The Question That Opens Everything Up
How do you create emotional connection?
A weekly question to ponder what matters in your WorkLife.
Each question is drawn from the School of WorkLife Question Banks.
This is the question I want you to sit with today.
How do you create emotional connection?
Let’s explore the question through a character I created.
Emma.
Emma is the main protagonist in the Story Lesson: How to Unlock Hidden Strategic Value Through Storytelling.
Her story is featured in the episode: The Stories Behind the Stories: Emma.
Emma’s story was told in WorkLife Stories: How to Unlock Hidden Strategic Value Through Storytelling — if you haven’t already, reading that story will help you understand how your emotional connection transforms the middle of a professional conversation and go deeper with this question.
Emma’s Discovery
Emma didn’t set out to create emotional connection.
She set out to understand what people actually needed.
Those two things turned out to be the same.
In her new business development role, Emma discovered something unexpected.
What happened after the opening question was just as important as the question itself.
The opening got her into the room.
The middle was where everything happened.
In the middle of every pitch conversation — something shifted.
The Food Distributor → When the Conversation Stopped Being a Pitch
With the food distributor, Emma asked the CEO to describe a time when logistics had worked brilliantly.
His tone changed immediately.
He described a temporary coordinator who had understood that restaurant clients needed precise timing for event catering.
Not just delivery.
Coordination with kitchen teams.
Ingredients arriving exactly when prep needed to begin.
He hadn’t been asked about this before.
And in the telling — something opened up.
Emma didn’t move on.
She stayed in it.
She asked what had gone wrong.
Not the logistics failure.
The real impact.
What they had actually lost when a provider had optimised for cost and damaged their relationships with restaurant clients.
And then she asked what drove his business beyond the logistics itself.
The CEO described something he clearly hadn’t said out loud in a pitch meeting before.
They were the bridge between small food producers and independent restaurants.
Both doing important work.
Both needing someone to take care of the logistics so they could focus on what mattered.
That’s when the conversation stopped being a pitch.
The Medical Supply Director → Permission to Say What Was True
The same thing happened with the medical supply director.
Sceptical at the start.
Waiting to hear what every other provider had said.
Emma asked about success first.
Then about failure — not the logistics failure, but the real impact.
Clinics that couldn’t serve patients.
A reputation damaged because commitments couldn’t be met.
And then she asked what drove the business beyond moving medical supplies.
Healthcare equity.
Ensuring rural and underserved communities had access to the same quality supplies as urban hospitals.
The director said it quietly.
As if it wasn’t something she usually said in rooms like this.
That’s Emotional Connection
Not created through performance or persuasion.
Through a question that gave someone permission to say what was true.
Emma understood something through those conversations.
Emotional connection in the middle of a conversation doesn’t come from what you say.
It comes from what you make space for.
The right question in the middle of a conversation does something that no opening can do alone.
It creates the conditions for the other person to say what they actually mean.
And when that happens — everything changes.
Not just the conversation.
The relationship.
So the question isn’t just Emma’s.
It’s yours.
How do you create emotional connection?
Today’s question is from Creating Three Fundamental Stories That Define Your Identity: Success, Failure and Passion Stories Question Bank — from the section Creating Engaging Middles.
Deepen the practice with the WorkLife Compass Guided Programme:The Art of WorkLife Storytelling: Creating Three Fundamental Stories That Define Your Identity Programme Crafting Success, Failure, and Passion Narratives with Powerful Beginnings, Engaging Middles, and Memorable Endings
If this resonates, you’ll find a daily thought on working life in School of WorkLife Reading Room — a LinkedIn group, Monday to Friday.
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