How to Quickly Build Relationships With Anyone | The Secret to Winning Friends and Influencing People
No matter what field you work in, your success is limited by your ability to connect with people.
Which is why I'm gonna give you a proven framework that makes building relationships and networking feel effortless.
Stay tuned.
I'm Doug Howard. I'm a licensed structural engineer and engineering manager, and my biggest passion is helping engineers like you elevate your life personally and professionally.
This YouTube channel is dedicated to teaching engineers how to build all those non-engineering skills you need to take control of building the career you want and deserve. Subscribe to my channel if you don't wanna miss out on any of these tools, insights, or techniques.
Today I'm gonna explain how to quickly win people over and make them feel more comfortable with opening up to you. And I'm gonna give you a simple five step framework that you can use to effortlessly build relationships with anyone.
Importance of Relationships
Let's start with why building relationships is one of the most powerful skills that you can develop.
Knowing how to quickly build relationships with people is one of the most valuable skills there is because it impacts every area of your life.
In your personal life, it's your way to make new friends, broaden your perspective, and gain exposure to new experiences that you wouldn't typically seek out on your own. Professionally, it's the fastest and most effective way to build rapport and establish trust with your peers, your boss, and other people that can impact your career.
This is important because even in a field like engineering, technical skills alone aren't enough to nail the job interview, earn a raise, or negotiate a promotion.
It's for one simple reason, decisions about you and your career aren't made through objective logic. These decisions are made by people, but people are biased. They make decisions based on intangible things like their emotions and how you make them feel. This is why job opportunities don't always get awarded to the most qualified candidate.
You could have all the technical skills in the world and be the number one expert in your field, but if the hiring manager doesn't feel comfortable with taking a chance on you, none of those technical skills really matter.
But when you know how to quickly build relationships with people, you can use this to your advantage because when you give people a good feeling, it makes them more comfortable with you. They wanna see you succeed, they're more willing to overextend themselves to help you. They're more willing to overlook your flaws, mistakes, lack of experience or skills, and they actually become more willing to take a chance on you. But how do you do this? How do you give people a good feeling about you? The easiest way to build relationships with someone is to start by finding a common interest.
Why Networking Feels Fake
Something that you and the other person have in common. It could be a shared experience or a background, or maybe it's something that you're both passionate about and this is hard to do because people don't just volunteer this type of personal information about themselves right away. In fact, when you first meet someone, both people are wearing a mask, you're showing a version of yourself to the other person, and the other person is also showing a version of themself to you.
As the other person begins to like you and trust you, they slowly begin taking off their mask by showing you more of the true version of themself. However, if they're undecided about you, then they keep that mask on longer. When both people keep their masks on, it creates an impasse where neither person opens up.
This is why networking feels so fake and inauthentic. It's like a poker game where nobody wants to be the first person to show their cards. There's an easy way to get around this because deep down, most people want to open up to other people and show you who they really are.
We're hardwired to crave connection to other people. We want to be understood. We wanna feel like we belong and we're part of a community. If you want to get the other person to open up and show you more of their true colors, all it takes is just a little nudge.
Winning People Over
Dale Carnegie talks about this in his famous book called How to Win Friends and Influence People, which is basically the Bible on people skills. But in his book, he comes at it from a different angle.
Carnegie says that one of the best and easiest ways to make a positive first impression with anyone is to basically just ask them questions about themself and continue letting them talk about themself.
As you're doing this, you should do as little talking as possible, and instead just continue asking them questions about themself. In Carnegie's book, he talks about the idea of asking people questions about themselves and letting them talk about themselves. Because it makes the other person feel important, it makes them feel heard and understood.
He shares a story about how he went to a party and introduced himself to a stranger, then he chatted with that stranger for about an hour. During the entire hour, he didn't say a single thing about himself other than his name. All he did was ask questions about the other person, and he showed a genuine interest in what they had to say, but when he left the party, the other person he was talking to wouldn't stop raving about Dale Carnegie to all of their friends for weeks. They would go on and on saying how Dale Carnegie was one of the nicest, smartest, most interesting people they had ever met, he literally did nothing more than ask questions about the other person.
I know this works because I've used it many times and it never fails because unfortunately, most people are pretty self-absorbed and they love to hear themselves talk. This is a simple but powerful method for influencing people and winning them over, but the purpose of this episode is about building relationships.
If you want me to create more episodes about how to actually influence people and win them over, let me know by hitting that like button. We're talking about relationship building and you don't wanna build relationships with people who are self-absorbed. You wanna build relationships with people you actually like. People who can help you. People you can learn from, people you enjoy spending time with, and people you have shared common interests with.
Which is why I put my own little spin on this Dale Carnegie principle when I'm applying it towards building relationships.
