First morning at a new school, nobody to sit with. What is the first thing you actually say?

The winning first line is always short, and it always ends in a question. “Hi, I'm Sam. Is this seat taken?” Six words, two jobs: it says who you are, and it gives the other kid something easy to answer. A line that ends in a full stop makes the other person do all the work, and on a first morning most people are far too busy panicking to do it.

That is not just manners, it is measured. In 2017 a team at Harvard ran three studies of real conversations and found the same thing each time: people who ask more questions, and especially follow-up questions, are better liked by the person they are talking to. In the speed-dating version, the people who asked more follow-up questions were more likely to get a yes to a second date. You can read the published study. The strange part: people do not expect this. Most of us assume talking about ourselves is what impresses, so we under-ask, and then wonder why the chat went flat.

Why follow-ups and not just questions? “What school did you go to?” is a form field. Asking about the thing they just said is proof you were listening, because it repeats one of their own words back at them. The researchers call that being responsive — listening, understanding, caring — and it is what actually moves the liking number.

Now the bit that helps most on the actual morning. In 2018 another study checked what each person thought of the other after a conversation, and found a consistent gap: people systematically underestimated how much the other person liked them. It turned up with strangers in a lab, with workshop attendees, and with first-year students living together for an entire year. They named it the liking gap. Practically: while you stand there worrying whether they like you, the kid across the table is doing exactly the same maths about you, and you are both wrong in the same direction. The awkward silence is not a verdict on you. Everyone standing in it thinks it is about them.

One note for the older end of the table, since somebody will think it. Asking a question is not uncool. Nobody in the history of school was remembered as the cool one for standing silently by the door waiting to be approached. The quiet kid at the edge is usually not mysterious; he is running the same panicked arithmetic as everybody else, just with better posture.

The three rounds stack. A question opens the door, a follow-up keeps it open, and switching seats is the one that scales: it turns you from someone hoping to be included into someone who includes. That last move is the whole reason this belongs on a teamwork day.