The right questions

Happy Tuesday to all 532 of you! To all 300+ of you have that joined since the beginning of the year, I’m happy to be able to share a quick thought or two on how to build strong and meaningful connections with clients, collaborators, and your community. If you thought this was helpful (or not) you can share your 1-click feedback at the bottom. Let’s do this!

A question for you:

What’s exciting you the most these days?

I’ll wait.

Relationships, regardless of business or personal, are built on trust and shared context. One of the fundamental building blocks of that is knowing one another.

If all we do is talk about the current business matter, that’s about as deep a relationship as we have with a gas station attendant (side note - why does New Jersey still have them?).

So to build a longer term relationship, the kind that leads to collaboration, community, and a life well-lived, we need to know them.

And the right questions are the key to open that door.

The next time you meet up with someone, whether an old friend or a business relationship, and you have the urge to ask “how are you?” or “what’s going on?” - pause for a second.

Will this help build a relationship? When they answer the routine “great” or “busy” - will you really learn anything?

Try these instead:

What’s been the highlight of your week so far?

What’s exciting you the most these days?

I have many, many more questions that, used in the right context, can go much deeper. We’ll talk about those in the future. But for now, if you built the habit with of starting every conversation with a simple-yet-effective relationship-opener, you’re in fantastic shape.

On a related note…

As I continue my adventure into video, I posted one last week on what to do after you ask those questions.

Four Questions to Ask After Every Coffee Meeting

BTW, I would LOVE for you to subscribe if you feel this was valuable.

Read and reflect

I missed it when it first came out, but The Friendship That Made Google Huge has been a fantastic read.

There’s a discussion on last week’s post here, I’d love to get your take.