Building on the idea that people like to talk about themselves and that they want to share who they really are with you. You can ask a series of strategic questions that gets the other person to open up to you. Questions that get the other person to take off their mask.
By doing this, it creates opportunities for you to learn more about the other person. It also gives you the chance to gauge whether or not you like this person so that you can decide if you're interested in learning more about them.
Questioning to The Core
But you can't just ask any questions. There's very specific types of questions to ask, and you need to ask them in a specific order, which is why I created this framework called Questioning To The Core.
I call it questioning the decor because it's almost like digging to the core of the earth. You start at the surface with questions that are pretty basic and easy to answer, then you gradually dig deeper, asking questions that give you more insights into who the person is and what they're all about.
Along the way, use their answers to gauge things like, do you like this person? Do you find this person interesting? Do you think this person would help you? Do you think this person could help you? Are you interested in learning more about this person? As you're asking the other person these questions don't just rattle off questions quickly, like you're a journalist at a press conference.
Make sure you're fully engaged in listening to their response. Look for opportunities to show genuine enthusiasm in what they're talking about. The whole idea here is that people naturally want to feel heard, understood, and appreciated. But unlike the Carnegie story where you're just listening and making the other person the center of attention the whole time, without really saying anything about yourself, Questioning To The Core exercise allows you to also show your true colors too.
After they answer your questions, share your thoughts on what the other person had to say. Tell them what you thought was most interesting about it, then share your answer to the question that you ask them as well.
You're using these questions to get the other person to open up and to find things that you have in common with them. Once you find something that you have in common with them, redirect the conversation and jump on that topic right away. I'll give you some examples for how to do this as I walk you through questioning to the core and how it works.
Layer 1 - Breaking Ground
First, there's five layers of questions. I call the first questions layer, Breaking Ground Questions.
This is your starting point after you've introduced yourself. These are questions where you're not digging very deep. You're just poking at the surface trying to loosen the soil before you dig any deeper. The goal is to get the other person more comfortable with talking to you. The other goal is for you to get comfortable with talking to them.
Do this by asking easy and safe questions that aren't too personal, heavy, or controversial. Instead, there are questions that pretty much anyone will feel okay and comfortable with sharing their open and honest answers to. I recommend focusing these questions around their job with questions like, what's the most exciting part of your job? What's the best piece of career advice you've ever gotten? What was your first job? What do you think is the ideal work life balance? Do you have a mentor? These are great warmup questions to help you and the other person get more comfortable with each other.
As they're answering your questions, follow up with why questions, like, why do you find that part of your job so exciting? Why was that advice so valuable? Why did you choose that as your first job? Why is work-life balance so important to you? Why questions are a great way to quickly learn about the other person, because when you understand the why behind a person doing something, you gain a deep insight into who they actually are and what motivates them, which is super powerful.
It also gives you the opportunity to gauge if you actually like this person and if you wanna learn more about them. If you do, continue to the next layer of questions.
Layer 2 - Best and Worst
The next layer, I call Best And Worst Questions. This is where you begin digging below the surface, but not too deep.
These questions are focused, fun, and positive. The goal is to learn more about what this person's preferences are, their likes, dislikes, pet peeves, and personal favorites.
It gives you the chance to start learning more about the person, and as you're listening to their answers, you can look for common interests that you share with this person.
Here's some examples of these questions. What's the first crazy thing you did when we started working from home during Covid? What's one place you visited that you never want to return to? What's the best TV show right now? If you could eat only one food for the rest of your life, what would it be? If you could only bring three things with you on a deserted island, what would you pick? What's your biggest pet peeve? What is your favorite movie of all time?
Now on the surface these are just fun, silly, dumb questions and conversation topics. But what you're really doing is you're searching to find something you have in common with the other person, or something that you find interesting and admirable about the other person.
Again, as they're answering your questions, follow up with more why questions? Why is that your favorite movie? Why is that your biggest pet peeve and so on.
In the interest of keeping this episode length reasonable, I'm only gonna give a few examples of each type of question. If you want more examples along with a nice, clean summary of how Questioning To The Core works. Download my free pdf.
Layer 3 - Friendly Debate
At this point, if both of you are comfortable and enjoying the conversation, go ahead and start digging a little deeper with the third layer of questions, which is Friendly Debate Questions.
Up until this point, the questions you're asking are pretty narrow, meaning you'll get a pretty focused answer. The goal of Friendly Debate Questions is to get a fun topic going where both of you can throw in your opinions and allow the conversation to begin taking a life of its own.
Do this by asking further thoughts on a broad, open-ended question that doesn't really have a right or wrong answer. Here's a few examples.
Would you rather live without the internet or without bathing?
What was the best decade for music?
