Researchers Tsedal Neeley and Sebastian Reiche tracked 115 senior leaders in a global technology consulting company who were responsible for selling and implementing projects in countries where they had limited prior experience. Tsedal and Sebastian found that leaders who were rated as top performers and got more promotions practiced “downward deference.” They reduced “social distance” and gained employees’ trust by taking time to learn about their lives and working “side by side”—rather than lording over them. Such leaders yielded to subordinates’ technical and cultural expertise by deferring to their judgment and delegating authority.

An academic study conducted by professors Gianpiero Petriglieri, Sue Ashford, and Amy Wrzesniewski, for example, found that successful professional gig workers take special care to build their “tribe,” a handful of sustaining relationships with peers. As one person in their study told them, “My ability to process, develop, and grow as a human being and understand who I am in the work I’m doing comes from the conversations that I have with these folks. These people are how I know what I’m supposed to be doing.

In one fascinating study, researchers divided a set of participants (who wanted a coffee) into two groups: one group was instructed to have an interaction with the barista, and the other to be as efficient as possible. Like the “strangers on a train” study that we mentioned in Chapter Two, the researchers found that people who smiled, made eye contact, and had a social interaction with the barista—in this case, a complete stranger—came away feeling better, and with a greater sense of belonging, than those who were instructed to be as efficient as possible. In short, having a friendly moment with a stranger was uplifting.

Small moments can provide an uplift for our mood and they can help balance out some of the stress we feel. An annoying commute can be softened by a short conversation with the security guard at work. A sense of disconnection can be alleviated when we say hello to our mail carrier. These kinds of minute interactions can affect our mood and energy throughout the day. If we get in the habit of seeking out and noticing opportunities for these daily uplifts, over time they can have far-reaching effects. Not only for us, but for our social networks as a whole; repeated casual contact has been shown to foster the formation of closer friendships. And sometimes even the most casual contact can open us up to whole new realms of experience.

The new tutor was different. She was relational, not gushy, but attentive. She intuitively understood you were working under the weight, the history, of a reputation— that it was “in the air,” waiting to be validated by your first frustration. She knew that any sign of a lack of confidence in your ability could send you into a churn of self-doubt and very likely kill your interest.

Yet shown in the Stephens research described in chapter 6, welcomes can go wrong: they can alienate people, even if inadvertently, as well as welcome them. Recall the finding: When a welcome letter ostensibly written by a college president emphasized independence, finding one’s own passion, and working independently, working-class students were affected enough that they performed worse than non-working-class students on a subsequent verbal reasoning test. And at orientation, when independence was emphasized but no mention was made of communication values, working-class students got lower grades than other students on a subsequent test. These were students whose admission credentials and high school grades were on par with those of everyone else participating in the experiment. There’s a lesson in these findings: When bringing a diversity of people into a setting, it’s especially important that welcoming be inclusive. When it’s not— again, even inadvertently so— it can have serious consequences.