Hello Reader,
When you're in an awkward networking moment, one thought tends to follow: "I'm so awkward, and they're so good at this." I want to challenge that thought.
Many technical professionals carry a specific assumption into a networking situation. They feel the fumble, the pause that runs a beat too long, the thing that came out wrong, and they conclude that they're the awkward one and everyone else is judging them. But research on social anxiety at professional events consistently finds that most people in the room are at least moderately uncomfortable. The person who looks like they're doing fine is almost certainly managing something you can't see.
I learned this sideways, not from networking at all, but from years of working with junior interns. Every summer new interns would come in and I'd watch them freeze because the gap in seniority made everything feel formal. At some point I started naming it: "Everybody starts somewhere. We've all been there." Nothing motivational, just the truth about where we both stood. For the ones who could hear it, you could watch them physically relax.
The deeper version of this took me longer — realizing that a lot of people in technical fields spent years honing their technical skills and almost none working on people skills, and that this applied to nearly everyone I was trying to network with, not just me. Naming a feeling out loud measurably reduces its intensity, and because the other person is likely feeling something similar, it tends to lower the temperature for both of you.
There's a form to this that works and a form that backfires, and the difference is subtler than you'd think — that's what this week's video gets into, along with the phrase I actually use.