5 tips on how to get a stranger to help you
How to create a strong start to a professional relationship
Hey Peer2Peer community!
Hope you’re sipping ☕️ and enjoying 🍳 on this fine Sunday morning ☀️. I've been thinking a lot about what goes into making a deep first impression and how to get strangers to help you.
Helping others is in our innate nature
Research indicates that humans possess a natural inclination and biological foundation for compassion and assisting others, even strangers. Studies show that infants as young as 14 months demonstrate spontaneous helpfulness, suggesting an intrinsic motivation for altruism from an early age. Brain imaging reveals that aiding others activates brain reward centers, indicating a pleasure response to altruistic acts. Compassion also triggers physiological changes, such as lowered heart rate, preparing us for caregiving responses. The hormone oxytocin, associated with bonding and nurturing, is released during compassionate feelings, potentially driving caring behaviors. Experiments by Daniel Batson further demonstrate that compassion can lead to altruistic actions, overriding self-interest without external rewards. Despite arguments for human self-interest, evidence suggests a deep-seated biological predisposition for compassion that can drive us to help others, even at personal cost.
Tip 1: Networking when you need something is too late
Most people only think to network when they need something —i.e. a new job, side gigs, clients…etc but it’s too late. There had been no investment in maintaining existing relationships or creating new ones, making it very awkward to make the aforementioned asks. It is also a muscle that one needs to build/maintain to be comfortable overtime.
Action item: Start by going to an event once every week/2 weeks/month to practice talking to strangers.
Tip 2: Go to events; Engineer your luck
Daniel O’Shea, the cofounder of Lasso, now Director of Engineering at X, recently partnered with jointaro.com (Get 20% off their courses) to discuss the important of networking. The first value is to engineer your luck. Place yourself where you want to meet the right people.
This is especially true in the Bay Area, with a high density of technologists who are often the best in their respective fields. Online channels work well with existing relationships, but lacks spades in immediacy in comparison to a face-to-face encounter, especially when you’re asking a stranger for help. A message can be easily ignored, but a person? Much harder.
Tip 3: Connect on something outside your domain expertise
We’ve seen a lot of networking events that are topical — you walk away gaining one iota more in wisdom, having good conversations, and an interesting night. If you can connect over other interests (i.e., surfing 🏄) outside of the main topic of the event (i.e., the best OpenSource AI tools), that will definitely be more memorable and help deepen the connection. A subtle way of getting to know a stranger that way — “Any exciting plans for the weekend?” followed by “Do you do that regularly?” If the answer is no, then “Are there things you do regularly outside of work?”
Tip 4: Be a good listener and be helpful
Be a good listener
You never know if the person you meet will be the next Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk. As a general rule of thumb, always make friends not enemies. A great start to a new relationship is to be a good listener. Make the person feel seen and understood. A couple of easy ways to do that are:
Restate and paraphrase — “It sounds like you’re saying…” or “If I’m hearing you correctly…”
Validate their experience — Acknowledge their feelings and experiences as valid even if you don’t fully agree. Saying things like “I can see why you would feel that way” or “That must have been difficult” goes a long way.
Be helpful
It’s disarming when you meet someone for the first time and they extend a hand to help. It certainly makes for a good first impression and compels the rule of reciprocity on the other party to return the favor. You can probe in the right direction — “What are you hoping to get out of this event tonight?” or “What kind of people are you hoping to meet tonight?” to introduce them to relevant people in your network.
Tip 5: Start with a small, specific ask
Now that you’ve established a robust initial rapport, it’s appropriate to make a small specific ask. A small specific ask is a starting point to something bigger, and doesn’t feel like a big commitment because it doesn’t take up much time:
Small and specific: I’d love to connect over a 30-min coffee chat on your process for working with designers 👍
Small and not specific: I’d love to connect over coffee sometime to learn more about your career 👎
It is certainly okay to shoot your shot and start with a big ask (I do it all the time), but starting out small can lead to a bigger ask down the road. Reasons to start with a big ask can be because the person is hard to get ahold of and the ask is relevant to them, or if the ask is unsuccessful, the risk is relatively low. You can always make a bigger ask down the road, but it’s hard to walk back from one if the person feels you’ve overreached. Remember, the smaller the ask, the likelier it is for you to get the help you need to build to a bigger ask.
Example: Getting dinner at the White House
Let’s illustrate with a hyperbolic example to see the impact of building small asks. Say you get a chance to meet POTUS at an event. You could ask him to:
Take a picture with you (small specific ask 🙂)
Have dinner with you at the White House (big ask 😲)
If you ask POTUS outright to dinner, the chances of you getting your wish is slim to none, but you leverage #1, it could eventually get you to #2. Let’s modify and utilize the tips shared above to make a memorable first impression and make that dinner a reality.
Be helpful Get passionate about one of his policies and see how you can add value. If this were me, I’d choose education because this is a deeply personal priority for him and his wife, and I had relevant experience.
Engineer your luck Go to the event where you’ll meet POTUS.
Ask him for a picture (small specific ask)
Connect on common interest While taking the picture with him, give him the elevator pitch on education reform policy, why it matters to you and what you need from him to make it happen (bigger small specific ask).
🔥 Put in touch with his team If 4 is successful, you’ll now be in touch with his team to work on the policy (asking even bigger small specific asks along the way)
many years later (or not)…
🎉 Dinner at the White House (the ultimate big ask) You’ve successful implemented a new education policy and are invited to the White House for dinner.
I’ll admit this is an oversimplified version of what needs to happen, but hopefully it illustrates the power of small specific asks that can eventually lead to something big.
Put it in practice
Now that we’ve gone through the principles, come put them in practice this Thursday, 5/2 📅: AI & Tech Startup 101: Build/Join Your Dream Engineering Org. We are giving priority to senior ICs in engineering, and then to engineering leaders, as the latter is closer to capacity.