Did You Miss That Bid? Your Members Might Be Trying to Connect

Did you turn toward or away from your partner’s last bid for connection?

Drs. Julie and John Gottman are relationship researchers who have researched “bids for connection.” A bid is when you are trying to connect with your partner or vice versa. Bids can be substantial, such as planning a bucket-list-style vacation for them. But most often, they are small, everyday things, like asking, “How is it going?” or “Hey, check out the way our cat is sleeping.”

So your partner makes a bid, and you have three options. You can respond positively to the bid something like, “Oh my gosh, it’s soooo cute when Noodle sleeps on her face. ” Or you can ignore the bid (maybe because you were preoccupied and kind of just didn’t hear them.) Or you can react negatively, “Well! I’m soooooo glad someone is getting some sleep around here with all your snoring,” said with a sarcastic huff.

As you might guess, in healthy relationships, partners react positively to bids most of the time (about 86%). While in on-the-rocks relationships, this falls to 33%.

At this point, you might be thinking, “This is interesting, but I don’t follow Amanda for relationship advice.” Yep! I hear you, and the reason I’m taking a little detour into the world of romantic relationship research is that this is highly analogous to what’s happening with members. Members are constantly making bids for connections.

A call, an email, a raised hand during a course, a post to the online community, even a tentative smile in the registration line—each is a bid for connection.

Rarely are member bids for connection met with negativity. But this can happen. A long-time member types, “This question has been answered like 100,000 times in this community, why don’t you try searching before you post?” However, bids for connection are often ignored. Chats from first-time attendees are frequently overlooked during webinars. The people working the event’s registration are too overwhelmed to make eye contact and flash a smile. New members contribute posts to the online community, and no one responds.

Consider all the times and situations when a member’s bid for connection is likely to be ignored. How can you create the structure to recognize and react to all the bids members make? How might you create a culture where most bids are reacted to positively?