Whenever we talk about recruiting automation, there is always a persistent narrative in favor of retaining the human touch in some way, shape, or form. While technology now enables us to interact in increasingly conversational ways, there’s still an irreplaceable quality in human-to-human, face-to-face dialogue that no machine or video can fully replicate.
So, how can we enhance the effectiveness of our conversations in both professional and personal settings? And could asking more powerful, thoughtful questions lead to better hiring outcomes?
My guest this week is Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Topaz Adizes, founder of experience design studio The Skin Deep. Having conducted over 1,200 filmed conversations exploring human connection, Topaz has gained profound insights into what makes questions transformative. In our discussion, he shares what his work has taught him about crafting questions that break down barriers and foster authentic dialogue—lessons that can help us all engage more meaningfully in the workplace and beyond.
In the interview, we discuss:
• Lessons learned from filming 1,200 conversations
• How conversations build relationships
•
• Avoiding power plays and making a safe space for conversation
• The importance of well-constructed questions
• Curiosity and openness in job interviews
• The power of bringing unrelated concepts together
• Connective questions
•
• Listening versus speaking
• Can AI write effective questions?
• The differences between face-to-face and virtual conversations
• What’s the future of workplace conversations?
Follow this podcast on Apple Podcasts.
Follow this podcast on Spotify
Matt Alder [00:00:00]:
Support for this podcast comes from smart recruiters. Smart Recruiters is your all in one platform for faster, smarter hiring, making recruiting easy and effortless. Smart recruiters are making some big changes, revamping their user experience, adding AI features and refreshing the ui. I know from experience that they truly are a company that really values the recruiter and the practitioner. They understand the intricacies of the recruiting business and this is always been reflected in their functionality and customer support. So it’s exciting to hear that they’re making a bunch of updates. If you’re ready to be part of the future of talent acquisition, head over to smartrecruiters.com and find out what they’re up to. Trust me, your team and your future hires will thank you.
Matt Alder [00:01:10]:
Hi there. Welcome to episode 654 of Recruiting Future with me, Matt Alder. Whenever we talk about recruiting automation, there’s always a persistent narrative in favor of retaining the human touch in some way, shape or form. While technology now enables us to interact in increasingly conversational ways, there’s still an irreplaceable quality, human to human, face to face dialogue that no machine or video can fully replicate. So how can we enhance the effectiveness of our conversations in both professional and personal settings? And could asking more powerful, thoughtful questions lead to better hiring outcomes? My guest this week is Emmy Award winning filmmaker Topaz Adizes, founder of Experience Design studio the Skin Deep. Having conducted over 1200 filmed conversations exploring human connection, Topaz has gained profound insights into what makes questions transformative. In our discussion, he shares what his work has taught him about crafting questions that break down barriers and foster authentic dialogue. Lessons that can help us all engage more meaningfully in the workplace and beyond. Hi Topaz and welcome to the podcast.
Topaz Adizes [00:02:31]:
Hey Matt, good to be here.
Matt Alder [00:02:33]:
A pleasure to have you on the show. Please could you introduce yourself and tell us what you do.
Topaz Adizes [00:02:38]:
So my name is Topaz Adizes. I’m the founder of the Skin Deep. We’re a experienced design studio and for the last 11 years we’ve with our kind of flag was it flagship experience called the and which is an Emmy award winning kind of documentary series that’s on YouTube and on the social media channels. We’ve basically been holding the space for incredible conversations between all kinds of people for the last 11 years. So my team and I have had the privilege to witness incredible conversations over 1,250 of them for the last 11 years.
Matt Alder [00:03:12]:
Give us a bit more background on that. Why did you start doing it? What was the sort of purpose, and what have you learned from it?
