On most nights, Ramadan can be found sitting on our couch, splitting his attention between working expansive Excel spreadsheets on his laptop and half watching something on TV. If it were up to him alone, it would be either MSNBC, a replay of the most recent episode of Game of Thrones, or a GOT YouTube recap video sent to our telly via Chromecast. Tonight, it is Independence Day. Often, I like to work to the backdrop of movies and shows for which I have little care (no offense, Will Smith), and its soundtrack is just the right mix of threatening and inspirational to goad my writing along with empowering urgency.

Ramadan, if you could not already tell, is my partner of four years and counting. In my eyes, he is great at many things, but he is phenomenal at accurately assessing the traits, motives and desires of people he has just met; this also makes him great at building relationships and creating synergies.

Check out our 6-question interview below:

1- Can you walk me through the process of how you deconstruct a stranger’s traits based on a 5 minute meeting?
They’re no longer a stranger in 5 minutes; what I can say is that it’s not about their grip. I always start with, “What’s this person like?” I first use their clothing as a directional vector compared to what they are doing – if they’re going to a baseball game and they’re wearing a shirt and tie, then why are they wearing a shirt and tie? Presumably, in their thought process, whatever they’re doing makes sense. So I get curious about their thought process.

Step 2 – How do they respond to my name? Do they begin asking about my religion? Or do they just ask me to repeat myself? It tells me a lot about their international exposure to other cultures. My name is an ice-breaker, so it helps. Then I begin asking them questions about themselves. Rarely is it “How are you.” Typically I start with “What’s New?” because it’s less common and less to get a knee-jerk “I’m fine, how are you?” People actually stop and think about it. And then I listen for whether they speak about the downside or the upside, and how they answer the question. Then I ask why. It tells me a lot about their perspective.

After that, there’s a lot of follow up questions to ask, so I listen for what they believe, and I try to actively call out what it is such that I identify the value in what it is they’re talking about. If they recognize the value themselves already, they’ll say, “Yeah, that’s right!” And if they didn’t recognize it, they’ll either acknowledge it, or say why it’s not valuable. Typically, they are either wrong, or I am because they left something out. At that point I understand whether they slant positive or negative, and whether they think of themselves as a principal or agent in their own life and of their own work environment. I then listen to when they ask me questions – the perspective that they take on, and how much they understand or don’t, and how much play they integrate in the conversation.

2- What do you consider to be your most essential life skill? 
My ability to think through a process, start-to-finish, as if it were a flow chart.

3- How did you build that skill?
By predicting that I wouldn’t be successful and looking at people that were, taking note of their failures and asking them about them. [I starting doing this] at 11. I memorized a whole bunch of Aesop’s Fables and Biblical parables to help me navigate situations I didn’t understand. I would always apply those to everyone’s situations to identify where things go wrong, and where they deviated from the principles.

I also watched a lot of TV where I predicted the outcome, and I got really curious about why I was wrong about specific outcomes until I got good at predicting those too.

4- When you find yourself in a rut, what steps do you take to get out?
I go for a walk, stare into space. Some type of physical exercise.

5- What are the most important mental or physical habits you maintain for your life/work?
For work, I go over everybody I met that day, every day at the end of the day. I remember key nodes about their lives and things we talked about. I believe that life is going to be great no matter what happens – it’s all great. I try to do something nice for somebody else – I try to find a way to do something really nice for someone in my life, not a stranger.

6- What is the most important life lesson you have learned to date? 
We aren’t our feelings – our feelings are barometers. They’re real, they act like a sonar. They’re not who we are, they’re a real-time indicator about our internal and external environment. (If not leading indicator.)