This first exercise – which can be covered in one or more meetings – is devoted to each team member answering questions designed to draw out your history, values and life goals. 

We suggest that you think about the questions you would like to answer, and answer them in your own mind ahead of the meeting. You can develop your own questions, or pick from a set of questions we have developed.

How it works

We offer some suggested questions here to help. Feel free to come up with your own.  (Please share your questions with us!) 

In each subsequent guide team meeting (on any topic), you might consider devoting the first few minutes of the meeting to each of you answering a question you haven’t answered previously – or maybe you’d like to answer a previous question if your answer has changed because of guide team conversations!

Before the meeting, pick one or more questions that you want to answer – something that you think will tell the others about yourself.  Teams don’t need to agree on the questions; each member can answer a different question or questions.  

Once you’ve picked your question(s), think about how you would answer it. We urge you, ahead of time, to write on a device, a small note card or a sheet of paper a brief outline of what you want to tell your team about yourself.  Why do we suggest that? We think writing it down helps you think it through.

Questions to consider answering

Questions 1-10 are for guides or explorers.[1] Questions 11-13 are for guides. 

1.     You were born.  Then what happened?

2.     When I took a chance, I…

3.     What do you like about yourself the most, and what do you dislike about yourself the most?

4.     How have your parents, or friends, or peers influenced your life choices? Do you have trouble deciding what you want in life, as opposed to what others want?

5.     Have you felt pressures from society telling you to be something or do something? If so, how have you dealt with that?

6.     When you were younger, what did you want to do with your life? Has it changed? Why?

7.     When have you been lost, and what did you do? Are you lost now?  How?

8.     When you were younger did you have any interests (hobbies, tasks, games etc.) that you have built into your work/career, or you work/career plans? 

9.     What obstacles have you overcome, or are you trying to overcome now?

10.  If you are on a career path or have picked a career path, when did the light bulb go on? When did you realize this is what you wanted to do? 

These questions are primarily directed to guides:

11.  What were you doing in high school/college, and how did you get from there to where you are today?

12.  How do you balance your personal and professional life? As you look back on your time after college, what would you do differently?

13.  If you had one piece of advice to young people getting ready to jump into the real world, what would it be?

[1] Some of these questions are questions the teams have come up with; others are adapted from Road Trip Nation: a guide to discovering your path in life. by Mike Marriner and Nathan Gebhard with Joanne Gordon (New York: Ballantine Books 2006).