Connect with People

In the increasing virtual world of high-technology, the ability to build personal connections with others is becoming a critical success factor.

Technology today has equipped the young professionals with an enormous number of digital tools to connect with people like chats, Linked-In, blogging, Orkut and other virtual communities being just a few. Now connecting with old friends, batch- mates, ex- colleagues or for that matter making new contacts is just a click away! So we can safely say that our Generation X, is exuding energy with all the online relations they manage… yes connecting with people generates a great deal of energy.

However we need to ponder over our ability in connecting with real people? In the real world, which fortunately is still a reality for a large part of our life, the rules of connecting with people are quite different. We may not realize but all of us move around with a kind of a notice board on our faces. Some faces scream ‘do not disturb’; while others say ‘stay away’; some others are completely buried in the sounds of their ear- phones oblivious of their environment. How about a face that is welcoming to open a dialogue and build a relationship? Notice yourself reacting to facial expressions very intuitively, almost non-rationally. It’s the same for others. It is your facial expression that tells people whether you are charming or alarming.

People decide to approach or avoid us based on the notice board on our faces. Do you find people approaching you easily or avoiding you? Are you the kind who builds quick connections with others or the kind who can travel for hours sitting next to somebody without even exchanging a greeting? You enter a lift, where per force there would be strangers within your personal space… what is the most common expression on everyone’s face… that of being alone where others don’t exist at all! Almost every one is looking at the numbers being displayed at the top. Some would be staring at their own toes as if reading an important message written on their shoes. And for some others the good old (rather new) technology comes handy, the cell phone helps them avoid any contact with the world.

In my earlier assignment I had a youngster from Chandigarh working with me. This young guy despite having a modest education and background has the gift of connecting with people. He always has a pleasant smile on his face and is most willing to open a dialogue. He is least self-conscious and is very willing to help. Once we were traveling together on a long flight. Very quickly I got into reading my book. This guy for a while tried to read the newspapers but soon he got bored. Next he tried to strike a conversation with me and read my notice board saying, ‘I want to read’. After a while I noticed that this guy was engrossed in an animated conversation with one of the air-hostesses, and she was requesting him to find a job for a close friend of hers who knew Japanese. At present this youngster is a ‘Recruiter’ with Microsoft in Hyderabad. As I reflect on his success, I think one critical differentiator in his case has been his ability to build connections.

In an old adage we’ve learnt that any interaction between two individuals is a sales situation. You could be selling a concept, an idea, a product or yourself in the mind space of another person. In the profession of sales it is taught that ‘people first buy you before they buy what you are selling’.

To develop this critical skill, the one key change we’ll need to bring about in ourselves is to exhibit the same confidence with people that we exhibit with digital tools to build connections. In the real world, we need to adopt a few every day practices: observe our own facial expression, smile at the world – we have only one life, greet strangers, be genuinely interested in knowing another human being and her story, offer help and finally notice the good in people! In a nutshell, check your facial notice board.