How to forge closer relationships
Can you form deep friendships instantly? A surprising discovery about the true nature of close relationships.
I've found it interesting how I've become so close to a collection of people here at the Stanford GSB in such a relatively short time. Perhaps I'm speaking prematurely, but I feel that my closest friends at the GSB will likely be some of the confidants and friends I will carry through the rest of my life.
Going into my second and final year, I've been giving this question more thought since I want to make the most out of this experience.
Typically, the length of how long you've known a friend is directly proportional to how close you are to that person.
If you've known a friend for a long time, you've observed their actions in various situations. By aggregating this behavior throughout an extended timeframe, you have a good idea of their likes, dislikes, preferences, and default behaviors. More importantly though, you have probably been able to establish a decent map of their values from their behaviors throughout time.
This is what I call the implicit communication of values — numerous observations of someone's behaviors across multiple environments allow you to construct a functional representation of their internal value hierarchy.1
Let's return to my close friends at Stanford — how did I circumvent the long-term requirement of knowing someone before I felt close to them? Ultimately, under this values framework, I feel closer to someone based on my perception of how close our values are — if we have the same values, there is comfort in knowing that someone is experiencing the same world that I am.
Therefore, as long as I can convince myself that someone's values are close to mine, that is all I need.
While we've introduced the implicit communication of values, its construction implies the existence of explicit communication of values — someone can simply tell you about their values.
Of course, explicit communication of values doesn't happen in everyday conversation. It's rare for a conversation to proceed in that fashion. However, the GSB seems to be a zone of scenius for encouraging these vulnerable discussions. It makes sense: GSB students tend to self-select into the program based on personal introspection, and the curriculum is geared towards providing us with the tools and language to dive into these conversations. After all, the famous GSB essay asks, "What matters to you most and why?".
Armed with the bid model for conversations and developing relationships, I've found that I've been able to have numerous deep conversations at the outset with so many of my friendships, forming the foundation for these close friendships.
I've also realized that I have a slightly different construction of what it means to be a close friend. When you ask most people who their closest friends are, they'll pick those that they have spent the most time with (subject to the recency effect, of course).
While the time you spend with someone is correlated with the closeness of connection, it is neither necessary nor sufficient to be a close friend from my point of view.
Consider your interactions with frequent acquaintances. Why has time and constant interaction not created a deep friendship?
These conversations have been a continual peeling of the first layer of the relationship onion without broaching any of the deeper levels necessary for further connection.
"How was your weekend?" rarely leads to a better understanding of another person. These acquaintances will remain so, and most likely forever, unless one or both of you take a risk to dive deeper.
Simply put, a close friend is someone who understands you (your hopes, dreams, fears, and desires, but most importantly, your values) and cares deeply about your success and the relationship the two of you share.2
I'm hopeful I've developed many of these relationships at the GSB, and I hope to make many more close friends.
A rather beautiful description of human connection: hearing the same music while others don’t.
A heuristic that I've developed for differentiating between if someone is a close friend: imagine if you haven't seen this friend for numerous months, and you see them again. How much of the conversation is purely a summary of your adventures, and how much of it connects these events to what matters to each of you?
It's similar to the idea that I think the depth of a friendship is measured by how quickly you can "get deep" with that friend.