Hello, and welcome to the Redefining High Performance Podcast. My name is Ty Bennett, and I’m excited to be with you this week. Every week, I bring you these short, quick episodes with some practical takeaways. Hopefully, this is just… 10 minutes of your day, and you get something beneficial out of it. I’m here to add value, and hopefully we’ll do that today. But this week is going to kick off a three-part series. That we’re going to do over the next 3 weeks, talking about how we build better connection.
Our research into high performance. Showed a strong undertone of connection being important. Connection for leaders, connection in teams and organizations, building connection, winning with people is extremely important. And a lot of my work that I’ve done over the years in writing books, in speaking, I’ve worked with sales teams and leaders, and helping them win in the people business. And so this week, next week, and the following week, we’re gonna do a three-part series on how to build connection.
Today, I’m going to talk to you about a specific strategy. I’ll reveal in just a moment. Next week, we’re going to talk about how to invest in people. And week 3, we’re going to talk about how to master conversational leadership. And so… to set up today’s idea I want to give you a little background. I grew up in Colorado. And I moved to Utah to go to school. I met my wife, Sarah, in Utah. She’s from Indiana. And we started a business in Utah, and that kind of kept us here for a while, and eventually we decided this is where we wanted to stay and raise our family. So I’ve been in Utah for the last 20… 5 years. I don’t know, maybe 10 or so years into that experience, I built a pretty successful business. I’d started speaking, I’d written my first book. There was a family friend from Colorado whose daughter moved from Colorado to Utah to go to school. And this wasn’t somebody I interacted with all the time. I knew she was in Utah, but she reached out to me one day. And she said, Ty, I’d love your advice. Can we set up a time to get together? And so we did. She came over to my office, and as she sat down, I said, tell me how I can help you. And what I expected was that she would say something like I want to start a business, or I have a big speech coming up, like, something in my wheelhouse, right? What she said kind of threw me. She said, Ty, I’m really not… happy. And I said, tell me what’s going on. And so I listened for the next couple minutes as this girl explained that she was 19 years old, she was a freshman in college. She was living on her own for the first time, away from her home for the first time. She wasn’t dating much, she wasn’t making friends. She was just having a really hard time in this transition. And as I listened to her, she said this one phrase a couple of times. She said, I just wish I was more interesting. I wish people wanted to get to know me better. I wish they would reach out to me. And I’m sure we’ve probably all felt some version of that. At the end of her sharing her experience, she asked for my advice, and that phrase stood out to me, and so my advice to her was this. I said, I want you to focus on being interested, not interesting. Think about it, being interesting is all about us, but being interested is all about other people. It’s placing other people’s interests first. And I made her a promise that day. I said, I promise you that you will make more friends, you will date more in the next 2 months than you would in the next 2 years.
If you’ll focus on being interested rather than interesting. And I could make you the same promise in a business context, in any context, maybe not that you’ll date more, but that you will have more influence, more impact, better connection with people. If you’ll focus on being interest-stead rather than interesting. I’ve shared this principle with a lot of people, and it resonates. I think most people recognize, yeah, that’s important.
How do we do it? Let’s get practical for a minute. I think when we focus on being interested, the first thing we need to do is start asking questions. Learning to ask questions and open people up is a skill set. It is a talent. Asking questions that go deeper. Helping people feel comfortable with that, with you, but then asking those open-ended questions, or asking those follow-up questions, that’s really interesting, talk more about that, right? Diving in, having a real curiosity for people and a genuine interest.
I think when we do that, we then need to listen. Listening is also a skill set. Listening to understand, not listening to respond. Listening to read between the lines to see the context, to look at body language. Right? All of those things matter. Eliminating distractions, how often are we guilty of? And I’m guilty, just like anybody else, of having conversations where we’re looking at our phone. Or we’re reading email at the exact same time, or we’re scrolling social media as we’re talking, like, I don’t know. All the things that are distracting in our world. There’s not a lot of interested in that process.
I think sometimes… Well, we’ve all been on the other side of this, when somebody is not really interested in you. And you’re having a conversation that just feels fake, it feels superficial, it feels like you’re a waste of their time. They want to be somewhere else. That feels really demeaning, right? It feels like… Well, it doesn’t build you up, it doesn’t make you feel important, it doesn’t make you feel special, it makes you feel pretty small. And we’ve all probably been guilty of that, too.
I want to share another idea with you on how we focus on being interested, not interesting. I call it the rule of two. So I don’t know if you’ve ever had a conversation with somebody where they seem to one-up everything that you say. I’ll bet you have, we all have. Right? I mean, it feels like you say something, and they go, well, you know what happened to me? It’s like they hijacked the conversation. It kind of feels like they’re going, well, my dad’s bigger than your dad, and you’re like. Are we even talking about our dads? Like, where… So, I don’t think most people do this because they’re a jerk. I think most people do this because they’re trying to connect. They’re trying to find common ground or commonality. And if we’re being fair, there’s a lot of people like me, gurus, thought leaders, whatever you want to call it, who have said that the best way to build connection is to find commonalities. I want to argue that, push back a little bit. I think that’s a good way to build connection, but I think the best way to build connection. And to be genuinely interested in them. To make it about them, fully. To, like, just dive into who they are. What if it isn’t about you?
And so, here’s the rule of two. The rule of two is this. Whenever somebody says something about themselves, you have to ask at least two questions before you talk about yourself. This allows you, or teaches you, and forces you. To actually validate what they’re saying. Instead of jumping from them, like, okay, let’s stop talking about you, and let’s talk about me. Let’s ask some questions, and I say at least two, because maybe two’s not enough. Maybe you need a couple more. Let’s validate it, let’s dive in, let’s flush it out, and then maybe there’s a point in the conversation where your story comes into play. Or maybe it doesn’t. Maybe it just let it be about them.
One of the best ways for you to build connection with other people ss to focus on being interested. Not interesting.
This week, I hope that you’ll practice that in lots of different forms. Eliminate distractions. Make eye contact, ask questions, listen. Practice the rule of two, whatever, uh, the… the mechanism is that the principle remains the same. Let’s make it about other people, make them feel important, make them feel special, let’s focus on being interested. Not interesting.
Well, I hope this has been helpful. This is week one of a three-week series that we’re going to do on connecting with people.
Next week, we’re gonna come back and talk about. How we invest in people as a strategy. And I think you’re gonna get a lot out of it. Thank you so much for listening. Again, if you haven’t done so, please subscribe. Greatest review, 5 stars are always appreciated. Share this with somebody who you think would enjoy this. And I will talk to you again soon.