Sometimes Presidential Hopefuls Walk Away and Sometimes They Don't.

Making connections

Photo by Madalyn Cox on Unsplash

One of my dads was a little hobbit of a man who loved all things breakfast and chocolate cake and conversation.

He was a truck driver and a mechanic and by his words to me never made it past second grade, not really, when he was growing up in Staten Island, New York where his parents had gone to hopefully make their fortunes, because he was incredibly dyslexic in a time that there were not many resources or knowledge for kids like him.

His brother and sister and parents were all incredibly smart and so was he, but he never realized it. He always thought he was dumb.

What my dad had was an incredible gift of communicating via listening and story. He instantly connected with people and went right to the heart of things.

I grew up in New Hampshire near the big city of Manchester where presidential hopefuls would do meet and greets in diners or in the Mall of New Hampshire or Bedford Mall, trying to make contact with as many potential voters as possible.

They’d cruise through the crowds.

Until they came to my dad.

My dad wasn’t a person of shallow talking. When he came across anyone—president, coworker, family member, random person walking down the street—he wanted to know them, really know them, and make a connection.

He would ask them how they were doing.

He would ask them if this is what they imagined their life would be when they were little.

He would ask them what they worry about, if their family was okay with them campaigning.

He would remind them that they were human.

And sometimes those presidential candidates would interrupt and turn away because they were too busy, but some of them? They’d actually engage with him despite their handlers’ urging them away to move on.

My dad didn’t do this on purpose—this building connections—he did it on instinct because he learned from other people by listening to their stories, reading their faces, being immersed in their experiences and it’s how he became one of the smartest people I knew when it came to what people were really like and about.

Connections like the ones my dad tried to build with anyone and everyone are beyond the small talk and about building trust.

After the jump, I have some cool ways to do that. I actually made our Rotary club do some of these at a lunch time meeting in the hopes of having everyone get to know each other a little bit more.