Hi! Welcome. You being here means more than you know. Knowing it resonates with you keeps me going. I'm Lavena Xu-Johnson. I write about psychology for founders. Why? Because scaling a business means knowing ourselves first.
Happy midweek, founders,
Every founder event follows the same scripts: what we're building, name, company, and what stage we're at, and once in every 3 sentences, someone throws in some vanity metrics.
Then the other person asks the same questions back, and we trade pitches until someone spots a friend across the bar.
We come into these rooms aiming to make an impression, so we put our effort into how we come across: we work on a sharper one-liner, a better story about the past, all just to give a confident answer to "How's it going?"
In my previous essays, I’ve dived into first impressions and conversations a few times: how to read someone when we first meet them, and how to influence the way others see you, how to criticise without triggering defensiveness and how to invite the answer you need without asking,
Today I am going into the part we cannot escape at any event: asking about the person.
Research shows that asking people about themselves leaves a stronger impression than anything we say about ourselves. The more we ask about someone, the stronger the connection we build.
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Why a personal question builds a connection faster than a pitch
Before getting to the questions, it's worth knowing why asking about someone works so well, whether we're at a networking event or a dinner party.
Harvard neuroscientists Diana Tamir and Jason Mitchell opened their 2012 paper with a striking figure: we spend around 30 to 40 per cent of everything we say telling others about our own experiences. They wanted to know why.
Across five studies, they found that when participants talked about themselves, the brain's reward system became more active, including the nucleus accumbens and ventral tegmental area, the same regions that respond to food and money.
Participants were even willing to give up money for the chance to talk about themselves instead of other people. The researchers also found that part of the value came from simply having someone to share it with.
So when we ask someone a question about themselves and listen to the answer, we're giving them something their brain registers as a reward.
At networking events, what do you usually start with?
The questions that build a bond
Research on what kind of questions create closeness has come a long way.
Questions that go gradually deeper. In 1997, psychologist Arthur Aron and colleagues paired strangers for a 45-minute conversation using a set of questions that became progressively more personal. Pairs who worked through the escalating questions reported greater closeness than pairs who were given small-talk prompts. This is the study behind the "36 questions to fall in love" that went viral years later, though the original was designed to study closeness between strangers in general.
Follow-up questions. Twenty years later, Karen Huang and colleagues at Harvard analysed live conversations across three studies, including online chats and speed dates. People who asked more questions were better liked, and follow-up questions drove most of the effect. The researchers linked this to responsiveness; a follow-up shows that we listened and cared. What’s interesting is that participants didn’t predict that asking questions would make them more likeable.
Deeper questions are less awkward than you think In 2022, Michael Kardas, Amit Kumar and Nicholas Epley conducted a series of experiments, studied shallow or deep conversations between strangers. They found a few interesting results:
Deep conversations were less awkward than they expected them to be
Strangers were more interested and cared more about their stories than they expected
Deep conversations left people more connected and happier than shallow ones.
The researchers proposed that these miscalibrated expectations keep our conversations with new people more superficial than either side would like.
So, what exactly are the questions?
Questions shape relationships; people don’t feel close to us because we speak well, but rather we ask questions that make them feel heard and let them see themselves more clearly.
Here are the types of questions that change how people respond to us:
Questions that invite more answers:
Self-disclosure reciprocity: when we share something personal, the other person tends to share back at a similar level. In Aron’s study, both partners took turns answering each question. So if we ask someone “what’s been the hardest part of this year?”, we should be ready to answer it too (Aron et al., 1997).
Here are some more personal questions to build a stronger bond faster:
What got you into this in the first place?
Did working in this industry change the way you see the world?
Do you have an inspiration that influenced the way you work? Who is it?
What’s the most exciting part about your work?
What would you be doing if you weren’t building this?
What are you looking forward to outside of work?
What's a hard decision you made this year that you're really glad about?
Questions reduce defensiveness (or trigger it)
Wise criticism: in how not to trigger defensiveness when you criticise, we covered Cohen, Steele and Ross’s 1999 study, where criticism was received best when it came with high standards and a clear belief that the person could meet them. Questions work the same way. “Why did you do that?” sounds like an accusation. “What was your thinking here?” sounds like we trust there was a reason.
High-quality listening: in how to talk to someone who won’t take responsibility, we looked at Itzchakov and colleagues’ experiment, where speakers who got undivided, non-judgemental attention became less defensive and more open to other views.
Psychological reactance: when people sense that their freedom to choose is being threatened, they push back, sometimes by doing the opposite of what’s being suggested (psychological reactance, first described by Jack Brehm in 1966). A question that sounds like a test, for example:
“Why aren't you charging more?”
“You should really be on TikTok."
Replace them with:
"How did you decide on your pricing?”
“Where do most of your customers find you?”
Key takeaways
When people talk about themselves, it activates the brain’s reward system.
If you want to be remembered AND have the other person enjoy themselves at an event, ask them very personal questions.
Ask a follow-up before changing topic.
Pick up one thing they just said and ask about it. In Huang’s research, more follow-up questions are better. Strangers care more about what we share and find deep conversations less awkward than we expect.
Be ready to answer our own question.
People share back at the level we share, so if we ask about the hardest part of someone’s year, we should have an answer ready too.
How's the depth of today's edition?
As always, hit reply if something in here hits home.
Until next week,
Lavena
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