Thesis on how to build connections in 1500 words.
The power of social is that it let’s people self-organize and pull in the resources in order to accomplish things. Open communication leads to a lot of right behavior that motivates people. Employees can see the bigger picture, they can understand, they get purpose in what they are doing because everything is transparent.
Social depends on 2 things :
- Effective Communication.
- Magic Connection.
Effective communication contributes to the 25% of the relationship and bonding whereas Magic Connection is accountable for making conversations historic. The connect gives the feeling to the listener which makes it unforgettable in the memory repository.
In order to understand this better, let us go dig a little deeper on how artists, magicians, stage performers, and comedians do it. They all are bunch of people who are able to do it absolutely on the most precise level with their audience. They connect with their audience instantly and the underlying part is that connecting with completely new strangers, people whom they have never met in their life before.
If we take an example of a magician trying to do a trick what we can observe is a same experience with 2 different perspectives. After the magician does the trick the audience see the act and feel hopefully like wonder, maybe amusement or perhaps frustration but for the magician the trick is focus. Magicians have unique dilemma, the magician is the person who is not able to see the magic, because he knows how the trick works. And that knowledge of the secret is a limiting perspective. So the magician should take on wholly and completely the on point view of audience in order to create illusions. This is a technique called perspective taking.
In theory it feels simple but in practice it can be incredibly difficult to do. Now coming closer perspective taking has 2 different variations : Visual Perspective and Emotional Perspective. The former deals with observing the way people see things and the latter deals with recording the emotional outcomes that people go through after it. On the whole together it forms an experience.
The General Phenomenon :
The biggest mistake people do is that they feel visual perspective and emotional perspective are to be observed parallel together which is in part of a experience.
Experience => VP + EP they feel that experience is divided into VP & EP.
The Right Approach :
Light travels faster than sound. Similarly here experience is an event of continuous process combines together connecting them backwards.
Emotional Perspective + Visual Perspective => Experience
Now applying perspective taking to the above expression you can understand that emotional perspective when triggered and supported with visual perspective leads to an unforgettable experience.
Note: the underlying fact that people miss-out and pass-over is that these are linear processes and not cyclic process.
The above sections of effective communication and magic connection from the article have been taken from Brian Millers talk
The Magic Process to hack connect :
the cobra scene from movie karate kid
If you have seen karate kid movie before then you might be familiar with this scene where the woman seems to the kid imitating the cobra, here the master teacher comes and tells the kid that it is the highest form of mind control and requires lot of dedication to be able to do it. The master tells the kid that the woman is not imitating the snake is imitating the woman. The magic process lies in this, that is the magic process to connect to anyone.
the magic process to hack connect (pic credits: Greg Rakozy)
The process is a linear process and in a single flow there should not be an in-order chain break, the next process should not start before the first one is completed fully.
- Observation : it means the process of perspective taking and now let us come to the point of emotional perspective(EP). So if you want to know the emotional perspective of someone, one of the simplest way to know it, ask. ASK Questions ! Too often we are afraid to ask people questions because we feel it will somehow be rude or somehow they won’t want to answer, but we underestimate of people’s willingness to answer our questions. For example in the previous mentioned scene from the karate kid movie after the perspective taking on the cobra scene, the kid asks question to his master “ why is the woman imitating the cobra ? ”
- Absorb not analyze ! this is the most crucial part where people get screwed up. The common action that everyone does after observation is analyze the situation in-order to come to an end. A person needs to show the property of water absorb as much as you can without analyzing it, because you cannot connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backward. The moment you start analyzing your mind takes it to somewhere else and you loose the major data points. The purpose is to just record the data points, not access them. For example if you are near a silent clear pond and you see down at the water, the first action is that you look at the water and you can see yourself , the second thing that happens after this visual taking is that you feel something. You may be amazed, might be happy or something else. But if you start analyzing you will loose the sense of understanding of emotions and might get into any weird thoughts like why the color of water, why reflection etc ….
Now if you are going to learn this, it is important not to simply ask questions, but listen to the answers and listen to understand. Don’t just listen to respond or to reply, this is where people go wrong most in their life. Too often we listen to people only with the intention of coming up with something clever to say. Have you ever asked somebody for their name and instantly forgotten it? do you know why we forget people’s names? because we are thinking how do we say our’s ! or thinking something else . The problem is that we are not listening, we are at our end of the conversation only.
3. Reflect : the trick starts from here, after you absorb properly you need to reflect, you need to reflect the traits that you have observed in-order in able to connect to the people. The phenomenon of opposites attract each other doesn’t work here. If the person is fun loving crack a joke, if the person is philosophical discuss discuss life, if the person is foodie talk food, if the person is adventurous talk moments and so on accordingly. When that happens you feel like I understand you . And when you feel understood, it develops a trust psychologically and we make a connection.
Biologically the subconscious mind is protected by the logical brain and when you try to hack the logical brain you might mess-up. The subconscious brain accepts anything that reaches to it in any form, it is the part that gives or triggers feelings, creates bonds, controls everything. So the moment you reflect it’s true form of behavior the logical brain senses it as an known phenomenon and gives you the access to the subconscious brain of other.
The reflect is the most toughest part of the trick to do, this is something that needs to be practiced and it can only be developed by practice and experimentation. The key thing to be noted here is that you need to reflect back their own self as they are and not act. I repeat you need to reflect not act.
4. Engage : it’s not enough to care for somebody, it’s not enough to understand them. They have to feel understood, they have to feel cared about. Now this is a place where the part of magic connections ends . From here you get access to the sub conscious brain and effective communication does the part after this . The engagement is required after the connect to maintain retention. This retention is what leads to long term activities or long term engagement.
the cobra and woman example explanation.
The Connection Graph :
by Varun Satyam
5. Analyze : The analysis is something that needs to be done on the experience created by the 4 phases before in different scenario in order to shape a parenthesis and master the art. So the analysis part is what i’m leaving it on you because it is the most easy part to do on top of various experiences collected.
A to do Analysis :
the email I wrote to Richard Branson and he replied
you can go through the mail I wrote to Richard Branson which he replied. Do your own analysis by applying the processes that are being mentioned above. Please share your analysis in comments so that it is public for everyone and we might get to observe a lot of different perspective of people on it.