Alyssa Birnbaum

Only audio interactions produce lower quality connections.

And third, and this was surprising and something I wasn't even looking for, but the final thing I found was the effect of burnout.

People who are burnt out, it had a tremendous effect on whether they were even able to engage in quality connections.

And that does make sense because people who are burnt out tend to withdraw.

Whereas people who are connecting, you need to put in that effort.

So burnt-out individuals had a hard time even making those high-quality connections.

So my research showed that having high-quality connections is very important for engagement.

And a recent study from McKinseyandLeanIn.org found that about 60% of in-person workers, employees, tended to experience connectivity compared to fewer than 20% of remote and hybrid workers.

So how do we build these connections in a remote environment or at all?

So here's the advice I would have given 22-year-old me who was fumbling to make connections.

Number one is expand or aiming for more expansive dialogue.

It helps you go beyond these polite greetings and helps you dig a bit more beneath the surface.

And there are two ways that you can do this.

One is to ask expansive, open-ended questions, and the other is to answer questions expansively.

Asking expansive, open-ended questions encourages the other person to open up and share a bit more about themselves.

Think about this as if you're talking to a child coming home from school.

If you ask them, how was your day?

Their response will probably be, fine, yeah, sure.

If you ask them, what was the most exciting thing or fun thing or boring thing about your day?

You're more likely to get a better answer.