I’m right off the wedding of a friend’s son’s. I was telling my friend, the father of the groom, that I woke up thinking I hadn’t done a good job connecting with the guests from the other family. I rationalized that it was the long table that made me not want to introduce myself to the people several chairs down. Who am I kidding? Sometimes I can’t muster up the energy to say, “Hello, my name is Cathy Paper, I’m from Minnesota. Where are you from?” or “Hi, I’m Cathy I’m a friend of the groom’s parents? You?”
You have to start somewhere and I had introduced myself to the other people at my table who were new to me so I figured I was doing well with my connection skills. I reminded myself that you have to start somewhere. Don’t worry about bringing your A-game, just start building relationships and rapport!
My friend made me feel better by saying not everyone is a networking expert. I think he may be right because I found myself introducing myself to people before they introduced themselves to me. I don’t run right up to random people to mkae a cold introduction. But when I’m in a conversation circle where I don’t know all the people, I do wait a sentence or two before I say, “Hello, I don’t think we’ve met, I’m Cathy Paper”. At which point the other guests are always kind enough to tell me who they are and thus the conversation begins.
Whether you’re at a wedding event or a networking event. you can have your questions prepared in advance. I usually have 3-5 questions ready. My goal is to quickly find a subject that I am actually interested in hearing about. The sky’s the limit on what type of questions to ask, depending on your goals.
My go-to questions at a social event are:
Where are you from?
Tell me your connection to the host?
What do you do for work?
What did you do today that was interesting?
Have you been to XXXX (fill in the blank) before? What do you recommend I do in your city tomorrow?
Conversation is a skill to be developed. If you know yourself well you know that you like to talk about travel or sports or pets or kids — and these are all great conversation-starters. Or maybe you want to talk about your work or your love of cars. One of the people I met at the wedding was a management consultant from Germany who worked in the automotive industry. She mentioned one of her clients, Porsche Cars, and of course I was excited to talk fast cars. When she shared that she had never been to the United States before I decided to slow my car conversation and discover what she wanted to do during her visit, and then suggest a few possibilities. Often being a better listener is better than doing all the talking.
Now that the event is over, the responsibility lies with me to track people down on LinkedIn or in this case, realize that I wasn’t working on making professional connections. I wanted to celebrate the happy occasion.
Deciding what type of connector you want to be before you attend the event can make you more relaxed and able to show up as your best self.
Here’s a photo of Tom and I with my college friend Mitch who took us to his favorite LA donut shop before we walked the beach. I really like the professional building in the background and as you can see, Tom really liked the donuts.
Networking Tip: Always have 3-5 questions ready to go for any event.
Have a great day!
Cathy Paper
P.S. Interested in being a guest on the AllStar Networking Show? I have a few spots for the fall so reach out to cathy@rockpaperstar.com for details.
Hire Cathy Paper, National Keynote Speaker, as a speaker on networking and sales.
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