Topaz Adizes [00:03:20]:
I mean, I was a filmmaker for many years, and then I realized I had. Well, I had a film that went to Cannes, and I thought, oh, my God, I’m a can. What more do you want? And it was after two years of being at Sundance, and I realized nothing really happened. And I put the film on Vimeo without a password, and it got picked up by Vimeo short of the week, and in a week, I had half a million views. And so it really, you know, was a cathartic moment in the sense that really the question arose, what game am I playing? What game am I playing? Am I playing the game of putting films into theaters, or am I playing the game of injecting ideas into the mainstream? And if you want to inject ideas in the mainstream and have conversations, there’s no better way than the digital form, because we’re all using our phones now. And if that’s the case, then you have to question, what kind of media do we make, right? Because the experience of being in a theater or watching television or even the Netflix series, your option is binary. It’s either you watch it or you don’t. You change the channel or you stay on the channel. But when you create content for your phone, you have the opportunity to create things that are so much more engaging. You’re talking on your fine left and right. It’s unique, made to you. And so that. That basically led me on a path that I am now, which is really just focus on how are we all changing in lieu of the technologies that we’re using. And that’s been exploration. My team and I have been on for 11 years. We create different experiences. And as I said, kind of the flagship experience that’s most successful, the one, the Emmy, that has really been viewed by millions of people around the world, is the. And which really is about conversations and questions. And so a lot of my time now, the learning I’ve had by virtue of Simply watching over 1200 pairs in kind of a interesting, cathartic, courageous conversations, is a learning of what does it take to have conversations that deepen your relationship? And we could ask, why do you want to deepen your relationship? What’s the payoff? Great question. You know, what are the. What are the parts that involve to make it so? How do you do that? And I think in today’s world, where things are changing so fast and everyone’s talking about returning to Work, return to the office? Or is it okay to be remote? And is it, what about AI? How’s that changing fundamentally at the bottom of any business is human relationships. How are we communicating, how we communicate to each other as team members and how we communicate to our clients or our consumers or our audience. And I think that is something that we and my team have gotten really good at. How do you create the space and how do you inject that space with, you know, catalysts to create deeper connection and deeper experiences?
Matt Alder [00:06:01]:
Going to come back to AI in the workplace and everything that’s going on in a second. But I suppose to paint everyone a little bit of a picture of this because I’ve watched a few of the, I’ve watched a few of the conversations and you know, there’s some amazing stuff there in the way that people talk to each other, ask questions and those kind of things. What have you kind of learned from that in terms of how humans find out about each other or how important face to face conversations are?
Topaz Adizes [00:06:29]:
So I’ve learned a lot. I mean, I, I started this when I’m 37, I’m 38, I’m 48 now. And I feel that I have changed a lot in the way that I lead my team and the way that I communicate with my partner. I’ve learned a lot of things. One thing I’ve heard learned is the heart is made to love. What am I talking about? If you’re listening, I’m talking about the fact that I sit there, I watch people in a room facing each other, asking and answering questions that I pose to them by placing on the small coffee table that’s between them as they face each other and have an hour long conversation. It’s almost like sitting in a therapy session, except there’s no therapists, just two people in a space conversing. It’s a very privileged position. It happens rarely in life that you get to watch other people’s intimate conversation of, you know, that explores a relationship. We’ve been privileged enough to see that and we’ve learned is the heart is made to love. People at the end of the day, want to connect with each other, but the heart has to find its way out of a maze of your personal trauma, of your personal, you know, challenges that you’ve had of, of the way you’ve shut down the past, your own fears, your doubts, shame, guilt, to then find its way out of its own maze within your own system, your own patterns, your own values out into the world to, to reach across society’s Rules and values to another person and connect. And I just see that over and over again that people have a yearning to connect. I think it’s a fundamental human desire to be seen and to see. Everyone talks about wanting to be seen. What about seeing fully seen? You know, there’s a vulnerability in being seen. There’s also vulnerability in fully seeing someone. And so I’ve learned, I’ve seen that just overlooked that there’s a beauty and that we are not very skilled at how to have these conversations. Because what you focus on, you get good at, what you practice, you get good at. A lot of the content that we watch, it’s all about speaking, not about listening. And what I’ve seen, what I’ve seen by all these conversations, that there’s a way to practice and create the space in which we can have conversations. Both speaking, sharing, but also listening and receiving. That can deepen and make more profound relationships which ultimately amplify your life. It gives yourself greater sense of fulfillment. Males, your relationships are more resilient. And there’s a very simple computation. If we’re just going to make this as an formula. You know Esther Perel, who’s the relationship expert and she’s incredible. Therapist, Relationship therapist, has written books and such, she says the quality of your life is commensurate to the quality of the relationships. Okay, that makes sense. Great. Well then how do I have great relationships? One way I would argue is you have great conversations. Great conversations means you have great relationships. Okay, well then how to have great conversations? Aha. My suggestion is from what I’m finding is two things. A, you need to create the space and B, well constructed questions. If you do that, you have the space. Well constructed questions, you have great conversations. Therefore, great conversations leads to great relationships. Great relationships lead to a greater life.