Who's the most overrated celebrity?
What's the worst seat on a plane?
Are you a dog or cat person?
How do you think Game of Thrones should have ended?
What do you think is the most annoying thing that people do in public?
These types of questions should spark a fun and engaging conversation around the topic.
But if it doesn't right away, just follow up with a why question to get the momentum going. I wanna make sure to emphasize something here. These are supposed to be friendly debate questions. The topics should be fun and light. Stay away from divided topics and controversial issues.
If remembering all these questions seems a bit overwhelming, then you should take my free mini memory course called The Memory Manual for Engineers. It teaches you how to organize your thoughts and how to engage unused areas of your brain so that you can mentally store more information and access it when you need it.
If you're interested in learning more about it, just click on the link HERE.
Layer 4 - Origin-Personality-People
The next layer of questions is called O P P, Origin Personality People. This is where you begin connecting with the person on an even deeper level by asking questions that are a little deeper and a little broader.
Questions that are designed to make the other person open up to you a little bit more. By encouraging them to reflect on their values, feelings, memories, and personal experiences. Many times the other person has never thought about these types of questions before. So they may need to think about these questions for a few moments before giving you their response.
If they do, that's great because it means you're getting their genuine and authentic reaction. Here's some examples of these types of questions. What makes you laugh the most? What's your favorite thing about yourself? What did teachers used to say about you on your report card, and is it still true today? What is something you would never guess just by looking at you? What's the best compliment you've ever received? What do you want other people to say about you at your funeral? Have you ever made a decision that's changed your life?
As they answer these types of questions, they'll most likely share a personal story or experience with you.
Listen closely and search for things that you have in common with their background. When you find something, be sure to share it with them. If you can't find anything you have in common with them, then search for things that you find interesting about their background, and ask more questions about it. For example, if the person tells you that they lived abroad in Europe for two years, ask them questions like, why did they move to Europe? What did they do while they were in Europe? What did they like the most about living abroad? What did they like the least about it? And why did they eventually return home?
As you can see, there's a lot of ways you can go with these follow-up questions. Their answer to each one of these questions gives you a lot more insight into the other person's natural personality, background, and their history. It makes the other person feel important, which ultimately gets them to like you, and it makes them more comfortable with opening up to you.
Layer 5 - Core Questions
If they're opening up to you, you should feel comfortable with moving on to the fifth and final layer of questioning to the core. Of course the fifth and final layer is called Core Questions.
Start with safer core questions like,
What's on your bucket list?
What does your dream life look like?
What do you feel the most passionate about?
What do you like to spend your free time doing?
These questions are still pretty safe, but they do dig closer to the person's core values because you get to learn about the other person's hopes, dreams, and fears.
If you feel comfortable with digging deeper, start asking deep core questions like, have you ever broken up with a friend and why? Who's the most important person in your life and why? What's your biggest regret in life? What are you most afraid of?
Before I forget, if you have any questions on Questioning To The Core, be sure to let me know in the comments.
Before I wrap I want to explain a few things related to how you should use this framework.
BONUS TIP 1
First, the purpose of this framework isn't to just ask questions for the sake of asking questions, so don't just run through a checklist of questions like a journalist at a press conference.
Keep the main goal of quickly building a relationship with this person front of mind, remember that you're simply using these questions to get to know the other person and to get them to feel more comfortable with opening up to you.
When they're answering your questions, make sure you're truly listening and make it clear to the other person that you value what they have to say.
Use why questions as a follow up to gain more insights about their answers.
BONUS TIP 2
Second, this isn't fake it until you make it. In order for this to work, you have to be authentic and you have to show a genuine interest in the other person.
The easiest way to do this is by entering the conversation with a curious mindset towards the other person.
You're not trying to judge, evaluate, or assess this person. Instead, you're just curious about the other person and you wanna learn more about them. To help shift your mindset, go into the conversation asking yourself this, what can I learn from this person?
BONUS TIP 3
Third and most important, don't force it.
Sometimes you'll be able to easily progress through each layer of questions. Other times you may struggle to get past the surface level and that's okay. Some people are more open and others are more private, which is why it's important to let the conversation flow organically. So don't feel pressured to get to the core questions the first time you meet someone, if you only get to the second or third layer of questions the first time you meet someone, then pick up where you left off the next time you see this person.
An easy way to do this is by bringing up something you guys talked about during your first conversation with them.
Questioning To The Core gives you a strong framework for quickly building relationships with anyone, but it doesn't cover the most important step, which is how to introduce yourself.
If you wanna learn a simple three step formula for introducing yourself in a way that always creates a positive first impression, then check out my episode called “The Best Way to Introduce Yourself In Any Setting”. Just click on the link. Thanks for watching.
