Guide to Building Relationships

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>> Francesca Sadikin: Hopefully you are all with me on why building relationships of trust, caring about people is important. But you might wonder how do you actually do that? All right, how do I actually make connections when maybe I'm not so great with people? So as someone who has had problems with socializing before.

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I do have some tips. So again, first I've mentioned this before, but building relationships to increase your opportunities is a long game. You're not going to see immediate results. But there are other significant benefits to starting early and fostering these connections often. Some of which is that things will go wrong, there's gonna be a mistake that happens, or you're going to need help, and all of that is just much easier to have a conversation about when you already have a good relationship with the other person.

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And to be clear, it's more like humanizing. People see you as a person, not just like a shadowless entity that does work, right? The other big benefit, sharing information. So through these conversations that you're having, hopefully you're gaining a lot of information about maybe the project, what's happening at your company, maybe they heard about layoffs or restructuring.

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All of this is really good information cuz it allows you to react faster if you knew about it before. And lastly, of course leveraging your network to find future job opportunities. Maybe they won't give you a referral, but if they can give you information about what it's like to work there or who's a good contact, just any sort of information can really make the big difference to whether you get that position or not.

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And strong positive impressions like so you've worked with someone you did great five years later you're like you pinged them again they'll remember that you had a good working relationship and they'll continue to help you. How do you do this a bit more, right? I really recommend face-to-face time.

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Don't just slack them with text messages. Something about seeing people in person or with faces actually helps you humanize each other. Try to go for repeat interactions. So if you're on site, I recommend having lunch with them every so often and then if your remote scheduling one on one meetings.

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Especially when you're first getting started, schedule one on one meetings 30 minutes to just introduce yourself to everybody and then meet them like every few months afterwards, just a little call. It's really also important to take a genuine interest in them. If you don't have that genuine interest, it's just gonna come across very strange, and you're not gonna have the effect that you're looking for.

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I use active listening for these, and don't worry, if you don't know what active listening is, we're about to cover it. But some other sample questions that I have is just try to go beyond the nitty gritty work details, go work adjacent. So how they feel about what's going on in their work or how they feel about the current company update, layoffs, restructuring, whatever, just work adjacent and try to get closer to learning about them, their thoughts.

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>> Francesca Sadikin: Okay, so I have another story. This is the last story, I promise, [LAUGH] so I mentioned that active listening was one of my big tips. You probably didn't know this about me, and hopefully maybe you can't tell and how I'm talking right now. But I used to have really severe social anxiety to the point where I thought I was actually an introvert.

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This whole time, I actually was a socially anxious extrovert. I do like people, I just didn't know how to talk to them, right? But the one skill that actually transformed my socializing skills is active listening. So to give you an example of what it was like before learning the skill, when I was trying to find my first job, I was ready to try anything, including networking events, even though I usually avoid them like the plague.

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Again, because I had no social skills. And these networking events were exactly what I thought. They were horrible for me. I would start sweating through my shirt just completely drenched, my face would turn very red. I would not know what to do, so I would just stand awkwardly, around the groups trying to like figure out how to come in, and then when I came in, somehow ask my two questions, don't know how to continue the conversation.

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And then I just had to, very awkwardly back out of the group. And every event just left me so frustrated, and embarrassed, and just emotionally drained. I just felt like I didn't know how to socialize and wasn't sure if I was actually Gonna get better. Fast forward a year, I was able to get a job as a software engineering consultant.

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Now, if you don't know anything about consulting beyond the technical tasks, you're also expected to create really friendly relationships with everyone you work with. And as demonstrated in my previous example, I didn't know how to do that. But the fear of getting fired finally pushed me to actually focus on how to get social skills.

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So my sister, knowing me, suggested a book called Never Split the Difference, which is about a hostage negotiator who uses tactical empathy and active listening to create quick connections with a hostage taker. I mean, I guess she was right and she did know how much help I need, because that book was amazing.

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To be honest, I only read the first few chapters, but those first few chapters are still taking me to today. Like that's how mind blowing it was for me. I learned that connection with other people does not depend on my ability to talk well or ask a bunch of really clever questions.

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Instead, I just had to focus on truly listening and ensuring that the other person felt understood and heard. So I was like, all right, sounds simple enough let me try it. At the time, I had this manager who I had regular one on ones with. Now, these were supposed to be 30 minute meetings, but he could barely get through five minutes with me, because we always had nothing to talk about.

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I had nothing to lose. I was like, let's try it, right? So the rules are simple. I have to start with a genuine desire to understand the other person, and then I use some of these active listening techniques I read about in the book. So I asked my manager a carefully chosen open ended question.

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And for the first time, focused entirely on what he was saying. Instead of just accumulating a bunch of questions in my head, I listened to what he was saying. So if he said something like, I don't know what that means. I actually don't know what that means. Let me ask him.

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Tell me more about that. Or if something was interesting, I was like, can you explain a little bit more about that? I'd love to hear more, right? And what was once a really painful five minute meeting turned into several one and a half hour conversations. He actually told me that he doesn't usually share so much, and really enjoyed our conversation.

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He was actually forming a connection with me. And that was amazing because that was the first time I was actually able to do that with someone. And I think I was like. I finally figured out how to socialize and create authentic connections. So this realization was mind blowing.

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It's so simple yet no one really teaches you this, and I applied this with everybody I met, which quickly grew my careers and in my personal life, I was able to deepen the friendships that I already had. So, this skill is my superpower, and I want to share it with you.

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It's difficult to teach in a one hour setting. But I want us to practice the first few steps and just to get familiar with it. Remember that the first goal must be to understand the other person, a genuine desire to understand the other person. Active listening is a technique to help you understand someone and help them feel heard.

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Without that genuine desire, people will always know and it's just gonna come across as manipulative. So we're gonna go over our connection principles and what active listening actually is. And then we're gonna put it all together in our active listening exercise.