Matt Alder [00:09:37]:
Perfect. And I suppose this is probably even more interesting in the workplace where you’ve got this kind of extra layer of formality and expectation and everything that people, the way that people think they should behave when it comes to, when it comes to being at work, how does it translate to the workplace? What kind of lessons can people learn from this in terms of how they communicate with each other and have these conversations?
Topaz Adizes [00:10:00]:
Yeah, it’s like a double edged sword, isn’t it? The workplace, because there’s a level of professionalism that’s necessary at the end of the day, you don’t necessarily have to be friends with the people you work with because you’re all there for your own livelihood so that you’re offering values and services to a market such that you can gain some type of repayment so that you can support your family and yourselves and the passions in your lives. Right. And yet at the same time, we spend most of our time with the people we work with. So it’s a double edged sword. On one hand, there’s a level of professionals like we don’t need to be vulnerable. We are doing work here. Why? Because it’s our livelihood. But at the same time, we’re spending a lot of time with these people. And so you can’t just walk away from those relationships. Right. Maybe you have a disagreement with a friend and you decide, you know what, it’s not worth it, I’m going to walk away. Fine. That’s a lot more difficult in the workplace. The payoff is a lot more direct. If you’re not able to efficient to cohesively work with the people in your team, then your ability to success is more limited. So it’s imperative that you’re able to communicate in ways that are both professional but also effective and deep enough such that you could take advantages of the opportunities that are around you in your business, in your, in the workspace. And so I think it’s, I think it’s, I think it’s a double edged sword. Right?
Matt Alder [00:11:18]:
Give us some examples of the sort of specific questions or types of questions that you think are most effective for getting that sort of trust and empathy within people who are working together.
Topaz Adizes [00:11:29]:
Well, let’s take, let’s take, even before we get to the specific question, let’s take the, the artifice of the question itself. If, let me take it. If your, if your colleague comes at work and says to you, what do you love about working with me? You’re there working, they come, they knock on the door, they do, they jump on the slack channel, huddle with you, or they zoom call, whatever it is, remote or in person. What do you love working about with me? Out of the blue? Are you thinking about why you love working with them? No. You’re wondering what happened in their life that they’re coming to you in this moment to ask you this question. Therefore, the space has not been created for you for you both to have that conversation. Now, if you have a very simple. For us, for example, I’m holding in my hand a box of cards, right? It’s kind of our model. We sell these questions. And now, for instance, we have a coworker’s deck, we have a team building deck, but you have a deck of 200 questions. Your work coworker comes you says, at the beginning of a meeting or at a lunch break, hey, you know what? There’s this cool product. Let’s play a game. We open the box, we pull out a random question, and it says, what do you love about working with me? The box and the fact that we’re the artifice, that we’re playing game has created the space now so that you both are not wondering, you know, you’re not wondering why they asked you that question. You know, we’re playing a game. The question was random. It came out. Similarly, if you’re in a meeting with your boss and your boss says, you know, Matt, what do you think we should be doing that we’re not doing? Okay, hold on a sec. Keep. This question is coming from my boss. I better, you know, answer properly if I want to keep my job. Or there might be an agenda. So you’re not actually really thinking about the ANSW answer. You’re thinking about the politics behind the answer. So there’s a power play there. Who’s asking the question holds the power. If you can remove the question asker into a randomness from a card game, it creates more space. Oh, we randomly got this question. So there’s a power in that. I’m not saying it’s always effective for you. That. And it’s also imperative that the leader of the meeting or that we ask questions, well constructed questions. That’s imperative. And that you. That’s okay. But sometimes when you have a card game, it takes the power away and it makes it more equanimous. Equanimous Equanimity.
Matt Alder [00:13:40]:
Introducing Invisible Choir, a true crime podcast that explores the most heinous murders through investigative storytelling, Primary source audio and exclusive interviews.
