How to bond with people

In this post you’ll find a few strategies you can implement today to make it easier to bond with people in business, and in life in general.

The ability to bond with people is one of the most valuable things today on the business world and in life in general. We tend to think that this is either born with us or not, and the ones who possess this gift are the ones who are labeled as charismatic.

We are all born with to some degree the ability to connect with other people, and when this is not the case, we see a person struggling through life, and more likely to fall into depression. We all need people to move up in business, and in life in general, and knowing how to create that connection with strangers is a very valuable tool to have on your tool belt.

Knowing how to bond with people can be viewed as both innate or as a skill. The truth as that as far as skill is concerned, the ability to bond with people can be said to be a skill that not only can be learned, can also be mastered. Below are a few things you can do today, to do just that.

1. Listen

I know, I know,…, we’ve all heard that listening to people is important if we want to create a connection with them, and just like most important things in life which are repeated over and over again, listening is to some extent important to increase your chances of bonding with the person next to you. We are all prone to attempt to make others listen to what we have to say, and the reason why this happens is in part due to the fact that there is nothing more interesting in life to us, than our own lives. This is even true when we admit that someone has a more interesting life than ours, and for these cases, the way our life is boring/uninteresting is more interesting to us, than the way someone else’s life is interesting. The problem is that most humans apart from their differences are quite alike. We are all self-interested beings, and this can quickly become an issue, when we unconsciously try to force others into listening to what we have to say, while they are trying to do the same. The solution for this problem is quite simple: listen more than you talk.

When we find ourselves caught up in listening someone else’s life story for an hour, we feel uncomfortable, and we are more likely to try to void that person in the future. However, something different happens when we find our life stories to be the focus of someone else’s interest. We hate to be forced to be interested in other people’s lives, but we love, when someone is positively interested in ours. When this happens we are more likely to want that person around for longer and more often, and before we notice, the secrets we once promised not to tell nobody, find their way of slipping out from our lips without any effort being made from the part of the other person. So, if there was only one thing we could do to make it easier to bond with other people, that thing would be listening attentively when someone talks about herself, and repress the urge to either tell a better story, or talk about ourselves. In a world in which pretty much everybody is self involved, listening to what they have to say is probably the best strategy to win over their hearts.

2. Add into their lives

In business the one thing that makes a costumer become a fan is the fact that the business, in whatever shape of form it presents, adds some value to the life of the costumer. Scams might work in the short term, but are definitely not a long term strategy if you want to be successful in the long run. By adding into the lives of others, whether they are your business partners, costumers or potential friends, you make others dependent on you, which is in part what the book 48 laws of power by Robert Greene teaches us. This dependency will not be of physical or resources kind, but more of the emotional one. For a person to want you in their lives they need to be aware of the fact that their lives would at the very least be less enjoyable without you on it. Examples of this are everywhere, and the one that mimics this point the best is the one in which lovers who wouldn’t think of each other as such, when set apart from each other for whatever reason, notice that their overall level of happiness is greatly diminished. In other words, people need to able to miss you to some degree if they are to like you, and they can only miss you if you add value to their lives.

3. Cultivate empathy

Empathy has been a subject of talk in many circles in the last few years, and just like most things which are widely talked about, there is some level of importance into it. Empathy, for the ones who don’t know if nothing more than the ability to feel what others are feeling, and scientists believe that this is what might be lacking on psychopaths. Feeling what others feel means simulating what others might be going through in our heads and bodies, and this is a very important tool for our ability to judge how we should behave, and how people might be thinking about us. It also helps us adjust our behavior towards the people around us, and to fit in on the social norms defined way before we were born, so we can function in society.

Empathetic people are the ones who also tend to have the most nourishing relationships, since on the moments in which your partner or friend is going through a rough period you feel for them, and they know you feel for them. For a moment you both share an emotion and a mental state, creating as a result a form of what hypnotists call Rapport.

