One of your New Year’s Resolutions is to get out of the office more and connect in person with those professionals who can hire or refer you business.
So, cup of coffee in hand, you show up at your first networking event of the year, find a seat and wait for the meeting to begin. The group leader welcomes everyone and says, “With so many new faces today, why don’t we go around the table and have everyone take a few moments to introduce themselves and what they do.”
“Oh great, here comes a glorified roll call,” you think. Short of watching your local news pundits rehash a recent political debate, nothing is as mind numbing as listening to a group of professionals introduce themselves through tired clichés, generalities, and generic value statements.
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Unable to travel to the Midwest to visit her family for the holiday, I invited a professional acquaintance, Sally, to a Thanksgiving dinner that I was hosting at my home for family and friends. Sally accepted the invitation, and asked if she could bring her “to die for” seven-layer dip appetizer.
As meal time arrived, my home was bustling with guest arrivals, last minute tweaks to prepared food dishes, and my dogs bouncing off the walls with the influx in household activity–but no Sally.
Twenty minutes passed and I started to wonder whether Sally was having difficulty finding my home, so I phoned her. No answer. Another 30 minutes passed and the doorbell rang, it was Sally. She whizzed past me in search of the kitchen with practically no greeting or explanation for her tardiness. By that time, cocktail hour was over and we were mere minutes away from sitting down for dinner.
Sally was anxious to meet everyone, or so it appeared. She worked the room, asking lots of questions and learning how everyone was connected. She was skilled at posing a question and then turning the attention back on herself. In her mind, she was the belle of the ball.
One afternoon, I received a call from an acquaintance, Roger, the head of a prominent banking institution. He had finished up a meeting with another contact in the building and wondered whether he could stop by to catch up.
For close to a year, I had been in the process of setting up a meeting between Roger and one of my contacts, Larry, who had a successful financing business. Operating in the same business circles, the two of them knew of each other, but had never met. Understanding that business results from professionals who know, like, and trust each other, I thought this was the ideal opportunity for Larry to make a great, first impression with a prospective client.
As soon as I hung up the phone with Roger, I called Larry to see if he could swing by my office and join us for the meeting. He was eager for the opportunity. Since it was a Friday and I figured Larry was dressed casually, I inquired if he had a suit at the office he could change into. He did.
I met Roger in the lobby and escorted him to one of my conference rooms. A few minutes later when Larry joined us. I could not believe my eyes. Larry was in a suit, but one that had been fashioned more than ten years earlier when he was 20 pounds lighter.
At some point during our professional upbringing, we were conditioned to strip our business relationships and interactions of anything and everything personal. This all-too-common practice suggests that professionals have one persona that is “all business” and a second that is “personal” and rarely the two shall meet.
Couple that conditioning with a communications environment ripe with email, texting, internet browsing, tweeting, and Facebooking, and it’s no wonder why we continue to have issues connecting. The tools we were told would help us stay better connected seem to be working against us!
Daily, I find myself fighting the de facto urge to email or text instead of picking up the phone or walking down the hall to have a live conversation. This is especially true when resolving conflict or communicating an important business decision. Whether it’s truly more convenient to email or just an excuse to justify one’s passive aggressive tendencies, many of us use it as a mechanism for issue avoidance.
One of my sisters, Heidi, accepted a management position with a well-known cosmetic company. She was excited for the new opportunity.
Shortly after arriving and settling in her new position, the company decided that Heidi’s talents and sales track record were better served with one of its cosmetic lines located in a major department store outside the city. It would be the company’s last ditch effort to save the cosmetic line’s business in the area.
The news of the change came with mixed reviews. On one hand, this presented a great opportunity for Heidi to make an immediate impression and position herself for future growth within the company by turning around a fledgling cosmetic line. On the other hand, the commute from her apartment in the city to the new location would be a grueling two-hours each direction, requiring her to take a series of trains and buses. Nonetheless, she felt up to the challenge.
