Connecting & being true to yourself

When you’re seeking to leverage connective energy the number one rule is to be yourself. There are two (at least) good reasons for this.

Firstly that trying to be someone else or trying to emulate someone else’s character or behaviour is endlessly exhausting and takes and huge amount of energy that should be focussed on building the relationship not holding a constant mask.

The second is that if you’re out there genuinely seeking to develop relationships on the basis of trust then there can be no greater breach of trust than to try to pretend to be someone that you are not from the outset and you will be found out.

Why do people engage in this form of emulation? Because they think it is expected of them or because the old rules of being great at networking and forging connections told them this is so.

15% of the population, that’s right just 15% are those who strongly identify as extroverts and these rules around networking and connecting were largely made for them. As for the rest of us who may identify as Centroverts or Introverts, we just learned to adapt and act up, often unsuccessfully.

Devora Zack, author of Networking for People who Hate Networking takes three dusty old rules of networking and turns them on their heads so they make more sense and are just more altogether doable for those of us not within the 15%.

DON’T DO THIS RULE NUMBER 1 – JUMP ON IN AND MAKE YOURSELF HEARD

Extroverts talk to think. My centrovert tendency means I can do this on occasions. I don’t mean any malice through this and I’m also very happy when someone takes something I’ve said and builds upon it. Stronger extroverts seem to have an ability to command words that bond on seemingly any subject and any occasion. Mention a holiday and they have a funny anecdote to make.

Extoverts are also great at jumping into conversations, standing on the outside, give an Extrovert a few seconds and they are off with anecdotes, jokes, stories and observations and before long they have their “new best friends” at their disposal. All the while the Innies just listen.

SO DO THIS INSTEAD RULE NUMBER 1 – USE YOUR LISTENING SKILLS TO SHOW YOU’RE LISTENING

We know introverts are wired to think in order to talk.  You can use this understanding to prepare well before you go to a networking meeting. You know the topic, study the speakers, read their study notes and bios in advance.  Rather than fret about your inability to sally back and forth with witty repartee in the conversation keep your observations short, accurate and thoughtfully open?

For example: “It found it interesting that both Mary and Jim’s separate talks both mentioned the challenges and opportunities posed by GenZ in the workplace, what did everyone else make of that?”

Keeping the observation concise, opening up dialogue where the extroverts will surely dive in and then taking in more information as it is offered.

DON’T DO THIS RULE NUMBER 2 – SELL AND PROMOTE YOURSELF FOR ALL IT’S WORTH

Extroverts designed the rules of networking events; to be visible, to share all your accomplishments freely without being asked, to make every contact count and make sure everyone understands your reason for being there and why you’re important.

The thing is promotion and self-promotion is stock in trade for the extroverts and they don’t mind at all doing this to each other because at the end of the day they’re only half if that listening to each others’ responses anyway.

And for the Innie this feels challenging, scary and somewhat disingenuous. Have you every found yourself in a circle where everyone is doing a more formal version of introductions – who are you and what are you famous for and as the circle creeps round you’re waiting for the fire alarm to go off, a sudden emergency or a sinkhole to open in front of you.

And when it’s your turn to talk, the words just don’t come out nearly as good as they imagined in your head and they weren’t that great there either.

SO DO THIS INSTEAD RULE #2 LEARN TO PERCOLATE NOT PROMOTE IDEAS

Whereas the extroverts will be just out there telling people how good they are, the Innies can percolate their value more subtly. Remember in a previous article I talked about how good it is to be listened to and heard. This is a super power for an Introvert that Extroverts can’t compete with.

Learn to permeate relationships beneath the surface by taking an interest in what people are saying and add to the conversation depth.

“I think you make an excellent point there and it reminds of our first speaker Karl who seemed to set out a theory that matches some of your observations. I wonder where this could go next”.

Always driving for depth and profound thinking, the Innie doesn’t have to say a lot but what they do say can be purposeful and purposefully oriented to showing to people that what they have said has been heard, has meaning and significance. And oriented to taking things to a deeper relational level.

Highly likely is that as the Innie you’ll be asked “how do you know so much about this” and of course you can and must answer but this is likely to feel so much better than the endless self-promotion you may be perceiving you’re getting from the strong Extroverts in the room.

Still waters run deep. And the advantage of this approach is you can allow groups to naturally thin out so you have fewer people to focus on. Just be sure in a group that you’ve not inadvertently isolated people by accident through concentrating and focussing on one or two people that you have bonded with.

DON’T DO THIS RULE #3 – NEVER STOP NETWORKING TIL YOU’RE REMOVED FROM THE ROOM (AND THEN CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION ONLINE)

Exies get their energy from other people and so they are the ones who are surprised when someone is finally trying to usher them out of the room because the networking session is over and the conference centre has leased the room to someone else and needs to reset.

They lose track of time because of the energy in room stimulating their senses.  Innies however, imagine an hour has gone by when in fact it is barely five minutes past the hour and they can’t wait for the session to be over as quickly as possibly.

SO DO THIS INSTEAD RULE #3 SET A PACE FOR YOURSELF AND STICK TO IT

This is highly personal as we will all have a different tolerance but set yourself a period of time in the networking event and stick to it. You can promise yourself to take a break outside just to get out of the noise. Fifteen minutes in, ten minutes out.  Build one connection then retreat, refresh and go back in. Or not – if you’re starting out here maybe fifteen minutes is all that’s right for you right now. Test your own tolerance.

Sure you may leave the room with a smaller number of business cards than the extrovert. But when you look at the cards later than evening you’re likely to remember the face, voice and some interesting fact for each person whose card you have. The extrovert is likely to be busy keying them into their electronic roladex and getting the LinkedIn connections worked up in place.

INTROVERT BONUS – GET GREAT AT QUESTIONS

Whereas introverts don’t like speaking voluntarily about ourselves, we are quite insightful and thoughtful about what we hear but how to keep a conversation going and show we’re interested and demonstrate that depth of listening? Learn to make great questions.

You probably already know the difference between an open and closed question. A closed question will be “Did you enjoy Mark’s talk on GenZ”. If you’re lucky the recipient will bail you out and expand further than a simple yes or no to that kind of question but you leave it to chance. Meet another introvert and you’ll have a game of 20 questions going on[IB1] .

But some questions whilst open can feel a little hostile when asked. “What made you leave Cartwright University” has a kind of rough and clumsy edge to it and sends a conversation into a potential dead end. So think about how you can practice and develop your own set of open questions – for example “You mentioned you used to be at Cartwright University, what led you to make the shift to Cogan University”.

TAKE ACTION TODAY

The big reason why networking events and therefore connecting with others doesn’t work for Introverts is that the rules of the game were not designed for you and they’re still not.  We’ve all at some stage probably had some well meaning advice to just act like an extrovert but if you’re an innie or a centrovert this is harder than it sounds and why should you have to be someone you’re not.

The big game in town here is not to try to be someone else, but to rewrite the rules of the game so they were designed to work for you and your personality. Own all the great qualities of not being the extrovert and make them work in your favour.

That’s it for this time, let me know what you think and share your experience in comments, if you like Thriving Leader why not share with someone you think would benefit. We’re all trying to grow. The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second best time to plant a tree is today.

My coaching mission – to help introverts succeed in a world built by and for extroverts. All the ambition, less of the noise. Discover lots of articles just like this, podcasts to develop yourself for free and how to fire up your quietly successful career at www.ianbrowne.com

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