Newsletter - December, 2005 - Issue 2 - Ignite your Connections

Becoming the most popular person you know

"Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier."
Mother Teresa

By Lindsay Sukornyk, Founder, North Star Coaches

As I sit and write this, I look outside my window and see the big, fat snowflakes falling to the ground, adding to the fresh blanket of snow that has fallen in the last couple of weeks. In the blink of an eye, the holiday season is upon us and with it comes the non-stop stream of parties and people. The thought of all that social interaction can be enough to make even the most extroverted of us want to run hide under our warm blankets and hibernate. Instead, I invite you to use this holiday season as an opportunity to boost your social savvy and become the most popular person you know.

Valerie is one of my favourite clients. She was recently promoted to a very senior executive position in a large Canadian telecommunications organization. An engineer by training, she has risen to her current level of success due in large part to her brilliant analytical skills, her ability to delve into the details and a very strong work ethic. Over the past many months, she has struggled with the exponential growth in the volume of work that she oversees.

In an attempt to stay on top of the work piling up on her desk, she has often had to stay late and come in on the weekends. She has commented many times in the past that "All these people dropping by to chat and all these social functions are really getting in the way of me doing my job."

When Valerie brought this topic to our coaching recently, I challenged her to consider each social interaction as an opportunity to learn something about the person with whom she was speaking and to find one thing that is fascinating about them. The assumption she chose to hold during this exercise was one of my favourites, which is "every single person has a lesson to share with me."

After several weeks, Valerie had learned a powerful lesson. As she had shifted her focus to be more attentive to the relationship-building aspect of her role, she actually found that she had less work to do. Because she was taking more time to connect with her peers before and after meetings, she found they were collaborating more and sharing information. She found that her direct reports were coming into her office less often, as she was providing more context and information in her informal interactions with them, which was allowing them to do a much better job the first time around.

Valerie also noticed that her relationship with Jim, one of her counterparts in another functional area, had significantly improved. Previously, he had been combative and negative in meetings, putting up roadblocks whenever her group had tried to implement a new initiative. In support of our homework assignment, she decided to make a point of sitting beside Jim at the holiday party. She held her assumption that he had something to teach her and that he had something fascinating to share. Within a very short time, they discovered that they had a mutual passion for scuba diving and spent the whole night comparing notes about the best dive locations to explore. When she looked at her watch near the end of the evening, she was shocked to see that it was time to leave and even more shocked to realize that she had had a fabulous time that night.

The next week at their regular meeting, Jim came and sat beside her. Throughout the meeting, his entire energy had shifted and Valerie found him nodding his head in agreement whenever she was speaking. Although he did disagree with one of her points, he brought it up in a constructive way and suggested they have lunch to clarify his concerns. This shift in dynamics between she and Jim was the largest win to date in Valerie's new leadership role.

At our next coaching session, Valerie captured the essence of her lesson in one powerful sentence. She said, "Socializing and networking is not just a part of my job to tolerate - it IS my job."

The truth is the more senior you get in your career, the more important networking becomes. It is never too soon to start honing these skills. So this year at your holiday parties, instead of dragging your snowy feet through the door with dread, take the opportunity to develop your networking skills.

I'm going to let you in on a little secret. People are dying to connect at a real level and are just waiting for someone to ask. Become genuinely curious about the person you are speaking with and make a point of discovering something new about them. Come to the party equipped with some good open-ended questions. Some of my favourites are "So, what do love to do when you're not working?" and "Tell me about your family." Listen for any topics that you are particularly interested in and use some simple phrases like "Tell me more about that - it sounds really interesting."

Most importantly, stretch yourself out of your comfort zone and be more vulnerable than you would normally be. Start a conversation with someone you don't know and reveal something about yourself that you wouldn't normally reveal. You will be delighted to discover how quickly you develop some meaningful relationships that you genuinely want to maintain. Before you know it, your contact list will be overflowing and you will truly be the most popular person you know.