Speaker 1: If you're anything like me, networking feels like a necessary
Speaker 1: evil at best, and an overwhelming nightmare more often than not.
Speaker 1: But it doesn't have to be that way. So today
Speaker 1: I thought I would share an extract from my new
Speaker 1: book time Wise, which is out in all places where
Speaker 1: you buy books. And this is a simple trick that
Speaker 1: I learned from Professor Marissa King that's helped me return
Speaker 1: to in person events with a newfound confidence, even when
Speaker 1: I don't know a single other person when I arrive.
Speaker 1: My name is doctor amanthe Immer. I'm an organizational psychologist
Speaker 1: and the founder of behavioral science consultancy Inventium, and this
Speaker 1: is how I work a show about how to help
Speaker 1: you do your best work. I avoid business events and
Speaker 1: conferences like the plague. In fact, the only time you'll
Speaker 1: see me at an event is if I happen to
Speaker 1: be speaking at it. I hate that feeling of walking
Speaker 1: into a large conference hall and seeing a sea of strangers.
Speaker 1: Everyone seems to be having an amazing time and connecting
Speaker 1: with long lost friends, whereas I feel like a social
Speaker 1: pariah and I'm always at a loss as to how
Speaker 1: I will infiltrate the crowd and find even one person
Speaker 1: who might want to talk to me. Marissa King hates networking,
Speaker 1: yet somewhat ironically, has dedicated more than fifteen years to
Speaker 1: researching social networks. Marissa is a professor of organizational behavior
Speaker 1: at the Yale School of Management and wrote the book
Speaker 1: Social Chemistry, which explores the science behind our networks. Like
Speaker 1: me and possibly everyone else on the planet, Marissa really
Speaker 1: dislikes entering a room full of strangers and having to
Speaker 1: strike up a conversation with someone she doesn't know. But
Speaker 1: luckily some of her research can help us out. What
Speaker 1: we know from research is that people don't form walls
Speaker 1: or oceans. They actually tend to clump together in small groups,
Speaker 1: explains Marissa. So really it's not an ocean of people,
Speaker 1: it's only little islands. Then the question is, now that
Speaker 1: I know they're islands and things feel a bit more manageable,
Speaker 1: what am I going to do next? What researchers have
Speaker 1: found is that people almost always interact in groups of
Speaker 1: two or diads. It's really the most fundamental unit of
Speaker 1: human interaction. We have two eyes, and we have two ears,
Speaker 1: and our hearing does something that's known as the cocktail
Speaker 1: party effect, homes in on a single voice. For Marissa,
Speaker 1: this means that when she looks at the islands of people,
Speaker 1: she is looking for a group that has an odd number.
Speaker 1: It might be three, five, seven, it doesn't really matter.
Speaker 1: If there's an odd number of people, then there's someone
Speaker 1: who really isn't part of the conversation and they are
Speaker 1: likely looking for a conversational partner. And so that's a
Speaker 1: very basic strategy that has become critical for me to
Speaker 1: start to navigate a lot of the social anxiety I
Speaker 1: feel in these types of situations, because it gives me direction,
Speaker 1: explains Marissa. Gone will be the days of standing around
Speaker 1: wasting time for and in You'll now easily be able
Speaker 1: to connect with new people while simultaneously helping that third
Speaker 1: wheel who might be feeling left out. If you're keen
Speaker 1: for more tips like this one, I think you will
Speaker 1: love my new book time Wise. You can get it
Speaker 1: from all the usual places where you buy books. How
Speaker 1: I Work is produced by Inventing with production support from
Speaker 1: Dead Set Studios. And thank you to Martin Nimba, who
Speaker 1: does the audio mix for every episode and makes everything
Speaker 1: sound so much better than it would have otherwise. See
Speaker 1: you next time.