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Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review. I'm Kurt Nickish.

The pandemic forced many people inside for many months. It is constrained our circle of

immediate contacts. It is layered everyday interactions with a sense of unease,

social distancing and masks make small talk harder. Increasingly, as more people head back out into

the world and back into their workplaces, it's a great time to think about reconnecting with people

and connecting to new ones. We're not talking about networking here or forcing more water cooler

talk, but building real meaningful connections with the people we work and interact with,

something we've been missing lately, whether they be employees, peers, or clients.

Today's guest is an expert at building human connection. Susan McPherson runs her own communications

consultancy, and she wrote the book The Lost Art of Connecting, The Gather, Ask Do Method,

for building meaningful business relationships. Susan, so great to talk with you.

Kurt, it is a pleasure to be here. Thank you so much.

Why is this such an important but maybe also difficult time to do this kind of connecting?

Oh, that's a very, very good question, and I have to tell you that when I put forth my book

proposal, it was four years ago, long before the pandemic was even a glimmer in our eye,

and I think, like you said in the introduction, people are feeling isolated, even in the United

States where we are now starting to kind of come back to life and come back to some semblance of

normalcy. After 15 months of being isolated, people are feeling like they are rusty in terms of

communicating with others. Have you felt that yourself? Absolutely, to a certain extent,

...