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Networking, Fixed · Humanity Working

• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: All right, Paul, I've recently been uh at a few events and it got me thinking about net networking.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I know you've looked a lot into networking and particularly uh with your early in career professionals.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so what do you think works well and what doesn't well you've been at a bunch of networking events recently, Matt.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: I know you've been speaking at conferences and things, so I'm sure at various points you've had to walk into a room with a bunch of strangers and talk about yourself and have them talk about themselves.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: What uh what do you what do you think?
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think it's do you think it's it works well?
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think it's kind of broken?
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: Hmm.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I it's interesting because I think I'm a uh I'm one of the I'm an introvert that can deploy extroversion, you know, uh in in in sparing parts, but like I don't like it.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: I don't like the party vibe I like or the jumping around of a networking event.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: I I like to sit and have real conversations.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah um so I would rather in an hour-long event have one or two really good conversations than you know 15 short ones.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh partly also is I am bad at remembering people's names.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: So I like to get in depth enough to have, you know, to kind of get them on the list of the uh what's the Dunbar's number of names, right?
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I've been really lucky as the speaker that people initiate the conversations generally, right?
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: So, but I I do find that uh the the whole process of it can be sort of exhausting, you know, on either side of it.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if you're trying too hard or if you do get into those conversations, like it's it's a welcome silence to get back to the hotel room and just be quiet for a little while.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um but those real connections are are are decades-long relationships, if if you do it right, you know.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: So I think the depth uh is the way because you might not talk to that person again for a few years.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: And they're like, remember, I met you at the this this thing, and we were talking about that in this location, city, or whatever.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: And you're like, oh yeah, we talked about this and that and your family, and like those are the ones that kind of stick around.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: And so, so I tend to make it by default.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: I don't like to bop around.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: So if I can find a comfy place to sit or stand and you know, rest my my my drink and have a conversation and hear the person and really pay attention.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's the move for me, is you know, maybe it's the lazy way out, but I find a comfy spot and and then it'll, you know, then the conversation can can be there.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: I I I have trouble with the the bouncing part.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that I have trouble with is one of the is a statement that we hear with almost everybody that we talk to about this, right?
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I think one of the most interesting aspects of networking is that you might think that the world is divided into introverts and extroverts, and that um extroverts love it and introverts hate it.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um and it's way more complicated than that.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um there most people, most people find networking events uh lower down the list of things that they like to do.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um most people find it fairly awkward.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: And some people, and actually a reasonable proportion of people in our work with people, um hate it to the point where they actively avoid it.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, that's the that's a real challenge because as you point out, there are potentially real uh real benefits associated with the end goal, right?
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: And the end goal being to uh make connections that are valuable and that you can take uh with you for the for the rest of your life.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: Those every every person that you know, um at one point you didn't, there was a there was a there was a song in the uh I think 80s or 90s uh by a band called Bros.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: Any of our British followers might remember them.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: And uh the first line of the song was most of my friends were strangers when I met them.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: And it always irritated me because it's like, no, actually, all of your friends are strangers when you met them.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um but the uh um by the way, the second line of that song is familiarity breeds contempt.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: So it makes even less sense as you go as you as you go through it.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: But the point is that people don't uh people don't like it.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and yet the the end element of it is is kind of essential.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: So what we've been thinking about is um is this is the way in which we kind of traditionally do it, which is we have a bunch of people that that physically gather in spaces and then we ply them with things like alcohol and food and stuff like that to ease the pain, and then we and then and we provide a little bit of time and then we see what happens.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: Is that is that the best way to accomplish the outcome that we want to accomplish?
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: You know what's funny is as you say it, I I realize that I never thought of those things that way, even though they're called a networking event.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: Like, like literally, it just didn't track for me that that's what was happening.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: You know, in in the best way possible, like you know, or that they're purposefully giving us things to make it easier to swallow.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: Like that, that's oh yeah, that's fascinating.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: I just never thought it just was the thing that came with it, just comes with the job, like it just comes with the territory, so you do it.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um you speak to people that are involved in this field, by the way, and they and and the really good ones are really, really intentional about like, for example, creating the spaces where the more introverted people can go.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: Interesting.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: Because there's a strategy that introverted people very often have.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: So, for example, they'll go to like a buffet area and they will look intently at the different parts of the buffet because if they can look at the buffet, they don't have to try to make eye contact with other people.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then once they've wound, once they've got enough like energy, once they've been refueled enough, they can like go to they can go to a table and then stand there like in a really, really aimless way, hoping that hoping that somebody says something to them so they don't have to think of the first line.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: But the people that will that design these things are thinking about like where those areas are spaced and how much time they're doing in order to be able to allow that to happen well.
• 7:45
  unknown: God.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: Aren't humans weird?
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: I was just talking to my wife about or my my daughter about this the other day, because she's going to college and she's like, it's gonna be weird, but everybody's gonna be weird.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: Like everybody is having this same experience.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: So yes, and I and that's awesome that she that that she's self-aware enough to be uh to be able to think about it in that way, yeah.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: You are in a when you are going to a networking event, you are among many, many, many people who don't want to be there either.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that's so crazy.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: So how do you I said one of my favorites is creating depth, right?
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: So how do you create depth quickly without a feeling forced question, shared tasks, or you know, small co-creation moments?
• 8:37
  unknown: Yeah, yeah.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the ar yeah, the irony is that um it's one of those things where even though small talk is feels kind of dumb and feels kind of stupid.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um you it's necess it's a necessary thing that humans have in order to be able to give them permission to move on to something that is more meaningful.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a bit like like like avoiding it almost never works.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's a bit like if you went to if if you went to your wife and the first thing that you said to her when you met her was like, so uh do you want to get married next week?