Topaz Adizes [00:13:50]:
He walked to his car, he pulled out the sword, and then he followed her. They found chunks of her hair in the grass because he was swinging at her.
Matt Alder [00:14:04]:
New episodes air every other Sunday. From a recruiting and hiring perspective, the place where it’s kind of most obvious to ask questions are in things like job interviews, for example. And we’re at this very interesting point where AI is starting to seep into that job interview space. You know, in some cases running interviews, in some case create. In some cases creating the content for. For interviews. What’s the, what’s the kind of balance here between machines and humans? And also, how do people create that, that kind of space that you’re talking about to, you know, to kind of have those sort of, you know, have those hiring conversations?
Topaz Adizes [00:14:46]:
Great. So I hear in your question three things. One is how do you create the space. Two, how do you construct effective questions that really can explore the person you might, may or may not be hiring or you’re doing work with? Right. And the third one is, how does AI affect it? So first, in terms of the space, I think what we want to do with the space is articulate the intention, which is different than the agenda. The agenda is where we’re ending up. The intention is where we’re beginning. If you want to invite someone into a conversation where you’re exploring and you actually get to know them on a different level in a different space, not just the face that they’re presenting to you for the workshop, but actually get a sense of who they are, then you need to come to the space without the agenda of I need to end up here. We’re not going to end up here where you’re going to say this, and I’m not playing a chess match with you. Chess game. And you know this. Sometimes people come to you and they ask you a question that you know they already know the answer to, which.
Matt Alder [00:15:38]:
Happens all the time.
Topaz Adizes [00:15:39]:
All the time.
Matt Alder [00:15:39]:
Yeah. I actually have all your details in front of me. I’m going to ask you about things that I’m actually looking at.
Topaz Adizes [00:15:44]:
So then you’re. You’re not having exploratory conversation. Then. Then we. What we’re doing, that’s fine. There’s a place for that. But then we’re not having a deepening conversation. We’re not having exploratory conversation. We might not learn anything about our relationship or each other through this conversation. We’re playing chess. Am I answering the question properly? Okay, but if you want to know who you’re hiring and you want to get a sense of who they are, you need to create the space which is saying, hey, we have a meeting. Now, we both know why we’re here. I’m evaluating whether it’s a good fit for you are. So let’s articulate our intention here is to get to know each other and see if it’s a good fit, see where it is. I don’t have an agenda in terms of where we need to end up. That is helpful because that creates a space of opening and curiosity. Now, how do we construct good questions? Here’s five things. This is part of my book 12 Questions for Love, but it can apply also to asking questions in the HR in the HR workspace. 1. Don’t ask any question that begins with is, are, do, should, or would. Is, are, do, would, or should. Why? Because no matter what words Come after those words, that word. Is this the right job for you? Would you do this or that? Should you do this or that or how? Right. Should. Right. Are you interested in the workspace of this or that? Okay, all those. If you start with is, are, would, should, or do. Your answer response will be a binary response. Yes. No, left, right. Yeah. Okay. What does it. What information does that give you? Instead, begin your questions with what? How, why? Right. In what way? How would you deal with this? Why would you do this? How do you feel about. Right. Okay, that’s one, two. What’s always nice, especially in the Irish space, is to ask questions that put them in each other’s shoes. If you were in my shoes, asking you a question right now, what’s the question you want me to ask you most? You know? Or what would you want me to ask you most? Or what do you think your. Your previous direct report or would say it was the most difficult thing working with you? So now they have to put themselves. Asking questions that put each other in each other’s shoes different is really interesting. It shows you a sense of how aware are they of other people and their relationships with other people. If that’s important for the job at all. Maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s actually, you know, what I don’t want. But putting the. Asking questions that. Putting, you know, what do you think is the hardest thing being your calling it work. What do you think people, you know. Another one that’s interesting is asking a ver. Another version of that is putting each other in each other’s shoes, but also asking questions that don’t necessarily connect. Two things connect so that it creates a space of a moment of pause and forces the mind to find an answer to it, because the man is always trying to find the answer. If you ask interesting questions, it’ll just work really hard to find it. If you ask simple questions, it already knows the answer and you’re not really finding something new. So what do I mean by that? Simple example would be, what does earning money cost you?
