When we introduce people to each other, we typically open with titles, companies, schools, affiliations, and achievements. Is it any wonder that connections feel transactional? That data might serve a purpose once a relationship is established, but when we start with it, it invites people to rank, compare, and categorize us before they know anything about us, curtailing the possibility of bonding over shared humanity. In a world full of contact but starving for connection, we need to rethink the introduction itself.
In response to a postpandemic world that intensified the way people first encountered one another through profiles, platforms, and titles, Riaz Patel founded ConnectEffect in 2022 with the aim of restoring human-to-human authentic connection.
ConnectEffect has people participate in deep conversations with strangers for an hour as a studio audience in a TV show format. The mission is to to decrease isolation, alienation, and polarization by building trust among strangers.
When students at Central Lakes College in Brainerd, Minnesota, participated in a ConnectEffect activation and were surveyed, nearly three-quarters said that “people are around me but not with me.” More than 70% said they felt left out. Half said they were unable to reach out and communicate with those around them.
Historically, we met people through introductions that were brokered by families, schools, workplaces, congregations, and mutual acquaintances. Today, introductions happen through electronic profiles, job titles, affiliations, bios, headlines, and algorithms. We’ve reduced introductions to cold sorting devices, not for seeing real humans. We end up forming conclusions before we form relationships.
“Hi, I’m Angela. I’m VP of strategy for a global healthcare company.”
“Hi, I’m Marcus. I went to UCLA and then Stanford and now run a venture-backed startup.”
When these facts arrive too early, they do something subtle and powerful: They establish rank. They invite comparison. Are you more senior than I am? More successful? More impressive? Hierarchy inhibits connection.
If we want better connections or more inclusive work environments, or want to build communities that create common ground, it’s vital to rethink how the connection process begins. Here’s how to get started.
1. Begin with shared humanity, not your biography
We all know the most common question we ask when meeting people for the first time in a professional setting is, “What do you do?” Unfortunately, it’s one of the least effective questions for establishing connection, because it defines someone based on their function and allows us to judge rather than connect.
The questions asked as part of the ConnectEffect event are designed to draw out information that would have been impossible to detect through observation alone: real experience, history, idiosyncrasies, habits, and places of being flawed human beings. “Yes/No” questions can also be telling.
Asking, “Have you ever felt totally out of place after moving to a new location?” can help people discover novel common ground that brings them together across age, class, race, nationality, and profession. “Have you ever pretended to know something at work when you didn’t?” can make people laugh and ease tensions.
When we ask questions like these, we see other people as complex human beings instead of just a category. To be clear, we aren’t suggesting that we deny professional identity altogether. It is simply a matter of postponing that identity long enough to meet the human first.
2. Delay mentioning status indicators
Titles, schools, affiliations, and even jargon can solidify relative position within a group. The problem is they serve as status indicators that establish a social ranking. And once position enters the conversation, comparison shows up right behind. Comparison is useful for hierarchy, but definitely not for connection.
Those comparison judgments have a high cost. They relegate people to mere objects of opportunity, obstacles, or categories before we offer them the dignity of being a human being. Avoiding status indicators creates a more level field, making way for people to truly see one another before hierarchy takes over.
Try creating “status-free openings” to conversations. Ask people to introduce themselves without using a job title, company, school, or any other status-signaling factor. “Let’s not introduce ourselves by saying what it is we do. Instead, tell people your name and one thing that has been on your mind lately.” Or, “Before we get to roles and organizations, tell us about a time in your life that was particularly formative.”
These openings keep us from being performative while helping us be specific. They also level the playing field, which makes it easier for people to identify things that feel familiar in others’ stories.
For example, “I lead product strategy at a fintech company” may unintentionally trigger comparison and judgment, even though it’s technically accurate. Saying, “I’ve been learning that it’s really tough to stop checking my phone around my kids” creates a different, more real connection.
At one ConnectEffect event in Brainerd during political division amid ICE raids in town, Mayor Dave Badeaux reflected, “The introduction itself may be one of the most overlooked forms of community infrastructure.
“The way people meet shapes the way they see each other and ultimately the kind of community they become,” he said.
3. Look for connection before utility
The question that we tend to ask unconsciously when networking is, “How useful is this person to me?” Are they going to give me a job, help me financially, introduce me to someone, or further my interests? But we cannot develop any sort of a genuine relationship by figuring out how useful that person is to us. People know if they are being sized up.
“Where do I see some familiarity in this person?” would make for a better first question. Here’s the difference: Similarity means, “You are like me,” whereas recognition means, “There is something in your life that feels familiar.” Sometimes the most meaningful relationships happen between individuals who do not share much in common but recognize something familiar in their life experience.
A student and a retired individual may have felt loneliness. A CEO and a worker on the shop floor have disappointed their loved ones at least once. A political conservative and a political liberal may feel fear for their children.
We can mitigate the initial sting of difference by finding something familiar. The idea is to prevent difference from being the sole thing we see.
Discussions filled with friction must begin with addressing common concerns, without getting into the conflict itself: “What do we absolutely want to get right when we make this change?” “What do people misunderstand about your team?” In this way we create the conditions for participation to be honest. Common ground lies in discovering common vulnerability.
Not only is this approach helpful to introduce strangers, it’s equally useful to reconnect with those who are known. Whether it’s the place where we work, our school, or our community, it turns out we often confuse familiarity with connectedness. We may share a workplace and still view each other simply through the lens of our job or experience. According to Ryan Stai of Siemens in Minneapolis, speaking after a ConnectEffect event kicked off their conference: “We’re a group that are probably in 60 different countries. We know each other but we don’t know each other . . . and this was an amazing way to immediately make that connection.”
Creating a culture of connection
Since its inception, ConnectEffect has run more than 70 activations with some 5,100 attendees across private companies, higher education institutions, local governments, nonprofits, and community settings. In the Brainerd activation, 97% of participants said the experience made it easier to meet new people, and 92% said it made them more comfortable talking to strangers.
The meta-analysis of the data from all the activations suggests that connection may be more designable than we have previously thought.
Focusing on just the introduction may feel like spotlighting an otherwise insignificant moment. But when you repeat insignificant moments thousands of times on teams, in classrooms, and in communities, those moments become culture. And in a world full of contacts that in reality are starved for connection, redefining how we meet one another may be one of the simplest and most powerful places to begin finding that connection.
