How to Network as an Introvert
aginfer.bearblog.dev
aginfer.bearblog.dev
At any rate it doesn't address the core concept. Anyone with anxiety (raises hand) will tell you that the worse thing you can do is care MORE about the thing you're anxious about, yet you've prescribed a bunch of rituals for someone to perform so that they do "well".
The best way to network well is to stop giving a shit about doing it well.
Dread is different. Dread is the expectation of a bad situation. It's not a worst-case scenario, it's a typical scenario. If what you are experiencing is dread, then pushing yourself into that situation will confirm to your body that, yup, it really is as bad as you thought, and will amplify the dread rather than diminish it.
A classic example is that certain forms of neurodivergence create sensory overload in typical "social" environments. This is likely to result in dread rather than anxiety. Your body is literally telling you that this situation is problematic, and repeat exposure isn't going to improve anything.
In our modern culture the language of anxiety is widespread but the language of dread much less so, and I think that's unfortunate because a lot of advice centers around "just get over it", which works only if what you're experiencing is anxiety. Personally, learning about this gave me permission to do "social" activities on my own terms and stop worrying about what other people think "social" means; turns out the social anxiety I had was relatively minimal and what I was experiencing was mostly the dread from environments where social activities often occur.
There is almost certainly a significant overlap between introversion and social anxiety/dread, even if they aren't 1:1 related
If nothing else, many people with a lot of social anxiety will claim they are simply introverts in order to cover for their anxiety
Although I will posit that physical exhaustion is typically more manageable, so that helps. There are certainly exceptions, but by and large in our modern, sedentary world, physical exertion can easily be limited to controlled environments where one is able to stop when they reach the point of exhaustion. It is unlikely that stepping outside means that you will have to outrun a lion, unable to pause else become lunch. Chances are these days you will only ever reach exhaustion if you purposefully push yourself to (e.g. hitting the gym). But if I have reason to worry that I am going to find myself in a situation where I cannot meaningfully rest when I reach my physical breaking point, absolutely the anxiety will be running hot.
Whereas social interaction can be harder to control. For example, reaching your social limit in the middle of the workday does not usually, for all practical purposes, enable you to remove yourself from the situation. You are expected to keep going until the end of the business day, no matter how you are feeling on the inside. Us techies might have enough individual work to slink away to, perhaps, but for many jobs there is no such luxury. Or you might come up against a Chatty Cathy who will continue pushing to keep the social engagement going even after you try to back away. There aren't all that many HN-esq situations in the real world where you can just magically pop in when you want to engage and then disappear as fast as you came. And where you might find something approximate, you are apt to find it much too limiting to be an exclusive social outlet.
Can you hold a conversation next to a lawnmower? A jackhammer? A jet engine? At some point there's literally too much noise for you to communicate verbally anymore. That point is different for different people.
Interesting take, are you neurodivergent? "Masking" is basically a "get over it" approach that the parent talks about. It is exhausting, to the point that neurodivergent people wil preemptively bail out of situations if they don't feel up for it. Tools associated with stocism can be helpful for neurodivergent people when they're used to support their needs rather than diminish them, in my experience.
you replied to a comment that cited "survival", so to argue against it you need to also cite surviving, or not surviving in the case you bring up.
I actually have pretty bad height vertigo. I can suppress it but it takes almost all my attention. In your hypothetical I expect I would suppress it and grab the child. This vertigo is anxiety, not dread; the outcome is almost always neutral or positive, not negative.
A scenario that might induce dread is being forced to jump off a 30ft ledge. Even if you know how to fall well there's still significant risk of injury, and either way it's going to hurt. Learning to fall better might help, but the more important thing is to _avoid that situation in the first place_.
I always joked that there’s nothing to fear about travel over plane. Nothing will fall, nothing will crash. The true horror is spending X hours without movement and a 2 day back pain afterwards.
Seems that I rarely experience anxiety but I do experience dread more often.
