrate empathy by telling a story about a similar experience we've had. While our hearts are in the right place, in reality, it just shows the other person we want to talk about ourselves. 🤦‍♂️

Instead, try:

💡 Continuing to be genuinely curious (e.g., then what happened; what did that feel like).

💡 Using emotion statements to further the discussion (e.g., that must've been stressful; I can imagine how excited you were). If you're right, they'll feel heard. If you're wrong, it'll invite them to talk more about it.

🤔 How do you work on being a better listener and fostering more meaningful conversations?

#emotionalintelligence