4. Get better at giving advice

Another way to make it easier to connect with people that arises from tip #2 and can work well with tip # 3 is the ability to give good advice to people. Whenever we feel even the smallest bit comfortable with someone, we become more prone to tell them about our problems, and this is an amazing opportunity to make others close to us. If you think about it, more often than not, if not always, is the case that the people who are known for giving good advice and having life experience are the ones who tend to have a large following of people, who would love to have them around at all times. Better than a friend, you’re looked at as a leader to be followed. This doesn’t mean that you should at all costs give advice you’re not entitled to give. The reason for this is that giving advice to a person can be a double edged sword. On one end, if it works and it does make their lives better, you’re looked up to and respected to higher degree. If it doesn’t work however, depending on the person, the results could range from the mere distrust we get from a person who told us to do the wrong thing, to the hate that comes when someone hurts us deeply.

So, to harness the power of the advice, the best and pretty much obvious strategy is to become more knowledgeable. For this, books, courses, and mentors are things you should be in contact with, if you are to increase the number of subjects you know about.Notice that Knowing more is not only good to be able to give good advice to others, but also to improve our own lives. “The more you learn, the more you earn” said Warren Buffet, and he is one of the wealthiest persons on the planned arguably because of this kind of mentality.

Sometimes even when you know what you’re talking about your advice doesn’t work, and to prevent the problems that could arise from this, another strategy is to give the advice as something you learned from someone else, if you learned it from someone else. We can argue that for every advice anyone gives, no matter how experienced, more than 80% of it is not original, they learned it from someone else. Even Issac Newton, the brilliant mathematician and physicist admitted once not knowing everything when he said: “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.” By pointing who you learned it from, you reduce the respect/admiration/appreciation you get if the advice does work, but also reduce the possible hate that could arise if it doesn’t. One thing you could to is to also cultivate the desire to simply help people for no ulterior motive, and this can take you a long way into creating better professional and personal relationships.

5. Get Better at reading people

One very important aspect of human interaction is the array of emotions and unspoken reactions to each others behavior that goes on when two or more people interact.

I’m sure we all are aware of a person or two who is completely clueless about what the people around them are thinking of them or the environment in general. Because of that they are also more likely to behave inappropriately, or say the wrong thing, and are usually the ones accused of what we call “going too far “. Maybe you’re that person, and if this is the case, paying more attention to not only what people say but also how they might actually be feeling or meaning is a must. As the “The God Father” book character Vito Corleone once said: “Its not just what is said that matters, you also need to know what is meant”.

Emotions and body language are two powerful aspects of human behavior which unlike our inner thoughts can’t be faked or lied about. When we feel anger or love, as much as we would like to hide them, this effort is almost in vain, since more often than not people around us are able to tell what we feel. The ones who historically have an easy time on hiding their emotions are psychopaths, since they are the ones who are said to have no emotions in the first place.

Just like most points above, this one can also be learned and perfected. We tend to think that the ability to read people is either born with us or not. There might be some truth to this, but if you think about it, the ability to read and tell what others are feeling is more a matter of observation that it is of intuition. One reason why we fail to read other peoples emotions and intentions is that we are more often than not so much into our own heads. We are worried about our own thoughts, feelings and dreams, that we forget to pay attention to the people around us. It’s no wonder that people who have passion towards people in general, are the ones who are able to better read their peers emotions and better connect with them.

By mastering the art of reading other people we gain the power to tailor speech and behavior to their needs and desires, as well as the ability to know whether what we said, or plan to say will be the wrong thing, or was the wrong thing to say or do. The beauty of this, and pretty much any other social matter is that there is a wealth of room to practice. People are literally everywhere, and for this, specially if you’re shy, there is no need to interact with anyone. You just have to observe.

Summary

Just like most things in life, connecting with people is a skill you can master. It’s true that some of us get it easier, maybe for their smaller degree of anxiety around people, but the idea that this is more of a God given gift that only a few of us are born with is far from the truth. Mastering the art of conquering peoples hearts will not only improve your life as a person, but also as a businessman/woman, by making it easy for you to get new partnerships, and getting your wills to become reality, and not just dreams.

It is all about knowledge and experience 😉

How to bond with people