The Connector’s Advantage

by Michelle Tillis Lederman

  Keep an Open Mind: Stay open to changing your perceptions of people as your connections with them grow. This also increases the likelihood that they’ll stay open to changing their perception of you.

  Be Consistent: To positively communicate your authentic self, make sure all your modes of messaging—verbal, vocal, physical—are in sync.

  Do Away with Self-Doubt: Harness the strategies of Saying Nice Things, Positive Reframing, Fake It ’til You Make It Real, and Work from the Outside In to connect with your best perceptions of yourself and convey those to others.

  Be Flexible: Be aware of the signals you’re putting out there and the ones other people are transmitting to you, and modify your behavior when necessary to ensure you’re being perceived in the most authentic way.

  4.The Law of Energy: Energy Is Contagious

  During any interaction, each person transmits energy that affects the dynamic of that relationship. Becoming more conscious of how you are acting and feeling, how the other person is acting and feeling, and what that combination contributes to your encounters is a powerful tool for harnessing likability and building meaningful connections. Often we are not even aware of the energy we are giving off. Energy impacts your communication, and it can either work for you or against you.

  Find the Right Energy: Channeling your authentic energy doesn’t mean constantly being happy—we can be genuine and real, and forge positive connections, even when faced with difficulties and challenges.

  Identify Your Energy and Theirs: Recognizing your energy in a given situation helps you understand how you are contributing to the dynamic, and what you can change to affect the most positive outcome. Recognizing the energy others give off helps you adjust your own if need be to keep things on track.

  Energy Knowledge Is Power: What we know about our own energy and the energy of others builds over time, and it’s a crucial part of deepening connections and increasing productivity. Energy expectations are what we expect from ourselves and others based on our energy knowledge.

  Harness Your Networking Energy: Determining the situations in which you express your most positive authentic energy is the key to creating the most fruitful networking opportunities.

  5.The Law of Curiosity: Curiosity Creates Connections

  Genuine curiosity can lead to more authentic, engaging conversations, which may lay the foundation for sustained relationships. Even seasoned professionals who understand and have successfully built valuable connections over the years can benefit from remembering how to stay curious. Showing your genuine interest in someone else increases your likability, and you never know what opportunities may open up. Your goal is to uncover what you might have in common.

  Start by Being Curious: Harness your curiosity to initiate conversations and open up avenues of dialogue.

  Learn How to Ask Questions: Open-ended questions create opportunities for conversation; probing questions are the follow-ups that deepen the connection the conversation creates.

  Don’t Interrogate: Stay curious, and continue asking questions to help the conversation unfold in fruitful new directions, but remember that a discussion is a two-sided thing. Sharing yourself is part of the experience and a key part of building the connection.

  Restrain Your Internet Tendencies: Use the internet to prep for events and meetings and build background knowledge, but don’t go overboard. Knowing too much can leave you with nothing left to know, deadening curiosity and taking away that path to true communication. Moderate yourself.

  6.The Law of Listening: You Have to Listen to Understand

  Just as curiosity is all about asking focused, engaged questions to find connections, listening is all about actively hearing and absorbing what is being said. Listening is not a passive activity. It takes energy and concentration to focus on what people are saying and what they mean by it, rather than hearing what you think they mean or what you want them to mean. How you listen is just as vital to strong communication as what you say, and it has just as much impact on your likability. It is crucial to do it effectively.

  Listen to Understand: If we want others to understand us, we have to understand them by truly listening to what they’re communicating.

  Harness the Three Levels of Listening: Listening In, level one, relates what you hear to you and helps establish commonalities and conversational ease. Level two, Listening Out, relates what you hear to the speaker and leverages the Law of Curiosity to uncover interests and perspectives. Listening Intuitively, level three, is a powerful tool for gaining a deeper understanding of the situation and possibly even helping the speaker put words to things they haven’t yet verbally expressed.

  How You Listen Is Key: Get off your pedestal and listen from new perspectives to encourage communication and build meaningful connections. And don’t forget, sometimes good listening is done with your eyes as well as your ears.

  Manage Distractions: Articulate when you need to regain your focus (just say it!), jot down thoughts so that you won’t be distracted trying to remember them later, and if you’re too exhausted to muster the energy to truly engage, postpone and reschedule.

  Improve Your Listening: Take credit for the ways you already listen well, and note the areas where you can improve. Then set up a plan to work on those things.

  Good Listening Is a Win-Win: Not only does listening well make people feel heard and understood, it enhances your experience of the situation and of the connection.