What you’re describing is my own self-developed strategy to deal with various stuff. Need to research dread topic more.
For me personally, the best-case scenario seems to be intentionally scheduled, one-on-one interactions in "clean" environments (i.e., quiet, unscented, no smoke/incense, dressed casually for maximum comfort, etc.). The next best would be some sort of group setting with structured, intentional sharing (i.e., not just doing something together but explicitly organized for the purpose of sharing). It can be a bit hit or miss to find these, so it can take some iteration to figure out what actually works.
Otherwise, "escalating" (i.e., inviting someone into a deeper/more meaningful interaction) is a skill you can practice, but if you're dealing with the rest of it at the same time, you're basically playing with a handicap. So incrementalize your goals as much as possible, practice in small, regular intervals with sufficient breaks for recovery, and don't compare yourself to anyone else, no matter how tempting that might be.
Hope that helps, and feel free to contact me on Keybase (in profile) or email (run the Perl script on my website) if you want help brainstorming.
Disclaimer: not a therapist.
So much this.
To have your own terms is always OK. If you think about it, what people think "social" means is not even fixed. It certainly changes with your age and your environment but even the consensus in a society about it changes.
When I grew up it meant being in a deafening loud environment so much full smoke that you could barely breathe. Hated it, but only when I moved to the big city and started university I understood that I am not the only one. Nowadays the smoke is mostly gone and at least it has become accepted to wear hearing protection.
This is just a different way of looking at it. What you do by addressing what you call dread is basically putting a halt to this feedback loop.
(disclaimer: IANAMD)
Leil Lowndes' How to talk to anyone (the source) is not explicitly about expanding your network. It's just guidelines (or rather suggestions, or even better - hacks) on how you can start and hold conversations with people. What you choose to do with them is your own purview.
I wish someone would write a guide to what to do in the 2 weeks after the networking event when inevitably everyone forgets about each other.
This worked out fine for me, some people who are better at networking than me reached out to me when they had interesting work at a good time, but 'do whatever and hopefully someone will find a job for you' is pretty bad advice too.
You've got to give some minimal level of shit, or you end up with a potential network instead of a network. I don't think going to 'networking events' is required; those always seem fishy, if your only connection is you wanted to make a connection, it's not a strong connection ... and probably the people going to these things don't have a very strong network or they wouldn't be going, so you're not getting much from the multiple hop networking either. There's probably exceptions, but trying to catch em all is not the right game.
This.
Introverts (in general) have no problems with communication\networking etc. Introverts simply do not _need_ company.
Extraverts, on the other hand, contrary to what people often think, _need_ company to do stuff, even though they may be not so hot on networking or partying.
As someone who has played piano for over 30 years and by any sane person's assessment I play at least "adequately", I can attest that worrying about how you play is the least constructive thing you can do and I have many times over my life crashed and burned when trying to play on the spot and in those moments people would question whether I knew how to play at all.
When I finally realised to stop caring (at least in the moment) everything got a lot better. Even if you screw up, owning it and laughing about it is better than curling up in fear and anxiety and making the moment worse and more awkward for everyone.
"stop caring" sounds like such unhelpful advice but when one finally realises you have agency over that, its like having a superpower
I think some people would rather keep searching for easier solutions than taking the difficulty one they can actually accomplish.
Imagine your mind is a highway, and your thoughts are cars that are driving along this highway in your mind. You, or rather your conscience, is sitting along this highway, and every time a thought comes along, you might try to stop it.
Of course, this is foolish, you can’t stop those thoughts any more than you could stop a literal car on a highway. The trick comes once you realize that attempting to stop unwanted thoughts is a doomed and pointless exercise. But just because those thoughts have entered your mind, doesn’t mean you have to engage with them. You could instead simply let them pass you by.
