I never had a plan when meeting new people. I always thought that “whatever happens, happens.” Now I do.
I’ve been profoundly influenced by the research in Ask: How to Relate to Anyone. I now believe I really can “relate to anyone” in a much more meaningful way.
Here’s how.
A brain flip
Like everyone else, I want to make a positive first impression. I used to think that doing so required me to share information about myself.
How wrong I was.
The secret to more meaningful relationships is eliciting information; not conveying it. Fortunately, it’s easy. All you have to do is ask questions.
Preparation
Before you can do the brain flip, you have to prepare. Here’s what I do.
I make no effort to talk about myself. Instead, I show a sincere interest in the other person. I do this by asking open-ended questions and then following up with sensitive, thoughtful inquiries, like: I’m curious about…or What was that experience like for you?
I avoid agenda driven questions. I’m not trying to steer the conversation in any way. I let the other person control the direction of the conversation.
A new metric
Here’s my new metric.
I picture the forehead of the person I’m talking to as a traffic light. It’s either green when they are speaking or red when I’m speaking.
My goal is to keep the green light on for as long as possible.
Try it. I predict you be amazed at the reaction.
Update on Ask
We are on schedule to publish late in the first quarter, or early in the second quarter, of 2020. We are currently working on technical issues, like formatting the references.
Ask relies heavily on research, but it needs to be easy to read, understand and implement, so we are listing the sources (around 450 of them!) at the end of book (in “endnotes”). Anyone who wants to read the underlying studies can go to that section and find them.
I think of Ask as How to Win Friends and Influence People on steroids. It’s what Dale Carnegie would have written if he had access to cutting-edge research in the fields of psychology and neuroscience.
The support from you has been overwhelming. Hundreds have signed up for this newsletter. My goal is to reach 1000 before we publish.
I have an innovative and exciting co-branding opportunity with Ask, which is described in more detail at the hyperlink below. Please click on it for more information. If you think it might be of interest to your business, we’ll send you a free, no obligation, pre-publication copy of Ask, as soon as it’s available. A number of you have already signed-up, for which I’m very grateful.