Networking New Year’s Resolutions: Be More Vulnerable!

I was going to write something else this week.  But I’ve just finished a call with a new client, and it’s made me think about the benefits of adding human-ness to networking.

I met this lovely person during a mask workshop we took together, all the way back in April.  That workshop had nowt whatsoever to do with ‘key learnings’ or making formal business connections.  In fact, all that would have been a hindrance.

Why?  We started the workshop by roaming around the room in circles, shouting the first words that came into our heads.

(That’s something crazy people do in Southend High Street.  I’m not going to approach them and start asking “…so, what do you do?” either.)

Then we tried on lots of hats, scarves, and home-made masks, and we became brand-new people.  I became ‘Tremendous Tom’, a faded kids’ TV presenter who was angry and bitter at the world.

My new client, meanwhile, transformed into a weird green alien who’d just arrived on Earth and didn’t know how to communicate as a human.

The workshop brief didn’t involve any sharing about what we did for a living as our ‘real’ selves.  We did this naturally, over coffee and a Pret lunch… after each of us gave a masked, improvised TED talk based on each-other’s random suggestions (my talk, if you’re interested, was titled ‘My Former Life As a Stripper’.)

When my client and I spoke again earlier this month, it was about the possibility of my editing some articles she’d written for her business.

The conversation flowed naturally, and the idea of our working together was imbued with an immediate sense of warmth.  I think that’s because I remembered how much fun we’d had at the workshop, and how much I liked her.

Not as a business-person, but as a human.

Later, when she gave me some critical feedback on my edits, I wasn’t fazed.  OK, I’ve been in the writing business for six years, and I’ve got the thick skin to prove it.  But it also felt like we already knew each-other, and that we were going to work well together.

“I wish we had the opportunity to get to know new clients as well as we did during that workshop,” she told me during our call.  “It’s made things so much easier.”

So the moral of the story is, if you’re going to make a networking-based New Year’s Resolution (come on… don’t we all?) then you could resolve to make yourself a little bit vulnerable.

I don’t necessarily mean you have to don a mask, then run round the room shouting random gibberish – though whatever floats your boat, of course.

But maybe you could occasionally steer away from those old networking chestnuts… (“What do you do?”  “Who are your clients?” “How’s business?”)

…towards something a little more human, instead (“What made you want to do what you do?”  “What’s your favourite thing about work?” “How do you cope with demanding clients?”

If nothing else, you’ll have fun and you’re more likely to be remembered.  That’s about as much as anyone can ask for in this life, isn’t it?

Oh, and if you’re curious about the mask workshop I mentioned earlier, some 2023 dates have just been scheduled.

(Booking your place would make a great New Year’s Resolution as well.)