How to Connect With Anyone

If you just met Amanda Marko at a cocktail party, you might have heard some version of this story:

Around Christmas last year, Amanda was talking to her sister at her family’s home in Cincinnati when her six-year-old niece, Evelyn, came walking up. “My sister told me that Evelyn had recently become pen pals with our cousin’s daughter,” Marko would tell you. “I thought that was so cool.”

Amanda’s sister then reminded her that Amanda had also exchanged correspondence with numerous pen pals throughout their childhood. “The funny thing was, she was right,” Marko would continue. “But I had totally forgotten about it. I had pen pals from all over the world that I picked up from different places or trips.”

Today, Marko is a strategic communications executive and the founder of Connected Strategy Group, a consulting firm which trains executives on how to use the power of connections and stories in business. And the experience with her niece made her realize, she says, "that I’ve always been someone who finds connections and stays in touch. It really is true: I’ve always been a person who likes meeting people.”

Her story gets that message across.

wavebreakmedia/Shutterstock

wavebreakmedia/Shutterstock

Connection Stories Reveal the True You

Marko tells this story—which she now calls her “connection story”—when she meets someone new. “Your connection story gives somebody a true glimpse into you,” she says. “I can’t just say, ‘Hi, I’m trustworthy, hardworking and diligent.’ But I can tell a story that gives the person I'm talking to the impression that Amanda Marko is trustworthy, hardworking and diligent.“

Stories are a great tool for making yourself memorable to new people you meet. The usual process of meeting someone new is so routine—we’ve all done it so frequently—that it's very easy to fall in a rut, and make little impression on potential friends, clients, or others. It's easy to get in a habit of explaining who you are and what you do the same way, over and over again, without thinking.

You get bored with your own usual answers, but you don’t put any energy and effort into thinking them through, even though how you respond may cement the first impression people have of you. In other words, rather than using an engaging connection story, you effectively just tell people, Hi, I’m Joe, I’m trustworthy, hardworking and diligent.

You can be make yourself much more memorable.

Why How You Explain Who You Are Matters

Why does it matter so much how you explain who you are and what you do? Anytime you meet someone, it is an opportunity—an opportunity for you to make a good first impression, and an opportunity to create a solid foundation for a new relationship.

If you sleepwalk through your conversation, you’ve just let an opportunity pass. Not only do you not make a memorable first impression, you risk being seen as boring or disinterested.

4 Steps to Creating Your Connection Story

A good connection story is short—preferably less than 90 seconds long—and illustrative of who you are as a person. It also explains what you do and perhaps even why you do it in a way that is distinctive and memorable.

There are four elements to a good connection story:

1. Story Markers. The first step is to create very specific “story markers” that indicate where and when the story happened. Amanda Marko’s story happened in Cincinnati over Christmas. These markers orient the listener in place and time.
2. A Progression of Actions, or Story Arc. “The story should be in the form of 1-2-3—there should be a cause and an effect,” Marko says. Without a progression of actions or series of events, you don’t have a story. You just have a recitation of facts, like a page of the phone book.
3. Other People. Identify the other characters and their relationship to one another, include dialogue, and use people’s names. Amanda Marko coached herself to say her niece’s name because a listener is then more likely to form a picture of that person in their mind. (Do you remember the niece’s name? It was Evelyn.)
4. The Point. At the end of your connection story, you need to offer a short summary of what it all means to you. Do not expect your listener to do this work for themselves. How often has someone told you a story they said they found to be funny or profound but which left you confused or unsure of the point? As Amanda said, “It really is true: I’ve always been a person who likes meeting people.” She summed up the point of the story so her listeners didn’t have to connect the dots on their own.

Find Your Story

Can't think of a good connection story from your life? Ask a family member, close friend, partner or spouse if they can think of episodes that illustrate who you really are. They may have an easier time of it than you.

Or there may be stories that you already naturally tell when you meet new people, but you’re not attuned to how you do it and what you're really conveying. For the next few weeks, pay attention to the stories you tell when you meet someone new. If it hits all four of the above points, you may have your connection story.

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Do you have a connection story you share when you meet someone new? Leave it in the comments below.

John Corcoran is an attorney and a former Clinton White House Writer. He writes about business networking and social skills. He has a free, 52+ page guide which you can download, called How to Increase Your Income Today by Building Relationships with Influencers, Even if you Hate Networking.