The Arthur Aron study fascinates me. For those who don't know, it's an experiment that suggests if you sit down with a stranger and ask 36 questions, you have a good chance of falling in love.

Now I'm a leadership coach, not a relationship coach. However, I believe that great leadership begins with good relationships.

Nurturing honest, open relationships with people is essential if you want to build trust.

Gone are the rigid hierarchical days of the boss telling people what to do from his corner office. Today, we encourage everyone to lead. Collaboration is key and having a solid relationship is the foundation of a successful team.

How do you build relationships at work?

It requires taking a risk and opening yourself up to others - showing vulnerability. And this is what the Arthur Aron study looked at – what happens if we share our true feelings with others?

Aron's team weren't looking at how to make people fall in love. The well-known engagement that resulted from this experiment was just part of a more comprehensive study. They were actually analysing the impact that honesty and vulnerability have on relationships.

Aron and his research team paired students together. These students were complete strangers. Each pair were given 45 minutes to ask each other a set of questions.

Half of the pairs were given factual and fairly shallow questions. Questions such as:

Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?

Would you like to be famous? In what way?

The other half began with the same questions but then moved into more probing, more profound questions that required a more personal response.

When did you last cry in front of another person? By yourself?

Tell your partner something that you like about them already.

At the end of the 45 minutes, the pairs were asked to rate how close they felt to their partner. The second group, who had asked the more intimate questions, said they had formed closer bonds than the first group. In fact, many of the pairs in the second group became lifelong friends.

Interestingly, Aron's team also spoke to a wide range of students not involved in the experiment. They were asked to rate how close they felt to the most significant people in their lives. This revealed that those involved in the intimate 45-minute conversation felt closer to each other than 30% of students' most important long-term relationships.

Simply being in the presence of this research had a profound impact on them.

This is a discovery that doesn't come as a surprise to me. When we open up, it provides safety and encouragement for others to do the same. When we remain closed, others do the same or only give surface-level details about themselves.

Obviously, I'm not asking you to survey all your work colleagues and ask 'when was the last time you cried by yourself'! Sometimes, people hope that I will give them a step-by-step guide to vulnerability because they worry they will get it wrong or go too far. Worry keeps people stuck in exactly the same place. Where relationships don't grow, and lack of growth is the death of a business.

Others do try and open up more, but the truth is that most people don't go far enough. They keep themselves closed, and this means relationships remain fairly average.

Are you building an average company or a company where you put relationships first?

Relationships with your colleagues, clients and the wider community you serve at the heart of your business.

Take Michael. He leads a team of 15 senior managers, reports to a Vice President, and the most he ever shares about himself is that he has children. No details about their ages, that they are struggling in lockdown, what they do together at the weekend.  He says he wants to support his team at the moment. He knows lockdown has been difficult for many of them. He understands the logic behind sharing information about yourself as a way to build trust and better working relationships, but he is worried he will go too far. He fears that people would stop seeing him as the leader and appear weak or soppy. Consequently, people often think of him as cold and distant, and conversations feel transactional. Other senior leaders seem to know his team better than he does.

Michael knew that others thought of him as distant. He said it feels harder now because we're all working from home, and when we get back to the office, it will get easier. This is a lie! Michael was trying to justify not making any changes in the present, hoping that it would get better later. So, with encouragement, he started small. Michael began to show a bit more of himself with his closest colleagues.

When asked about his weekend, Michael stopped his usual 'same old, you know'. Instead, he would tell them what he did with his kids, that his oldest son is obsessed with Minecraft, while he and his daughter love to play the piano together. Small details you might think. But suddenly, people felt a bit more connected to him. One colleague was able to tell him that he was feeling overwhelmed. Michael doesn't know whether this would have happened anyway, but he knew the conversation was different to one they had had before, and they had known each other for five years!

Vulnerability is about showing up and being seen. It's tough to do that when we're terrified about what people might see or think. When we're fuelled by the fear of what other people think or that gremlin that's constantly whispering "You're not good enough" in our ear, it's tough to show up. We end up hustling for our worthiness rather than standing in it". Brene Brown

If the idea of this makes you feel uncomfortable, you're not alone. But there are simple ways you can begin an honest discussion without scaring people. If you start like this, people are more likely to share with you the deeper stuff because you have made them feel comfortable enough to do so.

Showing your vulnerability, a window into your world, opens up communication channels and builds better working relationships. We are all having a human experience.

Returning to Aron's study, how can it help you build the team you want? Remember, I don't do three-step guides to changing your life, but here are just a couple of ways you might use some of Aron's questions.

First ask yourself the questions in the image. Get curious. What is there to learn about yourself? For example, I had never asked myself the final question (my answer is at the bottom of the article if you are interested).

You could use them with Zoom drinks or at the next off-site get together. One person in your group will find this cringy, and that's ok. Most people will welcome the chance to get to know who they spend the majority of their working week with.

Finally, give yourself permission to open up a little bit more about yourself. Dare to take the risk, knowing that your relationships will grow as a result of this.

I'm Sally, and I'm a leadership coach, trainer and mentor. I love working with curious people who are exploring how to make meaningful change.

My response to an Arthur Aron question:

Question: Your house, containing everything you own, catches fire. After saving your loved ones and pets, you have time to make a final dash to save any one item. What would it be? Why?

Answer: I thought long and hard about this, my first answer was nothing, and then on second thoughts I would save our wedding photos, because some of the friends that were at our wedding are no longer with us, John and David, and that makes our photos even more special.

Your turn …