Nothing About Strangers is Easy

We live in an era of isolation. Loneliness is reaching epidemic levels. We are also a quickly urbanizing; with 90% of the planet's people expected to live in urban areas of 2100. So it is natural that we have a significantly higher number of connections to strangers on a daily basis. But is this a big deal? Well, according to Malcolm Gladwell's new book "Talking to Strangers," not only is it a big deal, but we are really bad at it.

And the implications of being bad at talking to strangers isn't trivial. There are huge implications to the miscommunication between strangers that arise from unforeseen misunderstandings and misperceptions.

Honestly, I had never thought about this challenge. And part of the reason is that I make many of the blunders Gladwell describes very regularly when I talk with strangers. His book opened my eyes to the ways that I misread strangers and the dangers that result.

This book is Gladwell's darkest and most menacing. Usually Gladwell is highlighting a specific cultural and psychological human dynamic. His meticulous research and knack for storytelling brings the ideas in Tipping Point, Blink, and his other books to life in powerful ways. But this book is all about "Stranger Danger" and how strangers are even more dangerous because we misunderstand. I would have loved to see some positive and redeeming stranger encounters in the book to balance out the heaviness. But I understand that each of the stories he picked did highlight the core problem he addresses.

That core problem is that we think it is easy to talk to strangers and it is really very difficult.

Gladwell shares three key tools that we can put in our tool belt as we engage with strangers:

1. Default to Truth: He makes the case that our human nature trusts what a stranger says. This is fundamentally a good thing as it allows us to trust bus drivers, bankers, fast food preparers, etc. However, with 24/7 news coverage we are exposed to the deviant behavior of some strangers and begin to feel that it is normative. Gladwell makes a good case for why it is not and we should continue to act as if it isn't. 
2. Transparency: Gladwell explains that we believe we can read people based on how they act, but many times the way people act is not consistent with who they are. He described this as being "mismatched." Very often we make assumptions about strangers when their actions are mismatched with their motives. 
3. Coupling: Finally, he proposes that many times certain actions or decisions being made by strangers are coupled with another key item such as place, time, socioeconomic conditions, etc. We believe that the actions of a stranger would be easy to decode no matter what situation they find themselves in. Gladwell says that we have to couple the actions of a stranger with other key factors to really understand what is happening. 

These three items are very helpful and I am looking forward to applying them to different situations in my work. While this book was a really challenging read because of the heavy content and its winding nature, it is a critical topic and Gladwell has added some important insight for us to consider as we connect with a world increasingly filled with strangers.