I recommend reflecting on your experience with this chapter’s exercise before continuing. You can reflect about anything you found relevant, but here are some questions you may want to consider:

How did you feel using someone else’s words?

Are other greetings scripts?

How did your experience and results change with practice?

How do you feel about “So, what do you do?”;

traffic; weather; and other common greetings?

How would you approach someone you’ve never met before?

How do you feel about talking about people’s passions?

Where and how might you apply your experience in the rest of your life?

Data from Exercise

Some people wonder about using a prepared conversation structure—a script. I care about the person and what they say, not the originality of the conversation structure. Shakespeare’s sonnets were no less meaningful and expressive for their rigid structure. I want a structure that allows the other person and their meaning to come out. Meaningful Connection consistently leads to unique, personal, meaningful, two-way conversation content, even if the structure doesn’t change.
Practicing it makes me more comfortable and confident and helps me focus on the other person. That confidence means we talk less about traffic, weather, and other meaningless small talk and more about subjects we care about. I wonder less what to say. I enjoy learning about the person. People seem more open, less guarded, and more engaged. I talk to more people than I would otherwise.

Meaningful Connection is useful in networking, job interviews, social events, and any team context. I use it weekly or more, sometimes several times a day. It’s not the only way to create a meaningful connection, but it works. Practicing it reveals its underlying structure and skills that you’ll use in meeting and leading others. It’s also the foundation for all the exercises in Unit 4, Leading Others.
You can do Meaningful Connection in a few minutes or, with practice, you can extend it to full conversations, as I did with Frances. You can do it once or you can do it two or three times in a row. You can do it with people you know well or just met, with friends, family, coworkers, classmates, and so on. You don’t have to tell people you’re doing an exercise.

What to Do

Practice the script below at least a dozen times one way (you do the odd steps) and a few times the other (they do the odd steps). In university, I assign students to do it twice a day for a week.
The first few times you do it will take a lot of concentration, especially thinking of two people for step 3 and remembering the words in step 4 to use in step 5, but it gets easier with a few tries. Even Meryl Streep has to learn and practice her lines. Unlike her, you don’t have to create a character with a fictional back story. You only have to be you. You can show people the script while you do it the first time if it helps.

The Script
1. Ask their passion, or what they like to do, besides work and family.
2. They will reply with something still fairly usual: travel, books, food, and so on.
3. Say “Cool. . . . You know, I know [someone you know] who [does X] for [their reason] and I know [someone else] who [does X] for [their reason]. Why do you [do X]?”
4. Their response will include two or three words that are unusual or stressed.
5. Respond to clarify what they said using those two or three words in your response.

You don’t have to make time to do the exercise, since you can do it in regular conversation, with people you’ve just met, people you’ve known a long time, and everyone between.