Matt Alder [00:18:42]:
Yeah, good question.
Topaz Adizes [00:18:44]:
Right? How does you know? How does conflict make us better? What’s the favorite lie you love telling yourself? What’s the truth you hate telling yourself?
Matt Alder [00:18:55]:
I see what you mean.
Topaz Adizes [00:18:56]:
Yeah, right. So you’re just. That’s helpful because that creates a. Wait. Oh, wait. Okay, now I have to create two neural nodes, two ideas, disparate ideas, and connect them and find a connection to them. And a reminder to everyone, listen, listen. Your mind is a faithful dog, and it will chase any Stick you throw. The stick you throw is the question. If you throw a question into the muddy pond, the dog will chase the money pond. It’ll find the answer, why did I get fired from my last job? Here’s. Change the question. What can I learn from the last job that will prepare me for the next job, you know, or whatever it is. Construct. So what are we shaping the question so that you’re. That’s leads to another one is shape the question so you’re getting constructive feedback. You can really explore something. And the last one is, and I’m not sure how this pertains to the HR space, but it’s a nice play. It’s a nice thing to explore, is asking questions that are connective and why by me, connective is that they acknowledge the people in the conversation. So if Matt, I said, Matt, what’s your favorite dream job? Okay, if I ask you that and your best friend asks you that, and the barista at Starbucks asks you that, your answer will probably be the same thing. I want to be a football star or, you know, soccer star, whatever it is, you know, regardless of who’s asking, what’s your favorite dream job? This is it. Okay? Now just make it connective. Change the question. And now it could be like this. What do you think would be our favorite dream job we could do together? You will not answer that. The same if I ask it. If the barista asset and your best friend answer it, the answer will be different, right? If your best friend asked that, barista asked that and I asked that, it’s three different people asking it. We have three different relationships. We have just three different connections. So the question acknowledges the connection, and the answer inevitably will be unique to the people that you are. You are in conversation with. So in the hr, you go, you say, you know, what’s the hardest thing for you in the workplace is different. Say, what do you think will be the hardest thing in the working at this company? What do you think will be your biggest challenge working this company? And why, you know, what do you think we’ll learn about you after three months of working here that we wouldn’t learn otherwise? That will surprise us. What do you think you may learn about us that will surprise you? You know what does, Right? So you’re asking questions that acknowledge the people in the conversations and that make it unique. The answer is unique to the, to the people involved in the conversation.
Matt Alder [00:21:44]:
And bringing that AI bit in. How is that changing things or what, you know, what’s the. What’s the implications of It AI is.
Topaz Adizes [00:21:51]:
Going to do all the cognitive executive functions, physical or otherwise. It’s just much faster than the human brain. It’s going to get there in time. I think that’s inevitable. I think the space then that bellies the question, what’s unique about humans? What’s our value offering? And our value offering is the fact that we can never be AI. We do not learn at the same rate. If you learn the Japanese word right now, I’m not going to learn in the same moment. If we were part of AI nodes, if you learn a Japanese word, I would learn it immediately. And then boom, we’re all learning at the same rate, everything. That’s why it’s so intelligent. But we don’t. We have different learning rates, we have different perspectives, we have different ways of interpreting things. And that is actually our superpower. Because in the differences in that disparity, we’re not all the same. We do see things different. We learn at different rates. There’s opportunity. And so then the question is, how do we converse in a way that we can traverse our differences and find the opportunities? And that’s why it’s important to a create the space and ask well constructed questions. So if anything, I think with AI, I think the quality questions is even more important than ever. So for instance, our team building deck, if you put in to AI, okay, I have a team meeting and I want to ask 10 questions. They’re not. They’re going to ask, they’re going to spit out for you because I’ve done this. They’re going to spit out for you 10, 20, 100 questions. None of them find the five live out to the five rules or suggestions that I just went through. They don’t ask one connective question. Maybe they will in time, but right now they don’t. And in time they might. But then they don’t also put two disparate ideas together, right? So shaping the question so that we can have an exploratory conversation so that the dogs of our minds can chase and find creative answers. That’s a unique place for humans and humanity at my point, in the world of AI.
