Improve Your Communication Skills, 2nd Edition

181 Networking: The New Conversation
initiated? Sometimes we are set goals by our managers. If so, 
make sure you are happy with what you are being asked to 
achieve; negotiate if necessary, so that you feel in control of your 
goals. Be careful, also, to set only your own goals. We sometimes 
set goals for others: ‘I want Peter to offer me a place in his team’; 
‘I want Marilyn to accept my offer of project support’. Concentrate 
on your own behaviour, not on others’ actions.
What’s the context?
Where will this goal take you? How does the goal for your 
networking event relate to your values, your strategy and your 
‘brand’? Are you willing to take on the responsibility that 
achieving the goal will give you? To give up what you might have 
to sacrifice to make the goal happen? Are you comfortable with 
this goal?
The skills of networking 
conversations
However much you prepare, the moment comes when you have 
to get going. You have to walk into the room and start talking to 
somebody.
There is no one way of doing this. Some people cannot resist 
starting with a humorous remark; others use well-established 
lines like: ‘Have we met before?’ or ‘What brings you here?’ The 
important thing is that you do it. Make contact.
Establishing rapport
Look back at the notes on building rapport in Chapter 1. Start 
positive or neutral. Complaining about the food is one way to 
make contact, but before long you may find yourselves agreeing 
that everything about the occasion is disastrous. Avoid emotive 
subjects such as religion and politics – at least to start with – and 
be very careful about assumptions linking one person with 
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182 Improve your Communication Skills
another. ‘Are you married?’ can be an embarrassing opener – as I 
found to my cost a few nights before writing this chapter.
Be appropriately vulnerable. The other person may well be 
feeling as nervous as you are; acknowledging your own 
apprehensions – especially if you go first – actually expresses 
confidence and is an excellent free gift with which to start the 
conversation.
It’s more than likely that you won’t remember the person’s 
name within the first few minutes of your conversation. Too 
much else will be going on. A few simple tricks will help a name 
to stick.