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah it sort of would be like, you know, that would that wouldn't work, right?
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: So you have to do something to um to earn allow yourself to create to create permission for the um for the next thing.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: But the key, there is absolutely nothing that we found with having rehearsed elements.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, having rehearsed rehearsed elements can really help.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: So going into a networking event and knowing what are the one or two questions um that you like to ask, um, and ideally ones that are just slightly or fractionally different to um to what people um normally would say.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: And then also having your really short, really sharp uh answers that when people ask you obvious questions that you that you don't have to put the effort into thinking of what your answer is, you can just do the off the cuff.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: So we found that ease it can it can ease tension if you have your 15-second elevator pitch, even if you're not an entrepreneur, even if you're not pitching or whatever, it is the this is the 15-second answer I give when somebody asks me what I do, for example.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: And then you just do it, right?
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: You just now it'll feel awkward while you're practicing it.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: But then as you're going around, somebody says, Hey, what do you do?
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: And then you give them your 15-second, this is what I do.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: And it's probably got an element of I I do this in this way, and here's why I do it, as in, you know, here's the here's my why associated with it.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: And then the equivalent of that in terms of asking questions for other people, my personal favorite is not what do you do?
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it feels too mercenary.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: But I uh but I will say a very simple variant of that, which is hey, tell me about what you're working on right now.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: And then that's just a that's just a simple but subtly, uh, subtly different question, or something that is completely particularly at a at a networking mixer um that is that is work related, you can pick some kind of random thing that is not associated with work at all, but that which you know will likely get the other person to open up.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: The interesting thing is that if you're in a networking mixer and you get the other person to open up, it it makes it easier for you to open up.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: So it's worth doing those little things to help out.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: That's funny.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: So formats obviously matter.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: So what have you seen work better than open-ended mingling, you know, small curated groups, round tables, co-building, making, uh, and why?
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so we already talked about the fact that there's um that most people don't like this stuff, even whether they're introverted or whether they're extroverted, but it is almost uniquely uh horrible for people that are uh that are deeply introverted.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so if you're being truly, truly thoughtful about it, then um the open-ended nature of networking for introverts is probably the hardest single thing.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: Because you're uncertain, you don't know what you're gonna, you don't know what you're gonna say, you don't know who you're gonna meet, etc.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the stuff I was talking about before can help you as an individual, right?
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: If you go into a networking event and you do know what you're gonna say, right?
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know what your first question is gonna be for other people, you know what your first answer, if you're gonna be asked a certain certain number of things, you put in the work to make sure that you've uh that you've done that thing.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: If you know that, that can kind of ease some of the anxiety.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: But if you're organizing an event like this, then having um elements that are um that are in the networking format or within the networking format, but give some bit but create some sense of purpose within the format, that can be really helpful for introverts.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: So for example, you could say, okay, we're gonna hold this event, it's gonna be at this particular time, um, but during the event, um, there's gonna be, you know, five or six small tables where we're gonna talk about X or a Y or Z topic.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: And then as an introvert, you can be like, okay, well, I found that bit, that open-ended exhausting thing, but I can go to this table and talk to some people about this topic that I know something about.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: Now I've got a purpose and it makes everything feel a little bit less awkward.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: So it's sort of those types of things that you can bake into the format that will help people get over the awkwardness of it.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: Interesting.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: So, how would you balance depth with a small portfolio of weak ties?
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's so expansive, not transactional.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's interesting, right?
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: We spent most of our time here talking about sort of one specific type of networking event, right?
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's a like a mixer thing.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: And the broader question is um is is that even the thing that is that is most appropriate now?
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I think it's actually sort of part of a broader portfolio of ways in which you want um in which you want people to network in this in this new world.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: Because uh what is really interesting is that as you pointed out before, there is this concept of you know, of stronger ties that we're gonna have with a smaller number of people, probably up to around about 150 people.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's this now new, uh comparatively new, since the invention of social media, you know, the thousands of ties that you can potentially maintain across the various uh the various social uh social networks that you have.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um the people that benefit most from neck from networking and the people that do networking really, really well, do both.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: And they understand how and they understand how to do both.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: And they understand the thing that you identified at the start of this of this podcast, which is that there's an element of going to a networking event and collecting a bunch of LinkedIn connections, and that's not necessarily a bad thing, right?
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: Right, because those could be people that see your content, those could be people that reach out to you, that could be a whole bunch of different reasons, right?
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: So that could be that could be good, yeah, right?
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, um, but that has to be balanced with the idea of that you're creating a set of stronger ties with people that where you don't even know where it's gonna go.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: You just know that there is a connection that you've made, the connection is meaningful, um, and that that will something interesting will happen out of it.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: And you and I are a good example of that, right?
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: We met from a we met from a completely uh in a completely different realm uh when you were at a different company, I was at a different company, um, and our conversations were related to life sciences, and here we are um doing a podcast together.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: So those types of relationships, you've got to find a way to build and maintain those types of relationships in addition to that broader, uh, that broader broader view.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so as individuals, we need to figure out how to do that, but then as as teams and organizations, we need to figure out ways to facilitate that because weak ties are useful, strong ties, smaller numbers of them are useful, but you need both.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_01: And we bonded over pocket squares, which had nothing to do with any of any of the things we were working on, oddly enough.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: So absolutely.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: I've still got I've still got a few ones based on your recommendations.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: All right, Paul.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: We'll catch you on the next one.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: This is a great episode.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: Humanity Working is produced and edited for Billion Minds by Matt Meam.
• 17:42
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• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: It helps us reach more people.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: If you want to learn more about how Billion Minds gets companies ready for the future of work by building adaptable, resilient employees, look for them on LinkedIn or visit their website at billionminds.com.