How to connect quickly with any personality

For HR professionals, the challenge often isn’t talking to people. It’s connecting with them quickly, writes Nick Bendel.

Whether you’re interviewing a candidate, onboarding a new employee, or supporting a manager through a difficult conversation, you rarely have the luxury of building rapport over weeks. Often, you have minutes. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about that challenge myself, although for very different reasons.

As a lifelong introvert who found networking uncomfortable, I challenged myself to have lunch with 500 strangers between 2019 and 2025. I met people from every walk of life – CEOs, entrepreneurs, social workers, tradies, and retirees. The project was designed to stretch my social confidence, but it became an unexpected education in human connection.

Along the way, I became fascinated by a simple question: Why do some people feel easy to connect with, while others don’t? I expected to discover conversation techniques or networking hacks. Instead, I found that the people who connected quickly with others weren’t following a formula. They consistently displayed a handful of behaviours that made the people around them feel comfortable, respected, and understood.

Lead with curiosity, not confidence

Early in my project, I had lunch with the CEO of a start-up accelerator. Walking into the meeting, I felt nervous. She had achieved far more than I had, and I wondered whether I’d have anything interesting to contribute.

Within minutes, those nerves disappeared. She put me at ease, and the conversation flowed. A couple of years later, we met again and I discovered her secret. She told me that whenever she meets someone for the first time, she deliberately assumes they’re the most interesting person in the room.

That transforms the conversation. Instead of thinking about what she should say next, she becomes genuinely curious. She asks better questions. She listens more carefully. Her body language becomes more open. Most importantly, the other person senses that they’re receiving her full attention.

Her mindset changed the way I approach conversations. Before meeting someone, I no longer wonder whether they’ll find me interesting. Instead, I wonder what I can learn from them.

For HR professionals, this shift can be invaluable. Curiosity helps candidates and colleagues feel safe enough to speak frankly. People rarely open up because someone asks perfect questions. They open up because they sense genuine interest.

Listen as though it’s your most important job

One of the biggest surprises from my 500 lunches was that the strongest conversationalists usually weren’t the strongest talkers.

One memorable lunch was with an 18-year-old university student. She was intelligent, but what impressed me wasn’t what she knew. It was how she listened. Throughout our conversation, she asked thoughtful questions and seemed genuinely interested in my experiences. Rather than waiting for her turn to speak, she kept building on what I’d just said.

I left that lunch feeling surprisingly good about myself – not because she’d agreed with everything I said but because she’d made me feel that my experiences were worth hearing. That’s an incredibly powerful gift.

Listening is often misunderstood as a passive skill. In reality, it’s one of the most active things we can do. Good listeners notice tone, energy, and emotion. They pay attention not only to the words people choose but also to what they seem excited, concerned, or hesitant about.

That’s particularly relevant in HR. Employees often reveal their biggest concerns indirectly rather than explicitly. Candidates frequently communicate confidence or uncertainty through how they answer, not just what they say. The more carefully you listen, the more accurately you understand the person sitting opposite you.

Don’t mistake personality for connection

Another lunch challenged one of my assumptions about what relationship-building looks like.

I met a man whose job involved fundraising from wealthy donors. Before we met, I imagined he’d be charming, gregarious, and charismatic. But he turned out to be quiet, thoughtful, and understated.

He also organised a networking event every two months that attracted dozens of regular attendees. I became a regular and discovered he’d built strong relationships with almost everyone there.

He didn’t achieve that by dominating conversations or entertaining the room. He greeted people warmly, remembered details from previous conversations, introduced newcomers to others and took a genuine interest in how people were going. People trusted him because they felt seen.

That experience reminded me that connection and charisma aren’t the same thing. In HR, it’s easy to assume that the most confident communicator will naturally build the strongest relationships. Yet some people build trust through energy and enthusiasm, while others build it through calmness, consistency, and empathy. Neither style is inherently better. What matters is whether people leave an interaction feeling respected.

After 500 lunches, I’ve come to believe that connecting quickly with different personalities isn’t about changing who you are. It’s about changing where your attention goes – focusing less on yourself and more on the person in front of you.

HR professionals spend their careers connecting with people whose personalities, backgrounds, and experiences are vastly different. The people who build rapport most quickly aren’t necessarily the most polished communicators. They’re the ones who stay curious, listen generously, and make others feel understood.

Practise those habits and, even when you have only minutes, you’ll find it easier to connect with almost any personality.

Nick Bendel is a speaker, author, social courage expert, and author of The 500 Lunches Effect: How Social Courage Changes Everything.

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