I joined my current organisation after the world went remote. Meeting people isn't a luxury anymore. I experimented in something completely new to me — People & networking — and here is my experience from doing more than a hundred 1:1s since April 2020.
People don't bite.
For various reasons, I had a fear of meeting new people. Fear of what people will think of me. I'm stupid in private — what if everyone finds that out?
They will know that I'm not good enough and I don't deserve to be where I am.
I believe I'm just lucky to be where I am today, and it has very little to do with my abilities or talent. But then, one day before joining Atlassian, I came across a TED talk by Mike Cannon-Brookes about how everyone has imposter syndrome — and it hit me hard. So I enrolled in donut sessions and started meeting people within the organisation who were unrelated to my work/team. I met leaders, engineers, advocates, designers, event managers, and people from very different workstreams than what I do.
To overcome my fear, I made only one promise to myself: I won't cancel a connect from my side — no matter what. No other rules.
To my utmost surprise, people were more than welcoming. Almost everyone loved the gesture that I took initiative to set up the call. When I didn't know what to talk about, I tried being genuine with them by mentioning that I'm very new to the habit of meeting new people, and they helped me have a good conversation. Many of them gave brilliant tips on what good conversation starters can be, which I started using in my upcoming connects.
Yes, a few of the connections didn't turn out well. There were awkward silences and moments when we both didn't know what to talk about, but all of this seemed very natural while I was going through it. The feeling of getting embarrassed was all only in my mind.
People are unique, not ill-intended.
We engineers spend most of our lives talking to engineers, so much so that everything becomes an engineering problem to us — one that can be resolved by applying some formula. Many times, when I met people at work or outside work and things didn't work out between us, it was very easy to assume that people don't like me or they are just dumb. This was my formula for a way out. Easy, quick, and works every time.
I started meeting people who did not understand technical lingo. I felt powerless. I felt like a frog who has been in a pond for so long that it thought that was the entire world there is. Listening to people outside my workstream started giving me perspective and gave me patience to listen to people, because I started realizing everyone has a vantage point that I must be unaware of. This meant letting go of my engineering ego and starting to accept ideas with a wider horizon than I could ever imagine.
I started understanding that logic is not everything there is.
Talking to people without an agenda is okay.
I still fear that I need to have something groundbreaking to discuss to set up a call with someone high in the hierarchy. I'm working on it. Imagine a world where no one talks to each other unless they have something “important” to say. When I started doing two-three 1:1s every week, the biggest worry I had was: what will I talk about? What if I say something unimportant and that person feels that I wasted their 25 minutes? This thought was exhausting me, and then one day I started experimenting with: what if I assume that I'm not meeting someone for the first time? What if I speak just like I do with my friends over the weekend? How bad could it be! I started talking with no serious agenda, and I started calling that out in the meeting invite.
Hey XYZ,
Ajay here. Recently joined Atlassian and thought of saying hi. I don't have any serious agenda for this meeting — feel free to reschedule or decline it. It is completely fine.
It took a lot of pressure off me. Guess what? No one has declined the invite yet.
Imposter syndrome is very real.
I noticed something weird but real in the rooms while I was meeting people — even they were more or less hesitant, just like I was.
A percentage of people texted at the last moment about why they couldn't make it that day, with very similar reasons that I wanted to give in the first place. Now, folks, there must be some genuine cases too, but it helped me understand that we are all humans. We all share the same type of fears. If I think that I'm not good enough, I must not be alone.
PS: This is still an ongoing experiment for me. I'm far from done yet. I do make more mistakes in a day than Mr. Ambani earns dollars in that same amount of time. I would appreciate it if you can pitch in and comment/message me something that you found valuable on this topic, or just share your story.
Or let's connect — I would love to listen to your story.
You can connect with me on LinkedIn.