How to start a conversation in a business meeting? This is a really good question to answer because otherwise we’re going to be twiddling our thumbs. I want to do something different. I actually want to share with you a virtual keynote that I gave at a big conference global called trend lab. And in this keynote. I share 2 really mind-blowing stats. 3 specific tools that can help you have better conversations in business meetings and one story that will make you cringe a little bit. Enjoy the video.
You know, we show up to virtual conferences, summits, events, in person summits, conferences, events for content. Right? We show up to get the latest trends, the latest ideas hear from experts in the field. Oftentimes at the end of the conference, the most impactful meaningful part are the connections that we walk away with. All the connections that happen in between the conference.
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I’m really excited to be in cyberspace with you today. Trend Miner’s done a phenomenal job partnering with conversation starter to create a platform for you to be able to connect rather than just consume information.
I’m Chad Littlefield. Before I tell you anything that I know, I would love to know what is something you know really well? You know, collectively, everybody watching this right now is way smarter than just me. I want to know. What do you know? In the comments, feel free to share what is something that you know really well? And one of the reasons that i wanted to start off with this is the first and primary reason I think making digital connections is so immensely valuable. That is this concept that everybody you will ever meet knows something you don’t.
Everyone you’ll ever meet knows something you don’t.
For any of you who are familiar with Bill Nye, The Science Guy, that’s a pretty lovely quote coming from him. What I know really well to take my own medicine and answer my own question is “How do you ask powerful questions to create conversations that matter?” And so, what I hope to do today is share a couple stats that might blow your mind.
3 really concrete tools that you can use to make your conversations better.
The first stat and my question to you just to ponder is, “How many questions do you think we ask per day?” And let’s actually break that down. How many questions do you think kids between the ages of 3 and 5 ask per day? On average kids ask 300 to 400 questions per day. And any of you who are parents know this quite well. How about adults? How many questions do you think adults ask per day? 6 to 12. 6 to 12 questions per day. And I’m assuming some of those are “When are you coming home? And what’s for dinner?” And some other very mundane things. Whoa! What happened?
There’s this national international curiosity gap. Now, I’m not advocating that we go back to 300 to 400 questions. But I am going to suggest that if you want to make really meaningful connections that knowing how to ask really great questions is a phenomenal tool to help get you there. What I want to unpack today is how do we ask questions? Because think about you know when you typically whether it’s virtually or in person, when you meet another person for the very first time and you can ask any question you can say, anything you want. You’re meeting this person for the very first time, what questions do we typically ask? How are you? Where are you from? What do you do? Even in a room full of a lot of smart people, a virtual room full of a lot of smart people, we tend to only ask one of 3 or 4 questions when we meet somebody for the first time.
This is interesting, We could ask anything but we tend to ask one of 3 or 4 very safe questions. I think the reason for that is that our brains are wired for that, right? If you’ve ever gone to a wedding, nobody walks into a wedding and says, “Oh, who do I know least in the room and can I go sit down next to them?” No. We go we1 Our default is to say who do we know most, what’s most comfortable and to gravitate toward that.
I’m going to invite us as you use conversation starter throughout the conference. And in your conversations moving on beyond trend lab. I’m going to invite you to think about what would happen if you changed your question count and you ask 7 questions instead of 6 in a day. What would happen if you followed your natural genuine curiosity?
Before I show these 3 tips, why? What’s the point? Organizationally.Google is a company that really likes data. It’s a company filled with engineers and very left-brained folks and they love data. And a few years ago, they launched this giant research internal research project to unpack and uncover what are the characteristics of the highest performing teams at google. The number 1 characteristic that they found was not the degree or… It wasn’t the level of technical experience in the group. It wasn’t the perfect personality Myers-Briggs blend. The number one characteristic of high performing teams at google was the degree of psychological safety in that team. Which is really PHD academic term for interpersonal trust.
“Can I be myself at work? Can I share my ideas and trust that they’ll be.. Even if people disagree that they get constructed rather than smashed down?” I would argue that if we extrapolate that data a little bit, that the number one characteristic of really high performing conversations really meaningful conversations is often the degree of psychological safety in that conversation.
What can you do to create that? 3 ideas that come from the book Ask Powerful Questions Create my Conversations That Matter. If you look the the book and the tools and what I my work is structured into this tier. Wouldn’t it be really convenient if you could just snap your fingers and make the person that you were meeting with feel like you were willing to know them, like you saw them, like you heard them, you got them and you were ultimately with them. But especially as an engineer, if you consider yourself any bit of socially awkward and conversation is just like a bit of a slog for you, right? This is pretty hard to create actually.
Flipping it around are a series of tools that i want to unpack. I want to give you the first 3 spark notes version.
The first one is intention. Intention is a really interesting word. And the Latin root the word intention actually means to stretch. I love that concept. Because I think an intention is very different than an objective in a conversation or then a mission or a purpose. If you enter a networking conversation with the objective to get something from another person, that person is going to feel like garbage. The idea of an intention and stretching an intention. I think a really great intention stretches over the needs of everybody in the conversation and not just you. It serves more than just your needs. My invitation or the tool here is in your conversations, as you’re using conversation starter and going through your work life, the tool here is to get clear about your intention and share it with the person that it affects.
