An introvert entrepreneurs' guide to networking
A few years back, I hung up my corporate boots, packed up my corporate gloves and started off on my entrepreneurial journey, with a co-founder mad enough to share my vision. My husband, a habitual partner in my craziness and 10-year old (at that time) bookaholic daughter, gamely got ready for a new story. For someone raised with traditional Bengali middle class values of aspiring for a steady job, preferably one that involves a PhD and then some teaching, I just chucked the last of my parents’ potential aspirations for me.
Mid-life crisis was the most obvious diagnosis for my sudden malady by self-proclaimed doctors.
“It’s not enough to have an idea.” They told me. “Everyone has ideas. You need to be able to sell your idea. Network.”
Silence. An introvert whose greatest fear is small talk and network? I swallowed my bile in silence. There had to be a way out. But I couldn’t just wave copies of Susan Cain’s “Quiet” and tell the naysayers to hush up. I had to find my own way. And the answer had to come from what I loved doing. Reading, writing and storytelling.
I see you do a double take. Reading, writing, storytelling and networking? Not happening.
Reading:
I remember the first party at my first job; an Investment Bank where the closure of every deal was celebrated with a big party. At that first office party, I was standing in one corner, nursing my fresh lime soda, when one of the senior leaders practiced a small nugget of management by walking around.
“Don’t just stand there. Circulate.”
He meant that I should walk around the room with my glass and make polite conversation with the strangers and semi-strangers who I was anyway squinting at through my high-powered glasses.
I walked to the nearest corner where another person was standing alone. I didn’t know this party trick then. If someone else is standing alone, chances are they are feeling as out of circulation as I was. Thankfully, I knew the person vaguely. Through an article that he had penned. And we spoke about books. About Michael Lewis and Liars Poker. Neither of us circulated much but we managed to have a conversation. Much later in life, I find that if I have read something a person has written, it allows me to have a real conversation starter instead of using the proverbial common ground of weather, cricket and traffic.
Writing:
For the first decade of my corporate life, all I wrote was meeting notes or bullets sprayed on power point slides if you discounted the copious numbers I wrote in excel. Even if I sprinkled artistic bullets or Dilbert jokes on my slides, I still wasn’t really writing.
I first realized the power of writing beyond the powerpoint, when I started using LinkedIn to post my thoughts. Suddenly, just the way the articles other people had written allowed me to have conversations with them, I found conversations opening up for me. And over time, I found that happening in other forums as well. We write to understand the world around us and writing makes one vulnerable. I wrote the way I was. At times funny, at times irreverent and at times, questioning. People who connected with me after having read what I wrote, found it easier to understand me than those for whom I just another designation in a suit. And some of these connections opened new doors for me.
Storytelling:
A manager who tells stories! That was me. Always blessed with a highly skilled and motivated team, one value I felt could I provide my team was to understand and to share story driven narratives, at work, and beyond. We had a secret team code- bonds formed through bad jokes stick for life, much like the Fevicol ad below.
Metaphors, jokes, numbers, poetry. I learnt a lot. About how great leaders and changemakers blended the art and science of storytelling. About how stories inspired people to take action. And how I learnt too, from these stories.
And as I started my entrepreneurial journey - a storytelling company called Kahaniyah, where we work with individuals and companies alike to use data-driven storytelling to simplify strategy and to create authentic narratives, I came back a full circle. It's a journey that has been fraught with the risk, uncertainties and the self-doubt that always comes with the decision to build a new dream.
And yet suddenly, I found myself receiving new stories. Many of my earlier colleagues and team mates sent me articles that I should be reading and even shared some of my own. Our connection didn’t stop because I no longer work with them. It continued. Some even became client partners. The stories we had shared continue to inspire and connect.
Networking is often made out to be a bad word. An empty word. I am a terrible networker but I have made some beautiful connections. Through reading, writing and storytelling.
Would love to hear your stories.