"Everybody has a gift. Everyone has something to offer."
A conversation with Susan McPherson, author of "The Lost Art of Connecting"
Susan McPherson is a self-described serial connector, communications expert, and author of The Lost Art of Connecting: The Gather, Ask, Do Method for Building Meaningful Relationships at Work, which is out next week.1 I’ve known Susan online for years — she is indeed the kind of serial connector who reaches out to strangers to tell them she likes their work, to send a note of gratitude, or just to say “hi I think you’re interesting.” As one of those weirdos who always worries I’m bothering people, it’s refreshing to be around folks like Susan, who are just so genuinely warm and so very good at establishing deep ties. So I was just thrilled to see that Susan had written a book about what she’s best at: Connecting, not to climb a social ladder or extract a pay-off later, but because everyone has something to give, and the more we know each other, the more good we can collectively do. It’s an important, fascinating read, and I wanted to share some of her ideas with all of you. What follows is a transcript of a phone conversation, edited for length and clarity. And you can find The Lost Art of Connecting at any online bookseller, or (even better!) at your local bookstore.
Jill: Why this book? And why are you the right person to write it?
Susan: I thought everybody grew up with parents that clipped five morning newspapers into little pieces and then put them in little envelopes and sent them out to everyone they knew every day. I thought that was normal. By the time I got to college I would do the same thing— I would clip out an article that made me think of someone and send it to them. Then fast forward to the ‘90s and it became so much easier.
I founded my company at the late great age of 48 and I am now 56. In those years I was staying connected, taking meetings when I barely had time to breathe, but I knew everyone I met would be an entry point to someone else. Every person we meet we learn something from. We develop a new skill, or we find out something about ourselves that we didn’t know. As much as every time someone would say, ‘Can I pick your brain?’ it would send the hair on the back of my neck up, if I hadn’t taken those meetings, 25 years later when I put the ask out that I was launching a company and would they keep their ears and eyes open, it might not have mattered to them. Now I’ve just hired my 12th employee and we’re doing important work and making an impact.
I’m not suggesting that you take every meeting. But I want to make sure that people understand that everybody has a gift. Everyone has something to offer. And when we’re open to meeting people who we think many not offer us anything we are missing an opportunity.
I think a lot of us have had the experience of going to a mixer, exchanging business cards, and then not knowing where to go from there. How do you foster connections that go deeper than just a meet-and-greet?
It’s so individual to the person. First of all, you have to find out what you personally can manage — we all have a thousand things going on and this seems like an additional burden, but it’s worth the effort because it’ll come back in spades. When you talk to someone, definitely listen. It’s not something we are perfect at-- far from it. Ask someone how they want to stay in touch, if they want to stay in touch. I am a big believer in use the means of what is most comfortable to you, and what is the most comfortable for the other person. There are people I still write letters to because I know that’s their preferred medium. There are people I call, without an appointment. There are people I DM. If it’s a platform that person isn’t using, they aren’t going to respond. It’s important to ask the question, which I think many people don’t bother doing — How do you like to communicate? They assume everyone is using the same means they’re comfortable with.
And you don’t wait until you’re asking for help. You just check in.
I have found joy throughout this pandemic, in reaching out — not necessarily the joy of someone responding. It’s just dropping little bits of sunshine, just to say hey you’re in my thoughts.
One thing that struck me about the book is that you tie connection to service — that connecting isn’t about getting something or ladder-climbing but giving back.
I fervently believe, and what has been demonstrated from my own business growth, is that when we’re helping each other— the world is going to be a better place. So, when I’m asking these questions to find out how I can be helpful, I know that I may not go back to that individual person three years from now to say, ‘hey remember I did that!’ But the analogy is when you’re biking behind someone and you get to draft behind that bicycle: it’s propelling us all forward. What we’re seeing in this country is that rugged individualism does not work. I’m not trying to make a political statement, but it’s demonstrative. The societies that are doing better form a health and wellness perspective are those that are much more focused on the “we” instead of the “I.”
You started writing a book on connection, and then a pandemic hit that pushed many of us into isolation. What’s been the impact of Covid on the book?
In the book there are 30 to 35 interviews with various folks who have made connecting a core part of their being. So, in the interviews, Covid became a part of everything that was being discussed. Remote connecting became the way we all stayed in touch. But what became painfully clear is that our relationships mattered almost as much as our own health. What we had taken for granted became the most important thing next to staying healthy, keeping your family safe, and having an income — right below all of that was staying in touch with our loved ones. Even staying in touch with our colleagues, who used to annoy us, now we’re dying for that water cooler moment.
If someone had told me I would be launching a book on connections when I couldn’t connect with people, I never would have done it. I burst into tears two weeks ago because this is so bittersweet. But the reality is that this topic matters even more now than ever before. As we start to open up: our connections with one another will continue to be continually important, and we need to always be thinking about how to keep those meaningful relationships front and center.
How do you see technology shaping our connections going forward?
Originally, The Lost Art of Connecting was all about this notion that we have become so dependent on technology that we lost the art of human connection. And then last March happened. So, this has given me an appreciation of all things technological. As much as we curse the Zoom chats, can you imagine if we didn’t have that? If anything, it has given me a realization that these tools are extraordinarily valuable and that they are a means to an end, in a global pandemic. But I also see where they stop, and where that need for human touch, and that joy we only get from being in each others’ company, can bring. It’s so important to who we are, to our families, as coworkers, as friends. The epidemic of loneliness already existed before the pandemic — being lonely is as bad as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day — and the pandemic exacerbated that in so many ways for so many people.
It’s two important ideas at once: The over-reliance on technology, but the ‘thank god we have the technology.’ It’s disrupted my original thesis, but none of this was expected.
It’s going to be tricky to come out of it, because we have become so dependent. Are we going to be able to be normal around one another again? I don’t know, I don’t have the answer. I’ve been alone the entire time. So, I am completely — it’s bizarre, I’m writing a book about this when I’m by myself. And dating during the pandemic? Oh my, is that weird!
If readers walk away with one big takeaway from your book, what do you want that to be?
One, the more you connect, the more efficient you will be. And I don’t mean connect by taking numbers; I mean the more meaningful connections you make in life. The more of those connections you make the more effective and efficient you will be at everything you do. You will have an entire toolbox to pull from.
Two, my reaction to FOMO years ago was not JOMO, which is the joy of missing out, but rather — and this will sound hokey but it’s true — it was JOMO in the joy of meeting others. And this is professional rather than personal, but when I first moved to L.A. and was working in communications, I wasn’t getting invited to any gatherings or professional functions. So, I started my own. I knew I needed to get to know people in PR because they were our customers, so I started a monthly coffee gathering with the only three PR people I knew, and asked them each to bring another one, and within a few months we had 60 people and it became the de facto PR gathering. That taught me: Don’t wait to be invited. Create your own. And by doing that, it all of a sudden became the place everybody wanted to go anyways, and I didn’t have that fear of missing out. Today, where we see in real time the events we’re not invited to, it’s horribly painful, but create your own — then you’re not waiting for others.
The most amazing thing in life is meeting and finding the other in people: finding what makes people tick, what are their joys, what are their frustrations. We have so much to learn about each other and from each other.
Any last thoughts?
As scary as it’s going to be to go back into the “real world,” I think it’s going to be like riding a bike. It’s going to feel a little rusty at first, and then it’s going to come back. But this is an opportunity to pivot and really think deeply about what you want the community around you to be.
I am an absolute dope and sent this a week early! Susan’s book is out March 30th, and this post has been updated accordingly.