The Art of Human Interaction

When was the last time you had a conversation with someone that left you feeling really good? Recently, I had a riveting and immensely human conversation with someone I met for the first time over the phone! He was referred to me for his information technology subject matter expertise. Our conversational experience let me feeling uplifted, positive, hopeful and full of energy. We were ‘jamming’ like great jazz bands do so artistically.

The person I was conversing with was a potential supplier of professional services for my business. A 20-30 minute conversation turned into a 90 minute meaningful connection where we explored my business need and so many other topics. We had a high quality conversation.

COVID has had an enormous social impact and every day, more is being written about its consequences. In my part of the world, we have endured the longest lockdowns of anywhere in the world. We recently came out of our fourth lockdown in a year. Beside the economic impacts, one of the biggest negative impacts has been in social interactions. Missing all those micro-interactions: seeing our favourite barista, having coffee meetings with potential customers or colleagues, passing each other by in corporate kitchens, stopping and having a 2 minute chat and catching up on the news of the day in the office, as well as gatherings with family and friends has been a difficult adjustment.

My heart sings when a deep connecting is co-created with another. As we flowed in conversation, business was being conducted. In parallel, my new colleague and I discussed music (he’s a musician as am I), philosophy, technology, cars, the ‘state of the nation’, the original reason for my call, and our next actions. Trust was a natural outcome of our complete attention to each other in the moment. All the while I felt good about myself and wanted to work with this professional. The business outcome is that I will be buying his professional services.

I am reminded of what Angela Mayou said: “I‘ve learned that people forget what you’ve said. They forget what you did. But they never forget how you made them feel”.