# How to Connect With Anyone in Under 5 Minutes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ou8Xj13p2v0

[00:00] Today, I'm going to be talking about how to better connect with other people.
[00:05] You have to make the effort to connect to others.
[00:09] It It really has to to come from you.
[00:11] If you're going to be sitting on the edge of the room and expect people to come to you, um it just doesn't work that way.
[00:17] And so, I tell myself, "Walk in, read the room, and then proceed to try to at least introduce myself to everyone."
[00:27] What's interesting about connecting with people is that you will never know where that will take you.
[00:31] I have connected with people on the subway.
[00:33] I have connected with people sitting next to me on an airplane ride.
[00:38] And that led to years of friendship with quite a few people just because of a few words that were said.
[00:49] We exchanged cards, and then at some future point, one or the other of us reached out to each other.
[00:57] And it invariably it's been beneficial.
[01:00] Now, does it always amount to anything?
[01:02] doesn't have to, but what great practice it is.
[01:05] So, I tell myself, "All right, how do I connect with others?"
[01:10] Well, first of all, appreciate what you have.
[01:12] You know, connect with your family.
[01:14] Learn to connect with your children.
[01:16] I often say, you know, "Don't talk to your children like you're a drill instructor.
[01:18] Sit next to them.
[01:20] Have them explain things.
[01:22] Pick their their minds.
[01:25] Let them explain to you how they see the world."
[01:28] Treat them as someone to value and that you value their their ideas, and you'll be surprised how much more open they will be with you.
[01:37] With family members, your loved ones, your spouses, value what they are, what they represent, the the beauty that they have within.
[01:47] Look, not everybody's going to perform at the same level.
[01:49] Not everybody's going to be as clever and so forth, but everyone has traits that we should value and explore those things.
[01:56] Pursue an interest in others
[02:03] with friendliness, with approachability,
[02:06] with what I often call benign curiosity.
[02:10] Benign curiosity is I'm not here to
[02:12] judge you.
[02:13] I'm here to learn about you.
[02:16] The fact that you are another human
[02:18] being, I want to know things that are
[02:20] about you.
[02:21] I don't want to hear about myself.
[02:25] I know what I have achieved.
[02:25] I I really do not want to talk about
[02:27] myself.
[02:29] I want to talk about your
[02:29] family, if you want to talk about them.
[02:31] The books that you have enjoyed, the
[02:32] foods that you like, where the good
[02:34] restaurants are, something fascinating
[02:37] that has taken place in your life, where
[02:39] you've traveled to.
[02:41] That's what I'm
[02:41] interested in.
[02:43] I don't want to hear
[02:43] about myself.
[02:45] And I think when we
[02:45] exercise benign curiosity, we establish
[02:49] very powerful connections because they
[02:52] realize, "Hey, this guy, he's putting
[02:55] himself aside and he's genuinely
[02:58] interested in the things that that I
[03:00] have to say."
[03:02] The other thing I would recommend to you
[03:04] is if you want to connect with other people, for heaven's sake, be interesting.
[03:10] I I have talked to people that the only thing they know to talk about is wrestling or football or F1 or tennis and they cannot talk about anything else.
[03:22] Well, look, that's fine.
[03:25] But could you at least be interesting?
[03:28] Could you at least talk about other things?
[03:31] Could you in some way contribute to a conversation where you go beyond this very focused and in time monotonous area?
[03:45] And I find that there are some people who are just not very interesting.
[03:49] And so, after a while, you just kind of walk away because all they talk about is one single subject.
[03:57] How interesting it is to meet people who can talk on a variety of subjects or who have had experiences.
[04:07] I remember one time talking about scuba diving and this gentleman says,
[04:09] "You know, I've gone around the world diving these deep holes that most people don't dive into."
[04:17] I didn't know anything about that and he's telling me about how at a certain depth there's just no light and it's kind of weird and bizarre.
[04:26] I was fascinated by that as equally as fascinating as watching somebody who was knitting.
[04:32] And I asked them, "How did you get started in a flight from Miami to New York?"
[04:37] We talked the whole time and it was it was just fascinating to to talk about this woman's life and what she had learned and what she had done and so forth.
[04:52] Be interesting.
[04:56] It will go a long way into creating and mastering powerful connections.
[05:01] One of the things that I always try to do is usually before somebody offers an opinion is to ask their opinion.
[05:06] So,
[05:09] Try to focus what they're going to say by saying, "What's your opinion about what's going on?"
[05:14] I remember in 2008, I got into a taxi in Bogota, Colombia.
[05:20] I was there doing some work with the embassy.
[05:22] And the taxi cab driver says, "Oh, we're not taking dollars right now.
[05:26] If you have uh uh euros, we we prefer that."
[05:31] And I said to myself, "Here's an opportunity."