I don’t know why, but this worked for me. In the context of meditation, it freed me of the assumption that my mind should be blanked and free of thoughts, which always seemed impossible anyway. But it armed me with a useful mnemonic for recognizing when I am standing in the middle of the proverbial road, and the confidence to admit that I cannot do anything meaningful from such a precarious and hopeless position, so should move to the side, and focus on what’s possible.
Why the story? Because lots of things - including networking - sometimes come naturally to a few, but are more commonly learned. You can practice & must practice, and this can start with a short list of things like presented here. It's not about caring more about the Big Thing (tm) but focusing solely on a few small things that start you down the right path. In my experience a few easy things is a great way to displace the anxiety from big, complex, scary situations.
Another brief anecdote I think helps illustrate this. I teach mountain biking, and the two biggest desires are 1. corner better, 2. learn how to jump. I suck at cornering but have logged a fair bit of air time. A common observation is people go very rigid in the air (called a "dead sailor"). This not only undesireable, it's dangerous. The fix? Get people to do any sort of movement when they are in the air; the smallest wiggle, shimmy or tweak unlocks their body AND their mind, and moves them forward. It both focuses and distracts. The list here feels a lot like a similar approach for certain social situations, and compared to your advice (stop caring and... just do it?) actually targets the root of anxiety "OK, but how?". YOLO is often part of it, but makes a terrible strategy.
Have a plan, finish it.
Networking is a skill beyond simple vibing and should be treated as such. For those with social anxiety, having a script/plan at least allows one to be on autopilot so they don't have to in fact give a shit.
Also introverts definitely tend to not like networking or any group activity w/ a bunch of strangers (edit: I mean tend to like the 'idea' of them, but once there, can enjoy them). I think you meant that they can do it without fear.
Having social anxiety is different from not knowing how to talk to people and make friends. Bill Russel would get so worked up before games he would throw up. But he could also perform.
I think it depends on what you're anxious about. Being scared that people will dislike you is different from being scared of embarrassment and it's different from being scared you don't know what to do in the moment.
Of course all of those can be helped by simply exposing yourself to the situation over and over again. You learn that if you do embarrass yourself or if people dislike you, the world doesn't turn to ash.
"Every person you look at, you can see the universe in their eyes -- if you're really looking." -- George Carlin
I’m afraid of the much louder part of my brain that’s going to spend every quiet moment over the next 3 days replaying and re-living the embarrassing encounter.
In so far as he is a convinced participator in the general style, he undermines his own foundations, since the present style, with its almost exclusive acknowledgment of the visible and the tangible, is opposed to his principle. Because of its invisibility, he is obliged to depreciate the subjective factor, and to force himself to join in the extraverted overvaluation of the object.
He himself sets the subjective factor at too low a value, and his feelings of inferiority are his chastisement for this sin. Little wonder, therefore, that it is precisely our epoch, and particularly those movements which are somewhat ahead of the time, that reveal the subjective factor in every kind of exaggerated, crude and grotesque form of expression. I refer to the art of the present day.
The undervaluation of his own principle makes the introvert egotistical, and forces upon him the psychology of the oppressed. The more egotistical he becomes, the stronger his impression grows that these others, who are apparently able, without qualms, to conform with the present style, are the oppressors against whom he must guard and protect himself.
He does not usually perceive that he commits his capital mistake in not depending upon the subjective factor with that same loyalty and devotion with which the extravert follows the object By the undervaluation of his own principle, his penchant towards egoism becomes unavoidable, which, of course, richly deserves the prejudice of the extravert.
Were he only to remain true to his own principle, the judgment of ‘egoist’ would be radically false; for the justification of his attitude would be established by its general efficacy, and all misunderstandings dissipated. "
Jung -Psychological types
"You want to be understood? That’s all we needed! Understand yourself, and you will be sufficiently understood. You will have quite enough work in hand with that"
Jung - Red book
All the recipes there are basically for people who don't have "natural" interpersonal skills and need to emulate it as a formal conscious process instead.
