A book I recently finished reading (which was similar in many ways to the HR course I was taking at the time) is Click: The Magic of Instant Connections by Ori and Rom Brafman. I really enjoyed the stories that were at the center of each chapter, and I learned a lot of non-intuitive things about how to create environments that allow people to click and form closer connections. Below are my biggest takeaways from each chapter.

Ch. 1: Finding Magic

• Throughout out life, many experience mysterious moments of immediate, deep connection.
• Can be monitored scientifically: dopamine is often released in the brain during these moments.

Ch. 2: The Vulnerable Hostage Negotiator

• Has to form instant connection to criminal
  
• Casual touch and eye contact create attraction
  
• Pheromones/smells work in scientific studies. These affect the primitive brain.
• Book focuses on click "accelerators" (behaviors or environments that increase clicking).
  
• One of these is vulnerability.
  
• Stanford GSB "touchy feely" groups (class on interpersonal dynamics)
  
• Levels of conversations: 1) phatic, 2) factual, 3) evaluative, 4) gut level (feelings), 5) peak statements (innermost).
  
• 1-3: transactional
  
• 4-5: connective
  
• Raising language level creates click.
  
• Connections last a long time, way beyond initial encounter (scientific studies back this).
  
• Powerful way to create vulnerability: share story of loss.
  
• Sexual self-disclosure and general self-disclosure powerful
  
• People even can consider a computer as vulnerable when it pours out more information about itself.
• Clinton showed vulnerability on talk shows, increased his ratings.

Ch. 3: The Power of Proximity

• Clicked team performs better than individuals.
  
• Proximity creates click that goes away dramatically with distance.
  
• Whom you sit next to is the most important factor.
  
• Exponential attraction
  
• Those in center of apartment building have more friends (college study).
  
• Collaboration 25 times more in same room than other floor
  
• Spontaneous communication is part of reason for exponential attraction.
  
• Telecommuting much worse
  
• Fleeting informal convos nurture relationship.
  
• Passive contacts to others still increase likeability. People who attended more class sessions in college (even if never interacted with others) were found more likeable in a college study.
  

Ch. 4: When Everything Clicks

• Resonance, flow, being present
  
• Intentionality: purpose and conscious awareness
  
• Mutuality: open and available to meet other person
  
• Individuality: authentic and aware of self
  
• Attentiveness: active listening
  
• Mirror neurons fire when watching someone else working; seeing another in flow creates flow and connection.
  

Ch. 5: Seductive Power of Similarity

• Story of two people who met online purely because shared same first and last name and ended up getting married
  
• What matters is not the significance of similarities but the number of them; insignificant commonalities still add up.
  
• Shared first name or birthday increases donations people will give to strangers (from published study).
  

Ch. 6: Fire Combat and Nathan's Living Room: The Role of Place

• Industrialization promotes depression, suicide even when standard of living improves.
  
• Shared adversity creates connection.
  
• Wilderness camps for kids with behavioral issues helps because they endure adversity together.
  
• Navajo sweat lodges (ceremony to endure heat)
  
• Facing combat together
  
• Clearly defined and framed community
  
• Kibbutz (neat tie to Start-Up Nation, which I recently posted about)
  

Ch. 7: Naturals

• Self monitoring and matching demeanor to environment or other person
  
• Careers advance faster
  
• Bond faster with others
  

Ch. 8: Personal Elevation

• When we click, we become our best selves.
  
• Chemistry between decrypters of Mayan language allowed them to achieve progress decades of researchers could not.