What are the first questions you generally put when you meet someone for the first time? Ivan Misner, founder of BNI, a business networking organization, lists 10 of them in his book “The 29% solution”. These questions refer to an initial conversation about business. Two of them, in particular, can be very helpful to get a better idea of your intelrocutor and to build a lasting relationship with him. The first one is about about what he likes most about what he does. The second one, about the challenges he has to face in his business. Of course, there’s the right time to put both them in order to build confidence with your interlocutor.
Here the video you can find on the Business Networking website.
Source: Flickr – Daniel (CC – BY – ND 2.0)
Hey, intersting contribution, thanks.
I must confess I experienced this very ‘lack of starting words syndrome’, finding myself in a difficult situation while starting a conversation with a whole new person – one which of course has a completely different background than those of your compatriots.
Moreover: It has happened several times to me, and every time immediately thought: “Oh no, here it comes the ‘blank mind’ once again”.
This hasn’t happened while being off ‘on my duties’ – though it equally gave me an unpleasant feeling of being unable to communicate at the best of my chances.
Well, as times goes by, it turned out there were several reasons to this ‘blank mind syndrome’:
– A matter of english/ (/put a different language here) knowledge: study holidays are great to get on with the foreign language, because they can just underline so remarkably how unable to speak you are… (and that’s not just an humouristic statement) it’s obvious that a lack of a deep knowledge in a language can seriously obstacle any ‘meeting time’;
– A matter of foreign culture knowledge: always according to my study-holidays memories of my past teen-age, I remember how we italians judged all the spanish, russian, polish and turkish people equally, treating them like we’d do with our respectives… italian ‘comrades’.
Well, I experienced this proved to be equally right and wrong at the same time. Right, because every young boy of this world, most of the time, shares the same passions of any of his equal of age, and consequently likes to be treated as a passionate person – but also wrong, because there are common topics and not; plus, there’s what I could define as different ‘thinking patterns’ which obviously must be taken into account. Knowing the diverse culture of others helps relating with them: you know what to expect and they can tackle the (possible) starting skepticism toward you.
Having so gained ‘that pound’ of more trust in the other person which I will meet, I also find an important ‘point-de-force’ steering the conversation into an ‘all-male code of communication’: like talking of the common interests and goals in sport terms, as we were a group of racing car drivers competing each one against the common rivals… But this is of course possible only when ‘male-male’ meetings do happens.
That’s also why I highly value the endurance-racing cars competitions: their valor and lessons relies all in the very important team-work and the chance of moderating the effort to keep the most precious, last drop of energy until the chequered flag has been swung.
Of course experience do teach. I bet there are more and more ways to meet someone different from us in the nicest (and most agreeable) way possible.
Thank you Francesco, for your comment. I particularly like your endurance-racing cars analogy!