Matt Alder [00:23:51]:
And I suppose another sort of unique aspect of humanity is the ability to build connections when we’re sort of face to face. Now, increasingly as we work, we’re not face to face where we’re talking on zoom or teams or whatever that might be. How do we deal with that? How do we make sure that we’re still having those connecting, authentic conversations in a kind of a more digital in A more sort of digital format.
Topaz Adizes [00:24:18]:
Bottom line, conscientious. We have to be conscientious. What do I mean by that? If you’re meeting in person, are you conscientious of the fact that you’re meeting in person and it’s a different engagement than if you’re meeting on zoom? Let me give an example. In Zoom, you have a 25 person meeting. Everybody is framed like you and I are framed now. Three buttons called three button shot. It’s three buttons on your shirt. So you basically have like above your pecs to your shoulder and your head. And everyone is in that kind of medium close up. The world cinema, you know. So medium close up, you have 25 people on Medium close up in a physical room. That is a physical impossibility. If we had 25 people in a room sitting around in a circle, the medium, the person I’d see in medium close up, meaning I could see their micro gestures on their face, would be the person sitting to my right and to my left, the person sitting across, you know, the circle from me. I’m sitting him the full shot. I could barely really see his face, full face. So actually, on zoom, the fact that I can see 25 people at the same distance, which is a physical impossibility, is a great advantage because there’s a certain type of. It’s not physical proximity, but the framing and our reading of the gestures the same right now in real life, in physical reality. Now here’s a difference for zoom. So you. What I’m saying is you need to take advantage of the platform or the space you’re in if it’s physical or not, and make do with that and be aware of the tools we’re using. Because I think asking either or is just. It’s not a good question because it’s inevitable. Some of us will be working in person, some of us will be working remote. It’d be a blend of the two. But in the physical space, for instance, which you don’t get on zoom meetings or remote meetings, is that you’re sitting in a room and you see the people you’re meeting with the person you’re meeting with walking into the room. So it’s kind of what I call like a defreeze. You know, you’re warming it up, you see them at a distance, they walk in. Hey, how you doing? How’s it. There’s a warmup, there’s a warm up physiologically, when they’re 20ft away or at the door, and then they come to the desk right Whatever it is, there’s a warmth. There’s also a cool down, the meeting’s over, small talk, goodbye. They walk out the door. You see them kind of disappearing now in the zoom room, you don’t get that at all. It’s like turn on, turn off. There’s no warm up. There’s no. There’s no like warming up or defreeze. And then there’s also not like a finalization, like a landing the plane. So in the zoom room, bring that into the space whenever you want to, like create a moment where people can all arrive together in the. So in the physical space, you can’t get 25 people all together. But there’s other advantages of being, having a sense of connection. This. So maybe. So you use the physical space to your advantage, much like we should use the zoom space to our advantage.
Matt Alder [00:27:06]:
No, that makes perfect sense. I always like to finish with a question about the future. So what do you hope the future of human conversations in the workplace is which? Reflecting on it is a ridiculous. Would seem like a ridiculous conversation ten years ago, but ridiculous question ten years ago. But maybe it’s kind of relevant now with all the technology and the automation and all those kind of things.
Topaz Adizes [00:27:33]:
I’m not sure what you’re hearing in your field, but what I hear in my field a lot is about curiosity. And I think it’s true. And I think in your field, maybe you hear about curiosity, lives, be curious and ask questions. Okay, so at this point, it’s almost cliched. I think it’s about listening. It’s about listening to yourself to know what is it that you want to know about the other posing that question and then listening to the response. And I think the more we can all practice listening, the more we can create the space for each other to be who we are. And from being who we are, we can be more successful in the workspace that we have.
Matt Alder [00:28:10]:
Topaz, thank you very much for joining me.
Topaz Adizes [00:28:13]:
Thank you so much, Matt. Appreciate you.
Matt Alder [00:28:15]:
My thanks to Topaz. You can follow this podcast on Apple Podcasts on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. You can search all the past episodes at recruitingfuture.com on that site. You can also subscribe to our weekly newsletter, Recruiting Future Feast, and get the inside track on everything that’s coming up on the show. Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next time and I hope you’ll join me.