[05:34] And I said, "Well, what's your opinion on what's going on with the economy?"
[05:39] It was interesting because cab drivers have so much information.
[05:43] And right at that minute, you quickly learn they had switched from dollars to euros because the economy was tanking.
[05:51] And I asked him what their opinion was.
[05:54] And right away, I I knew this guy is a really good observer.
[05:56] He He said, "Well, we have less Americans coming.
[05:59] We have more Europeans coming."
[06:01] And he just gave me this profound lecture on something that I knew nothing about.
[06:09] and it was all based on me asking him for his opinion.
[06:12] And when he left me off at the hotel, he gave me his card and he said, "If you need a ride, just call me directly."
[06:19] That's the kind of thing that you get from mastering connections.
[06:21] Is the person feels valued and they also value you back.
[06:29] And you know, obviously, it's nice to always have some sort of commonality, but many times we don't have anything more common than maybe as myself, I was born in Cuba, that we were born overseas or that our parents were good parents, whatever.
[06:48] Find something in common.
[06:50] There's always something in common.
[06:52] It can be very simple, but it can help us to establish good connections.
[06:58] There's another technique that is often useful and we use it in elicitation.
[07:01] I remember this technique vividly cuz in 1984, I was teaching it at the FBI
[07:11] Academy.
[07:14] And that is that you say something so that the other person is compelled to set the record straight.
[07:19] So, you might say something like this restaurant in particular is the best restaurant here in the city and they'll come back with, "Oh, no, you have no idea.
[07:29] The best restaurant in the city."
[07:32] And they correct you and set the record straight.
[07:34] Or you say, "Hey, I hear Volkswagen vehicles are becoming more popular again."
[07:42] And they may come back and say, "Listen, we don't see any folks wagons around here anywhere.
[07:46] You can't even find one.
[07:46] You can't even find a mechanic."
[07:49] So, uh it use certain lines to get people to uh set the record straight.
[07:55] And you'd be surprised how they they open up.
[07:57] In essence, you're asking for their opinion.
[08:00] And at least it gets them talking.
[08:04] I always like to get them talking by talking to them and exploring things with them.
[08:10] And I do this all the time when I'm walking around where I live.
[08:12] There's a lot of fishermen, and I'll ask them, "What's running out there? What's a good fish locally?"
[08:18] And it's interesting, you know, you walk by, you say, "Hey, uh any anything good today? Any fish?"
[08:24] And so forth. And they'll remember you that the next time you walk by.
[08:26] Explore things with them, and people will will connect with you.
[08:32] And then, once you've established some sort of uh communication, it's always powerful and good to be in synchrony, what we call iso.
[08:38] Practice same behaviors, where we mirror each other.
[08:44] If we're both leaning back in our chairs, then uh synchrony is harmony.
[08:50] But, we can also mirror each other by repeating what somebody has said.
[08:55] If somebody says, "Yeah, I have a real problem with that."
[08:58] You could just come back and say, "Yeah, I can see where that would be a problem."
[09:01] Instead of using the word issue or uh challenge.
[09:04] That's not what they said. Uh learn the power of mirroring both in words and nonverbals.
[09:10] It'll save you a lot of
[09:12] headaches, and it'll establish connections much more quickly, but also more powerfully.
[09:20] And again, always make it about them.
[09:24] Try to get people to talk about what they think and what they aspire to do.
[09:30] And I find it useful to change my voice.
[09:33] I use my voice to adapt to any given situation, whether I'm talking to a child or I'm talking to a stranger, my voice can be useful in achieving harmony.
[09:46] It can be used to indicate that I'm interested, but also to establish trust and that I'm not a threat.
[09:52] So, the voice that you use for answering the phone or ordering a sandwich at at a burger place should not be the same voice that you use to talk to others.
[10:02] Make sure you individualize that.
[10:04] Anytime I am connecting with others, I always make sure that they have the last word.
[10:09] I have met so many people who invariably number one, offer their opinion when
[10:13] They haven't, you haven't asked for it.
[10:15] I mean, they just give opinions all day long.
[10:17] Um but secondly, if if you do value someone, make sure that they have the last word.
[10:23] Don't put yourself out there to have the last word always.
[10:26] I always make sure that the other person has the last word.
[10:30] So, some simple techniques on how to connect with others.
[10:33] Now more than ever so important because, you know, everyone is thinking about AI and how AI can expedite this and it can expedite that.
[10:45] AI can expedite any number of things.
[10:49] What it cannot do is establish powerful connections, valuable connections, influential connections.
[10:56] And that's the big difference.
[10:59] And to stand against that wall of AI that's coming, it really is up to us to master connecting with others.
[11:08] So, I hope you'll you'll try some of these techniques out.
[11:10] Thank you.