If you want to connect with someone, ask them what they are feeling, and then reveal your own emotions. If others describe a painful memory or a moment of joy, and we reveal our own disappointments or what makes us proud, it provides a chance to harness the neurochemicals that have evolved to help us feel closer. It creates an opportunity for emotional contagion.

This is how to ask emotional questions in the real world: Ask someone how they feel about something, and then follow up with questions that reveal how you feel. It’s the same framework for emotional connection described before, but in a slightly different guise: If we ask questions that push people to think and talk about their values, beliefs, and experiences, and then reciprocate with emotions of our own, we can’t help but listen to one another. “The best listeners aren’t just listening,” said Margaret Clark, the Yale psychologist. “They’re triggering emotions by asking questions, expressing their own emotions, doing things that prompt the other person to say something real.”

It is easier to judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers,” the nineteenth-century thinker Pierre-Marc-Gaston de Lévis wrote, and yet he stayed silent on which questions, exactly, should be asked. Science has provided guidance: Ask others about their beliefs and values. Ask them about experiences and those moments that caused them to change. Ask how they feel, rather than about facts. Reframe your questions to be deeper. Ask follow-ups. And as people expose their vulnerabilities, reveal something about yourself. It will be less uncomfortable than you imagine. It will be more fascinating than you think. And it might lead to a moment of true connection.

But how we match other people matters. While reviewing his recordings, Provine noticed something interesting: If two people were laughing at the same time, but one of them was caught up in a belly laugh, while the other was just chuckling, they usually didn’t feel closer afterward. When we laugh together, it’s not just the laughter that’s important. It’s similar intensities—the evidence of a desire to connect—that is critical. If someone gives a half-hearted chuckle while we are doubled over with laughter, we’re likely to sense their tepid enthusiasm and see it as a hint we’re not aligned, “a signal of dominance/submission or acceptance/rejection,” as Provine wrote. If we chuckle only slightly at someone’s joke, while they laugh uproariously, we’ll both see it as a sign that we’re not in sync—or, worse, that one of us is trying too hard, or the other is not trying hard enough.

One of the reasons supercommunicators are so talented at picking up on how others feel is because they have a habit of noticing the energy in others’ gestures, the volume of their voices, how fast they are speaking, their cadence and affect. They pay attention to whether someone’s posture indicates they are feeling down, or if they are so excited they can barely contain it. Supercommunicators allow themselves to match that energy and mood, or at least acknowledge it, and thereby make it clear they want to align. They help us see and hear our feelings via their own bodies and voices. By matching our mood and energy, they make it obvious they are trying to connect.

Eventually, McGuire developed a checklist of things to watch for during interviews: How did candidates react to praise? What about skepticism? How did they describe rejection and loneliness? He would ask questions designed to assess their emotional expressiveness: When had they been happiest? Had they ever been depressed? He would pay close attention to their body language and facial expressions as they responded, note when their postures seemed to tense up or relax. Did it seem like they were inviting him in? Were they showing him they wanted to connect?

It’s hard to tell exactly what someone is feeling, to know if they are angry or upset or frustrated or annoyed or some combination of all those emotions. The person, themself, might not know. So instead of trying to decipher specific emotions, pay attention to someone’s mood (Do they seem negative or positive?) and their energy level (Are they high energy or low energy?). Then, focus on matching those two attributes—or, if matching will only exacerbate tensions, show that you hear their emotions by acknowledging how they feel. Make it obvious you are working to understand their emotions. And when you, yourself, are expressing your own emotions, notice how others are responding. Are they trying to align with your energy and mood? This technique is so powerful that, at some call service centers, operators are trained to match a caller’s volume and tone in order to help the customer feel heard. Software made by the company Cogito prompts operators, via pop-up windows on their screens, to speed up their speech or slow down, to put more energy into their voice or match the caller’s calm. (Companies that use the software told me it makes customer service calls go much better—as long, that is, as callers don’t know that a computer is telling the operator how to speak.)

Seek out topics where everyone has some experience and knowledge, or everyone is a novice

First, try to draw out your conversational partners’ multiple identities. It’s important to remind everyone that we all contain multitudes; none of us is one-dimensional. Acknowledging those complexities during a conversation helps disrupt the stereotypes within our heads.

Social dialogues—Who Are We? conversations—are gateways to deeper understanding and more meaningful connections. But we need to allow these discussions to become deep, to evoke our many identities and express our shared experiences and beliefs. The Who Are We? conversation is powerful not only because we bond over what we have in common, but because it lets us share who we really are.

What do you hope to accomplish? What do you most want to say? What do you hope to learn? What do you think others hope to say and learn? If we have elucidated goals before a discussion, we’re more likely to achieve them.

				How will this conversation start? How will you ensure that everyone has a voice and feels they can participate? What is needed to draw everyone in?
			
			
				What obstacles might emerge? Will people get angry? Withdrawn? Will a hesitancy to say something controversial prevent us from saying what’s necessary? How can we make it safer for everyone to air their thoughts?
			
			
				When those obstacles appear, what’s the plan? Research shows that being preemptively aware of situations that make us anxious or fearful can lower the impact of those concerns. How will you calm yourself and others if the conversation gets tense, or encourage someone who has gone quiet to participate more?
			
			
				Finally, what are the benefits of this dialogue? Are they worth the risks? (The answer usually is yes.) When people get angry or upset, or it’s easier to walk away, how will you remind yourself and others why this dialogue is so important?