  7.The Law of Similarity: People Like People Who Are Like Them

  Realizing that we share a connection with someone else puts us at ease, whatever the parallel is. Finding those similarities and associations increases your comfort with new people and, likewise, their comfort with you. This makes the conversation easier, but also opens the door to discovering what else you have in common—more links for building connections. The commonalities we have with people are not always obvious at first, but understanding how to stay alert to them is part of the work of building connections into meaningful relationships.

  When meeting new people, the Law of Similarity tells us that we should be looking for commonalities or similarities to build trust. The possible ways you may connect with someone are virtually endless, and by using the Laws of Curiosity and Listening, you can discover what you have in common with someone and where your natural connections occur.

  The Sub-Law of Association: People trust the sources they know best. Being associated with one of those trusted sources often means that the trust will, by association, be transferred to you.

  Uncover Connections: Look for common interests, backgrounds, shared experiences, and beliefs to find similarities that can help build connections.

  Be a Mirror: When you’re comfortable in a conversation and feeling engaged, communicate that by reflecting the person with your body language. Don’t force it, just follow your natural mirroring tendencies.

  It’s Not Always Obvious: Don’t get stuck on the obvious differences; you never know what similarities are there for the finding.

  8.The Law of Mood Memory: People Are More Apt to Remember How You Made Them Feel Than What You Said

  The way you experience a person or a situation—the feeling you get, whether negative or positive—lingers long after the actual moment of interaction has past. The impressions you’re left with form the feelings you associate with that person or event. This is called mood memory. Creating positive mood memories of yourself for other people is an essential part of increasing your likability.

  The Laws of Self-Image, Perception, and Energy intertwine to help shape mood memory. The energy with which you enter a situation dictates your word choices and body language. These things transmit your energy to other people, which in turn impacts their mood memory of you and the situation. It is a cycle, one that you can consciously affect when you have awareness.

  It’s Not What
You Say, It’s How You Say It: The overall energy you impart often has more of a lasting impression on someone than the specifics of what you said.

  Harness Your Words, Your Body, and Your Energy: The same strategies for word choice, body language, and shifting energy can be applied to creating positive mood memory. How you perceive of and present yourself will directly impact the impression you leave.

  Admire, Appreciate, and Ask for Advice: Articulating what you admire about someone makes them feel understood; asking for advice makes them feel valued and shows that you can be vulnerable, which fosters trust. Both are powerful tools for creating positive mood memory.

  Know When It’s Over: Exit the conversation at the appropriate time to ensure the most positive mood memory and the best opportunities for productively following up.

  9.The Law of Familiarity: People Are Comfortable with Who and What They Know

  The more someone hears from you or about you, the more they will develop feelings of trust in you, and the more their comfort with you will grow. When you regularly extend yourself, in a variety of ways and for a variety of reasons, you allow connections to continue unfolding, which increases familiarity and likability.

  There is, of course, a line between keeping your name in someone’s mind by building positive associations and barraging them to such an extent that they tune you out. Creating mental and physical familiarity enhances likability, and it’s important to develop this whether you are in or out of sight of the other person.

  Build Familiarity: Stay in someone’s mind through social networking applications, notes of well-wishing, personal recommendations, and sending your regards.

  Continue the Conversation: Leverage tech tools and social networking sites to increase your opportunities to interact.

  Keep It Authentic: Harness electronic media tools in ways that seem natural and true to you. Don’t get in someone’s face: be in their circle.

  10.The Law of Giving: Give First, Give Because You Can, Giving Creates Value

  One of the strongest ways to increase likability and foster a connection is to demonstrate that we understand someone else’s needs and are happy to help fulfill them. By drawing on what we’ve learned about the other Laws of Likability, we can apply our creativity to expand the kinds of value we offer others, giving to them in ways that speak directly to what might be useful for them.

  There are so many ways to provide value to another person, and everyone has something to offer. Whether it’s by suggesting resources, creating opportunities for meaningful interactions, or offering feedback and support, we can employ the Law of Giving by seeking out chances to give back. By embracing opportunities to help others, you can recognize all the ways, big and small, that giving adds value to your relationships.

  Do unto Others: There are countless ways to give freely to others, including making introductions to other people they might benefit from knowing, extending invitations to events and activities, sharing resources, doing favors, and giving advice.

  You Can Help: Be proactive about determining how you can help the people in your circle. Create an action plan detailing whom you’re going to help and how to set the Law of Giving in motion. Then do it.

  What Goes Around, Comes Around: You may not always be the explicit recipient of the Law of Giving, but when you give to others more often than not, you reap rewards in return.

  Pay It Forward: Repay kindnesses and generosity bestowed upon you by continuing the giving—extend yourself freely to others to sustain the positive cycle of giving.