That's it - nothing in the article touches any aspects of willingness to engage with others, or ways to break out of maladaptive behaviors like social evasion.
* "Why would I want to network with people?"
* "I don't feel like engaging with anyone."
* "I don't enjoy or feel fulfilled doing any of this. I'd rather be home or by myself."
* "I have never enjoyed doing this. I have to keep up a facade in front of other people at all times. It makes me angry and resentful."
They should expand upon why networking is a thing, why having a social rapport among peers and coworkers is important to healthy relationships both inside and outside of work, how you can have your connection to your social circle weakened if you don't, and spell out clearly why that's a bad thing.
Maybe an article like this should look at it from the perspective of mental health and neurodivergence, but that might be pushing it.
From the article: "The next morning, I’d wonder if anyone even remembered I was there."
Personally speaking, this question has never popped into my mind. I suppose that's owing to the fact that it's simply not in my nature to actively seek out people or connections.
I can at least understand on an intellectual level that there could be personal benefits to socializing with people outside of work, but when work already sucks everything out of you then it just feels like a cruel joke to suggest an introvert get into "networking" and here's a list of weird, creepy, manipulative tricks to do it better. Surely the article must be a parody?
This comments deeply resonates with me because that's exactly how I feel.
When I'm wfh I have to put an alarm to remember to stop working because I'm in the flow and can work for +14h without feeling tired. Whereas, when I'm the office, I have to take a walk mid-day because I'm already exhausted by the socializing.
And to be clear, it's not that I don't enjoy socializing at work, it's just that it drains me quickly.
This comes down to the idea of whether you believe that if you “keep up a facade at all times” that the facade becomes who you really are.
You don’t need an article convincing you why networking is important. You either need to be curious enough to want to see if your life can be better by doing something that goes against what you believe is your nature or not.
But they seem to be a serial startup founder — so the value of networking’s probably self-evident to them, but won’t match the value you and most others get out of it.
This is something that feels alien in SF people. A fundamental difference for example from Greece and people living in SF is this.
- Greek opening question: "Which city are you from?" - SF opening question: "Which company do you work for?"
Many big tech companies have inclusion training calling this question out as inappropriate on the grounds it provides an opportunity to introduce bias.
In the same lines, don't ask anything. Everything is a bias. ie, What do they do? - Also a bias as they are engineer, or product, or sales, or whatever.
First time is always very difficult. Identify recurring or comparable events. Over time you will meet some people you already know. Remembering some details from earlier encounters will build rapport. Likewise people will remember you from previous encounters. But, beware of the trap of only talking with those whom you already know. For every event, target to form at least a couple of new connections.
Recurring events make it easier to meet others, and the regular, repeated interactions help form stronger connections.
Over time it also deepens your options of people to move around room for conversation - which is a nice way to break out of being awkwardly stuck in a 1:1 conversation for too long.
"Follow me so I can introduce you to Bob" is a way kinder way to exit a 1:1 than "I'm going to get another drink/visit the bathroom" and leaving them standing alone.
I learned this one during a period at work when I was the host of 10+ large events per week and I needed to move around the room. Spending more than a few minutes in any one conversation was a problem and so I landed on this as the best way to break away without creating awkwardness for the other person.
Key to the "follow me" strategy is to just start walking - 99% of time they will follow you rather than stand there alone. If you know them well enough / the context is OK then a light touch on the shoulder / elbow to point them in the right direction also helps.
The flip of this is that if YOU don't know anyone else in the room then ask them something like "do you know anyone else here?" / "have you spoken to anyone else interesting at this event?" - usually that provides a pathway to someone new and you say "Great! Can you please introduce them to me?"
Well, I'm not currently obsessed with anything. Where does the conversation go from there?
> Where does the conversation go from there?
I dunno, maybe try asking a neurodivergant person sometime? I certainly would rather be asked about my obsessions than my passions, as my passions are all too often left to rot for one reason or another, which just makes me sad and want to leave.
