Hello, Stranger

“When you talk to strangers, you're making beautiful interruptions into the expected narrative of your daily life -- and theirs," Kio Stark, stranger enthusiast

“Don’t talk to strangers.”

This universal piece of advice is one we might all remember getting from adults in our lives at an early age. It’s right up there with:

• “Don’t do drugs.”

• “Don’t talk back.” and

• “Don’t set the house on fire.” (Did you turn off the oven?)

We are raised believing that talking to strangers is scary and dangerous.

It’s actually good advice for a 5-year-old. At 5, we don’t have the ability yet to know the difference between stranger danger and stranger kindness.

But it’s terrible advice for adults *(and young adults). Talking to strangers is one of the most important things we can do, but we rarely learn how, when, or why to do it.

The Big Idea

My professional life has been all about talking to strangers. Doing research, raising community, looking to raise funding, create partnerships, build gatherings around action —-to do any of these we start by talking to strangers.

Psychologist Gillian Sandstrom recently was a guest on the Hidden Brain podcast, with Shankar Vedantam. She shared research she and her team have conducted that has found that speaking to strangers has a significant effect on our happiness, general well-being and opportunity. Seemingly trivial social encounters — chatting with a person in an elevator, making small talk with the Dunkin’ barista, or even just smiling at a passerby — can have profound positive effects.

Talking to strangers reduces bias, unlocks cultural understandings, and solves problems. Strangers hold answers to all kinds of questions. We need go out of our way to talk to more of them, and to teach young people to do so as well.

Just this week, connections with strangers brought me (and my family) some gorgeous mod furniture, a box of sandwiches, a philosophy for living, and an idea for a new children’s book.

These weak social ties3 we develop also build community. THIS is the mindset we need to teach and model in schools, in workspaces and in life - the power and skills needed to talk to strangers.

Making Big Ideas Usable

In combing through research and considering personal experience, I’d offer three strategies for increasing opportunities to connect with strangers that might be shared in learning settings. Click here for the strategies.