If you're listening to this podcast from Sydney or Melbourne, how excited are we that we're finally out of lockdown and have been for the last few weeks. I'm finding that it's still sinking in. But I mean, there are so many options. We can go back to the pub, our friends' houses, to the office and to networking events. Even saying that said a bit of a shiver down my spine. I am really grateful for the return of in person events, but I'm well and truly out of practice.
And if you're in the same boat, revisiting my chat with Marissa King, who's the professor of organizational behavior at the Yale School of Management might help, Because what are the best types of questions to ask when meeting new people? And how can we deepen existing connections with our networks? And what is mutually reciprocal self disclosure and why is this important for being a great networker. My name is
doctor Amantha Imber. I'm an organizational psychologist and the founder of behavioral science consultancy Inventium, and this is how I work, a show about how to help you do your best work. On Today is my favorite tip episode. We go back to an interview from the past, and I pick out
my favorite tip from that interview. In today's show, I speak with Marissa King, and this excerpt starts with Marissa talking about one of the best things that we can do that leads to building natural social chemistry.
There's great research that has shown that one of the best things that you can do in a conversation is actually ask follow up questions. So asking questions in general makes people more likable, but we know that the follow up question actually has particular power, and in part that because it shows that you're really lessening to the other person and so once so now you're your odd numbered island.
You found someone to talk to, and really just listening to them and engaging with them and continuing to ask all up questions really not only increases the sense of liking, but it deepens the conversation, and the more depth that there has to conversation, the easier it is to truly connect.
That's really interesting. I was intrigued when I was reading your book Social Chemistry. You actually talk about that there are six types of questions that we can ask, follow up questions being the most powerful. Are there any other kinds of questions? That can help us get into an interesting territory that will lead to those follow up questions.
I think one of the things that we also know about just how conversations normally unfold is there's a secret ingredients is also what I think of as mutual reciprocal self disclosure. And so there's a great study that was done by Arthur Errands which and it famously became like the thirty six Questions to fall in Love. But what's key about the way that those questions unfold is that they get with increasing depth. But what I've found also is true is that people will often try to meet
you where you are. So, for instance, in a conversation, if I'm honest and open, that encourages the other person to be honest and open to So an example of this is a common opening question is like how are you doing today? And lots of people right just use that. It's a throwaway like oh, I'm good, how are you?
Or talk about the weather. But to really build a relationship, and particularly to accelerate the building the relationship process, you need to go far beyond that, right, and you also need to go beyond what I could learn by googling you or seeing on your CV and so often when people ask me that, I tell them truly how I'm doing today, and that honesty is usually met with honesty
and openness. Not all the time, but when it is, it really just changes the tenor of the conversation and makes connecting far easier.
So how much would you typically share? Because you also talk about you know, research into oversharing and that can that can have, you know, not great consequences.
So how do you sort of.
Gauge how much to share, how vulnerable to make yourself when you are first connecting with someone.
It's such a good question, and I think that this is particularly if you're trying to do this so at work or certain situations, understanding what are the constraints, and particularly like imagining the other person, because for this to be comfortable for everybody, I often say, like, you need two things. It's a part of the essential elements for these types of conversations, which are safety and structure. Right, So the structured interaction part is that we're talking about
something rather than just open conversation. So this is why in general, just having a cocktail party or a work event with no purpose it's really really difficult. Instead if you're ideally, if we go back to that previous scenario and we imagine that we're setting the stage or designing this interaction, ideally that there's going to be something to talk about the mutual safeground. So if that's true, it
makes it a lot easier. When that's not true, what you're looking for is that you want to engage in conversation that's aimed at mutual discovery, but in a place that right like, I'm not going to tell you about I mean I personally, For instance, I don't really talk about my family life. I don't talk about there's lots of which a lot of people do, but I'm really private, as I mentioned. So the idea is I let you know things about myself, maybe where I grew up or
a really transformative experience. I had a great question to ask people, is what are you really excited about right now? Because it allows you to tap into passion, it allows you to tap into identity, but it's giving the person a lot of control over what the boundaries of discussion are, which creates the safety that's so essential.
I hope you enjoyed revisiting this part of my chat with Marissa, particularly if you've got some events that you're going to in the next few weeks, and if you're looking for more tips to improve the way that you work. I write a short fortnightly newsletter that contains three cool things that I've discovered that helped me work better, which range from interesting research through to gadgets and software that
I'm loving and all sorts of things. You can sign up for that at Howiwork dot code that's how I work dot co. How I Work is produced by Inventing with production support from dead Set Studios. And thank you to Martin Nimber who does the audio mix and makes everything sound awesome. See you next time.