When you’re seeking to leverage connective energy the number one rule is to be yourself. There are two (at least) good reasons for this.
Firstly that trying to be someone else or trying to emulate someone else’s character or behaviour is endlessly exhausting and takes and huge amount of energy that should be focussed on building the relationship not holding a constant mask.
The second is that if you’re out there genuinely seeking to develop relationships on the basis of trust then there can be no greater breach of trust than to try to pretend to be someone that you are not from the outset and you will be found out.
Why do people engage in this form of emulation? Because they think it is expected of them or because the old rules of being great at networking and forging connections told them this is so.
15% of the population are extroverts, the rest of us are on a sliding scale towards true introvert state. The rules of networking were not built for us, but with some techniques discussed in this podcast, we can rewrite the rules to network and collaborate on our own terms