Even taking it most charitably it presumes that most people are obsessed with something. I'm not, I'm not really passionate about anything either, certainly not anything I do professionally.
The last time I was at a conference, if anyone asked me why I was there my honest answer would be "my boss said I should go" and if they asked what I had enjoyed the most so far my answer would be "I skipped all the sessions yesterday afternoon and went to a gym and lifted weights for two hours." If that led to a conversation about weightlifting, I wouldn't have much to say. I don't obsess about it, I don't have a coach, I don't compete, I don't know any names of professional lifters or their latest records, it's just exercise that I do.
I guess it boils down to, I'm a pretty boring person. I generally feel like I don't have much to add to a conversation and it's uncomfortable to answer questions that reveal that. So I do generally try to keep people talking about themselves, which most people seem happy to do.
Continual obsession is derangement (which can be useful to society overall in small amounts). I might respond with "I wouldn't say I'm obsessed with it, but I've been thinking more about FOO"
Converting a vague, complex, often scary thing like a networking event into a well-defined mission is a great way to address fear, add value and contribute.
You might not be able to convince people on your first attempt, but eventually you can build this skill if you try
It evokes smiles, it allows the other party to answer the question, share their own question, discuss the process of getting into a friendly conversation, etc, all without being formulaic.
> People smile when someone makes a bad pun also
Here too I think it's all about how the pun is delivered.
The checklist
The idea that everyone in the party is quietly evaluating you and making up a story in their head
The forced body language
The weird conversation starters
Like all this stuff is forced and artificial and the goal is you're trying to build a relationship with someone for the implicit purpose of getting something out of them. None of this is genuine social connection, it's just a performance to try and increase your own status.
All just superficial interactions to keep up the social standing, presenting yourself as special and useful to associate with while not actually making any meaningful connection with anyone. That's the feeling I got from reading that scene as well as whenever I hear about this networking stuff.
No friend = debilitating levels of social fear. Friend = mostly fine.
I love to present or teach. From 2 to 2000 people, I never ever had one second when I was not trepid yo get on stage. I love it, feel very well and live to turn unexpected events into fun.
And then there is the coffee break where I need to talk to people. Once it syarts then it is on, but finding how to start is a nightmare for me.
I've been presenting at conferences for 30 years and still did not solve that.
>Don’t waste their time with “Great party.” Say something more vivid. “The lighting is perfect.”
What? I think someone needing this level of instruction would be better served by basic mindfulness and small, manageable exercises in active listening or empathetic dialog, rather than a grab bag of non-contextual tips like this.
> What? I think someone needing this level of instruction would be better served by basic mindfulness and small, manageable exercises in active listening or empathetic dialog, rather than a grab bag of non-contextual tips like this.
Look, when you say "someone needing this level of instruction," it comes across like needing detailed, step-by-step help is weird or a problem. But plenty of people with ADHD, autism, or other brain differences don't just find this helpful - they actually need it to make sense of things.
And suggesting they'd be "better off" with mindfulness or simpler stuff? That assumes they haven't already been down that road. Maybe those approaches just don't click with how their brain works.
Calling it a "grab bag of random tips" really undersells what's going on here. For people who need things spelled out clearly and directly, those specific tips might be the difference between something being useless and actually doable.
The whole thing reads like it's written from the perspective of someone who finds this stuff obvious, then judges other approaches as somehow inferior. That's the ableist part - acting like there's one "right" way to understand things and anything else is just... less good.
That wasn't my impression at all, to give another perspective. "This level" indicates me that instructions are too specific or too detailed to be of any help.
See I asked someone at a training course on this stuff once to give me concrete things to do instead of the two days of blah blah in the course that basically boiled down to "you just gotta figure it all out yourself" - gee Thanks!
So the guy told me to use people's names when talking to or about them because most people, even if they don't realize or are outward extroverts, like hearing their own name.
