Why Some Conversations Just Click
In one of my final classes this semester, I asked my students a simple question:
Why do some conversations feel easy almost immediately, while others take work?
To test this, we ran a short exercise. I asked every student to pair up with someone they didn’t know well and find five things that they have in common. Not obvious things, such as “we both go to IU.” I wanted real, specific overlaps.
As my students saw, something interesting happened.
At the start, most conversations felt a bit forced. By the end, almost all of them felt natural. However, nothing about the people changed.
But the conversations did.
The Shift
What changed was simple: They found common ground.
There’s a concept in social and organizational psychology called the Self-Similarity Principle: people tend to feel more comfortable with, trust, and favor individuals who seem similar to themselves.
As I explained to my students, even small similarities create familiarity. Familiarity then creates comfort. Comfort then builds trust. And trust drives what happens next.
Where This Actually Matters
We like to think professional decisions are objective. Unfortunately, they’re often not.
This shows up everywhere:
Who gets the follow-up conversation
Who gets the opportunity
Who a leader invests in
Who a client chooses to work with
This doesn’t happen because people are trying to be biased. As our lesson in class explained, this is simply how our brains are wired.
What This Means in Practice
Most people think being a good networker means being the most charismatic, outgoing, or confident person in the room. In reality, the better approach is much simpler:
Find common ground.
Do a little preparation before the conversation
Ask questions that reveal shared experiences
Build on those moments naturally
You don’t need to be forced or scripted, and you most definitely don’t need to pretend or fake your way through connections. You just need to be aware that the person standing across from you likely has more in common with you than you think. This is where we build familiarity, comfort, trust, and opportunity.
The Important Caveat
However, like most social and organizational psychology lessons, this one also has a downside.
If similarity builds trust, it can also reinforce affinity bias, where people may unintentionally favor those who look like them, think like them, or come from similar backgrounds.
That’s not something to ignore. As socially conscious business professionals (read: decent people), it’s something to be aware of and manage, especially as you move into leadership roles.
The Takeaway
Strong professional relationships rarely start with credentials. They start with connection. More often than not, that connection comes from something small:
A shared experience. A similar path. A moment of recognition.
Those are the moments that make conversations feel easy. They’re also the moments that can open doors to some of your greatest opportunities.