Now, this is a little bit unnatural for us because very often, we have intentions that might affect other people but very rarely do we actually share those intentions with the people that they affect. When we don’t do that, that’s actually manipulation. When you’re in a networking conversation and you’re wanting to get a deal, you’re wanting to get some information, you’re trying to get them to do something that you want without necessarily telling them. That’s manipulation. My invitation is before you split out into conversation starter, which by the way, just a little digital inception here. Conversation starter is going to look like this.
This, I printed out a web page. Whoa! Find this a little pink button wherever your digital spheres are to set up a profile on conversation starter so that you can be paired algorithmically with the right people to be in conversation and connection with. And my invitation is when you get to those, get clear about what is your intention or the way that conversations starter phrase is. What is your request? And share that with the person that affects. Share that with the person that you’re actually talking to.
Tip number 2, one of my absolute favorite questions. “What are you curious about right now?” The most intelligence from the most intelligent to the least intelligent human beings on the planet, people are really good at picking up on natural genuine curiosity. Kids, right? 300 to 400 questions a day have lots of natural curiosity. Adults 6 to 12 questions per day. Somewhere along the line we’ve lost our curiosity. Tip number 2 is to follow your natural genuine curiosity based on what someone is sharing with you.So the best way to trick your brain into listening really effectively is to hear what somebody else is saying… Stop thinking about yourself and all your experience and how you can relate to that. Just think about what are you curious about right now? Alright what are you curious to know about that person right now? And follow up with a sentence that ends in a question mark, not a period. Ask a question. It’s somewhere along the line as adults we learned the pattern of you speak then I speak. You speak then I speak.
And it’s a really great tool in conversation to have you speak, I ask. You speak, I speak, you ask. To weave in questions throughout. Cool. So, follow your natural genuine curiosity based on what you’re hearing somebody say.
The third and final tool that I’ll drop with you today I want to share in the form of a story. If used to work for this organization called world and conversation and my job was to sit down and have conversation, facilitate and lead conversations with strangers from very different backgrounds about very difficult topics of conversation.
My job was to break the ice and make that as least awkward as possible and create a really meaningful conversation.90 minutes. Picture a group of people sitting down in a circle talking to each other. Sometimes about race, relations, politics, long-term conflict. Things that are not typically discussed especially with strangers.
In order for that conversation to go well, going back to that google study, we’ve got to have a high degree of psychological safety in order to make that really work. I was teaching a bunch of other facilitators how to do this. And I don’t think you can teach people how to ask questions without actually experiencing it. We stopped the workshop. It was a middle of a 3-hour workshop. We stopped the workshop and we said, “You’ve got 3 minutes to use the tools we’ve shared with you about getting clear about your intention and sharing it and following your natural curiosity to build a relationship of trust with 3 strangers. Go.” Those 20 students in the room were kind of freaking out. They were not interested in doing this exercise. I don’t believe in asking somebody to do something I’m not willing to do myself. On this particular time, I was like, “All right. If I’ve got to do this, I’m going to run a quick errand.” I head downtown to a convenience store. I pick out a couple items that I want. And as I’m checking out, there’s a woman who’s has bright colored tattoos all over her neck. And I’m like “Oh!” I teach this stuff. I’m going to follow my natural curiosity. I get to the front and I say, “I’m just so curious.
What’s the story behind your tattoos?” And she goes, “I like the colors.” Oh! Right? Did not build a relationship with trust. We get back to the room. All the students come back, the energy in the room is electric because everybody’s just had 3 experiences, successes or failures aiming to build a relationship a trust. One student quiets everybody down he’s like, “Whoa! I have to share this first. We go to debrief this.
I’ve got to share this first. I was ticked when you asked me to do this. I did not want to do this.” I said, “If I have to do this, I might as well get something done while I’m at it. And so i walked down to on the convenience store. I picked out a couple items that I really, really needed. And I got to the front and there was a cashier wearing bright colored tattoos all over her neck. And I looked at her and I said, I’m just curious I have to ask, how annoying does it get when people ask you about your tattoos?” She just starts gushing with information. And so she starts gushing and she… And what she says… She specifically said, “Oh, my gosh. I have no idea. Sometimes I wish I never got them. I feel like wearing a turtleneck in the summer to cover them up. In fact, there was just this guy in here asking me, what’s the story behind your tattoos?”
My question to you to share the final the third and final tip with you is what was the difference between his success and my failure? I would argue that it was empathy. It was in that moment that she was able to put at least one of his feet into somebody else’s shoes. As you dive into your conversations through conversation starter, think about what is somebody else wanting, caring about needing and be able to ask follow your natural curiosity rooted in empathy for the other person? Because there’s a very powerful shift that happens in conversation when we stop thinking about this person and we start thinking about the other person.
I’m Chad Littlefield. It was awesome to share some time in cyberspace with you. Go create some conversations that matter.