Good social skills positively impact one’s well-being and life expectancy.Technology continues to impact and change our lives in myriad ways. This newly updated Silver Anniversary version of How to Work a Room mirrors those changes and is even more relevant, informative and helpful as we leave our cubicles, computers, tablets and smartphones to venture forth into the world of opportunity. This book is your passport to possibilities.
What I’ve learned in the twenty-five years since I originally wrote How to Work a Room is that people of all ages, from all walks of life and backgrounds, can find events uncomfortable and often daunting—be they meetings, sales conferences, parties, retreats, weddings, fund-raisers or even family gatherings.
I’ve guest-lectured nationwide at universities and Fortune 20 to Fortune 500 companies, to senior executives and young professionals, to provide the strategies, philosophy and techniques of business and personal socializing and mingling. The purpose is not only to ease the discomfort but also to make the most of every event: from making contacts, starting conversations and building relationships to having a good time. Developing good social skills even has a health benefit: According to a “Live Longer and Better” quiz in Parade magazine citing a 2012 study in the British Medical Journal, people who had a “rich or moderate social network” lived five years longer.
Talk—conversation—is how we relate, explain, persuade, sell, converse, amuse, learn, collaborate, motivate and connect. No matter what walk of life we pursue, we need to be able to break the ice, approach strangers and start, build and maintain conversations.
• We cannot build strategic partnerships, business and social relationships and business-to-business models unless we communicate.
• We cannot approach team building unless there is an exchange of words among the members of the team.
• We cannot collaborate unless we discuss the issues.
• We cannot enjoy the benefits of brainstorming unless we are conversing.
• We cannot build a base of customers unless we are communicating.
• We cannot sell our services or products unless we listen to our customers, converse with them and solve their problems, according to author Daniel Pink in To Sell Is Human.
“Face-to-face contact with bosses, employees, customers will become newly important,” according to William Strauss, coauthor of The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy in the 21st Century. That makes mingling, conversing and connecting necessary skills and requires the personal touch.
This Silver Anniversary edition will assist you in working actual rooms, online sites and virtual rooms, as it has more suggestions, tips and ideas. A room full of people, especially of strangers, is still a daunting experience—even more so today. Why? Because we spend an inordinate amount of time communicating online, texting, shopping and playing games on our smartphones, we have let our “fingers and thumbs do the talking” and have lost the skill, courage and confidence to deal with the face-to-face. We are addicted to text messaging, email, online gaming, e-commerce and our apps. The consequence is that we have decreased our ability to chat at a business dinner or a social event.
In the 1980s Dr. Philip Zimbardo, founder of Stanford University’s Shyness Clinic and currently president of Heroic Imagination Project, discovered that 80 percent of adults identify themselves as shy. In 2000 that figure increased to 93 percent, due in part to technology. We can get money “out of a hole in the wall: the ATM”—that’s where kids think money comes from; money growing on trees is history—and, in fact, we can do all of our banking online and never have to exchange pleasantries with a teller.
We can get our stamps via the Internet, our groceries can be self-checked (which I never thought I would do and now it’s my check-out preference) or ordered from the web and we can “talk” to people’s voice mail without ever having a conversation. These changes impact and decrease day-to-day social conversation skills.
When I ask my audiences how many of them feel comfortable in a room full of strangers, it is still rare that as many as 5 percent raise their hands—even among salespeople. If you are sitting in a meeting; attending a convention, a board retreat or a yearly conference; or are involved in a keynote presentation, you are already in a group with whom you have something in common. You just need some strategies; tips; opening and exit lines; and mostly, the permission to talk to those still unknown colleagues, cronies, contacts, clients, customers and potential friends.
How to Work a Room provides the information and the impetus, along with many new, improved, tried-and-true strategies, examples and ideas to work any room, gleaned from years of conversations with a multitude of audiences and feedback from over a million readers and visitors to my website.
I’m often asked how to converse with someone who is disinterested, bored or aloof. One of the realities of life is that we will not click with everyone we meet. Their timing, interests, agendas and values may be very different from ours. But the rooms will be full of other nice, interesting, friendly people who will be open to meeting, conversing and doing business with us.
At a presentation for a professional services firm, one of the partners wondered how he could possibly introduce a person he found boring to a client. His colleague provided the perfect response, “What’s boring for you may be fascinating for someone else who shares their interests.”
It’s so true. When people talk about their favorite recipes or science-fiction books and movies, I struggle to keep my eyes from glazing over, but a foodie or sci-fi fan would find that person to be interesting, even fascinating.
If you are in situations where being able to work—or just feel comfortable in—any room is important professionally or personally, this book is for you. It contains quizzes, quotes, quips and cartoons. If you have a sense of humor, this book’s for you. If you suffer from “irony deficiency,” especially when you have to attend a conference, party, fund-raiser, meet-up or trade show, this book is the perfect antidote!
If we are aware of and prepared for the roadblocks we encounter, we can implement the remedies as we prepare to circulate in the rooms we enter.
This book continues to be my “magic mingling wand” that will help you remedy the roadblocks and turn you into a newly minted Mingling Maven!®
Good social skills positively impact one’s well-being and life expectancy.
Those who can mingle and make contacts and conversation will shine in any room.
Conversation is the cornerstone of team building and collaboration.
Face-to-face contact with bosses, colleagues and clients requires a personal touch.
When you’re in the same room, you already have something in common.
No one is boring when you discover their area of passion.