An invitation to attend business dinners offers an excellent opportunity to connect with and get to know associates and partners outside the boundaries of work-as-usual. Yet what can you do when one person does all the talking? Unfortunately, when one person dominates, it stifles more meaningtul and productive conversations for the group at large and the opportunity for valuable networking suffers.

If you do nothing, other people check out and it leads to boredom and group frustration about time waste.

What can you do?

Here’s a list of 10 Business Dinner Conversation starters designed to shift focus, add some flavor and include others:

• What is the craziest thing a boss has ever asked you to do?
• What was your first job and the best lesson you learned from it?
• What is the best business advice you’ve been given? And what was the worst?
• Who at work would you pick to be your Amazing Race partner?
• What would you do for a work-cation or sabbatical and where would you go?
• What is the most unbelievable thing that has ever happened to you?
• Who is the most impactful mentor/role model in your life to date?
• If you could teach a college course, what would it be?
• What would you choose as a superpower?
• What career move do you wish you’d said YES to? Or NO to?