  11.The Law of Patience: Give It Time, Things Happen

  Patience produces results. You never know when things will happen, but with patience they do happen. This law is needed to embrace the other laws. You must have patience with yourself and with others—patience to find similarities, build the relationship, establish trust, and create familiarity. Having patience means choosing to do something without expecting to get something back. It means doing it because you can and because you want to. Being patient means knowing and trusting that somewhere in the universe, some person or some good cause is benefiting from the way you have lived the Laws of Likability.

  It Comes Back to You, or It Goes Somewhere Else: You may not know what the results of your generous actions will be, or whether or not you will ever directly benefit from them. That’s okay. Kindness repays kindness, even if it’s not in obvious ways.

  You’ll Get Your Chance: Be patient with yourself. You never know how or when you may be able to bring value to someone else.

  Friendships Grow in Time: Stay open to the possibility that a relationship may evolve over time. Have patience.

  Refresh Your Memory

  Likability enables connection and is often the foundation for lasting connections. You can’t make anyone like you: you can enable them to see what is likable about you.

  The Law of Authenticity: The Real You Is the Best You

  The Law of Self-Image: You Have to Like You First

  The Law of Perception: Perception Is Reality—Yours and Theirs

  The Law of Energy: Energy Is Contagious

  The Law of Curiosity: Curiosity Creates Connections

  The Law of Listening: You Have to Listen to Understand

  The Law of Similarity: People Like People Who Are Like Them

  The Law of Mood Memory: People Are More Apt to Remember How You Made Them Feel Than What You Said

  The Law of Familiarity: People Are Comfortable with Who and What They Know

  The Law of Giving: Give First, Give Because You Can, Giving Creates Value

  The Law of Patience: Give It Time, Things Happen

  What Level Connector Are You?

  “I think anything is possible if you have the mindset and the will and desire to do it and put the time in.”

  Roger Clemens

  I had a theory. When I thought about the Connectors I knew, I recognized certain characteristics about how most of them think and act. As a rule, they were often accepting, trusting, and conscientious, to name just a few traits I noticed. In order to validate (or revise) my theory, I conducted an extensive survey on the attributes that I hypothesized led to a Connector approach to relationships. The survey looked at the attributes of self-esteem, conscientiousness, extraversion, emotional intelligence, trust, locus of control, political skill, and authenticity as well as behaviors about appreciation, community, and responsiveness.

  In addition to the survey, I conducted extensive interviews with different types of Connectors. What I found is that my hunch was true—Connectors do have certain behaviors, ways of doing things and ways of looking at the world, all of which add up to stronger relationships. For example, 98% of Connectors are genuine during their communication with others—they don’t put up walls or feign interest in someone to impress. They’re also highly emotionally intelligent—Connectors are 5.5 times more likely to know their friends’ emotions from their behavior than Non-Connectors.

  The next section of the book will share the seven mindsets of a Connector and how you can adopt them into your way of thinking and interacting.

  Connectors Are Open and Accepting

  Connectors Have Clear Vision

  Connectors Believe in Abundance

  Connectors Trust

  Connectors Are Social and Curious

  Connectors Are Conscientious

  Connectors Have a Generous Spirit

  Whether or not the mindsets are already a part of your nature, you will benefit from the advice of the powerhouse experts and Connectors who share their knowledge throughout the book.

  The likelihood is that all of us have some of these mindsets as part of our approach to people already. My research with the survey revealed that the differentiation on a few of these mindsets isn’t large, which suggests that it’s often a subtle tweak in
your behavior that can take you to the next level of Connector. First, you have to determine which level you are right now. Then you can decide what type you want to be. Perhaps you are already there and simply want to enhance the level that works for you.

  A Connector Defined

  A Connector is someone with a certain way of thinking and behaving, who acts and gets results with ease because they have a level of credibility and trust in and from their network. When they ask for something or make an introduction, it carries weight and people respond.

  In his book The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell states that the most obvious criterion is that Connectors know a lot of people. 1 He further describes a Connector as someone with an impulse to connect as a personality trait. 2 Here is where Gladwell and I differ. Though I agree some people have a natural tendency toward this way of thinking and behaving, I believe anyone can infuse these actions into their interactions and, if not born a Connector, become one.

  In chapter 1, I described the mindset of a Connector as a person who is people- and relationship-focused. That is the foundation, but that definition needs to be expanded. In my survey, I presented the hypothesis that a Connector is defined by the following characteristics:

  knows a lot or a diverse set of people;

  connects other people frequently and for their benefit, not for self-interest;

  likes people and enjoys meeting new people and collects acquaintances;

  displays listening and caring by remembering information about people; and

  seeks to help others in various ways.