Never in my life would I have come to that realization by myself because I'm the exact opposite. I hate it when other people do that with me but now I use it with others.
(On a slightly funny personal note, the thing that helped me most with social skills was watching the first few seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in my first year of college. The actors emoted so clearly that even I could understand what feelings they were trying to convey, and that’s how I learned to do body language and appropriate vocal tones. This took me from unapproachable to merely awkward, a huge step up in the world.)
> Me: Last week I went to the beach.
> Conversational adversary: You went to the beach last week?
> Me: No.
Maybe this explains why I don't have many friends.
(For the "real artists also can draw like that" crowd I don't think the OP is an artist and it has no credits.)
But this is a good checklist. I'm a wreck if I don't eat & sleep enough prior to social activity. And the whole thing about a "social battery" is on point. No remedy for that other than a recharge.
Advice like this article, and the thousands of books before it, are usually totally garbage. I'm very introverted. I've spent weeks by myself in nature, completely alone. I find parties too stimulating. But just do it. It's not like you're getting your arm cut off. You're just talking to people. Don't be mad at yourself for saying some out of pocket stuff. Don't dwell on what you could have done. Just see what's going on in the lives of other people and stop overthinking it.
This is why the stock market is a godsend.
> Make eye contact before you smile. Let there be a beat. Then let the smile arrive slowly. This “delayed warmth” makes your smile feel specific, not generic. It’s subtle, but people feel the difference.
> Don’t waste their time with “Great party.” Say something more vivid. “The lighting is perfect.” “Everyone feels relaxed.” It anchors your presence with detail.
> Use an uncommon adjective: “Had a remarkable time.” “Such a thoughtful gathering.” That small twist makes you stick.
Does anyone other than a salesperson do this?
It seems a bit manipulative, and not genuine.
Is there a blog post for "how to realize a list of my own personal compulsions isn't advise for others?"
I like the idea of baiting with a “whatzit” item
Me too! I can’t believe that I never thought of it before, but it makes perfect sense.
And confidence is good because it's a signal of competence, or at least that things have gone well for you in the past in similar situations.
For example, I can't unconsciously read expressions. I scored worse than blind guessing on the "Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test". So I consciously learned to read and mimic expressions, literally using a textbook for theater performers. So now I can score at the upper range of neurotypical people.
Other introverts often have problems recognizing social cues or initiating conversations. Purely because it's not _natural_ for them, even though they might _want_ to actually speak to people.
So is it kind of performative? Yes. But think about this, extroverts are doing a lot of same tricks subconsciously. Does it mean that they're _always_ performing?
Speaking from experience as an introvert who suffered social anxiety...
A lot of people (probably extroverts) don't respond well when you're expressing anxiety and/or doubt. Clients won't want to work with you. People won't want to be around you at parties. Co-workers will speak behind your back about the weird person. Etc.
Especially with other neurospicy folks, it's a very easy way to bond. My issues might not be the exact same, but it's close enough that they can empathize and grow closer as friends/coworkers.
I'd rather own my mistakes than be a walking contradiction.
To be fair he's probably overconfident. But picking up any sense of false confidence(not a shy buddy attemping to 'fake it til you make it', more serious matters) is a massive red flag to me that I can't trust their judgement of their own knowledge or capabilities. Someone who says straight up it will be difficult gets a lot more trust from me.
Inviting an introvert to a group lunch with six other people would likely cause angst.
And yes, the introvert probably didn't notice. They probably don't often think about you either.
I'm not particularly extroverted and being organised doesn't come naturally to me either, so this type of thing is even more of a nuisance. I'm putting in effort to set up fun things to do using calendars and spreadsheets and research, I'm making notes about interests and mutual friends, and the other person can't even set up a two month calendar event then write "Hey, let's get coffee"?
> Human kind is a social animal that expects reciprocation
Sounds to me like you did it for yourself, after all.