I used to network the way I think most people do.
Someone would introduce themselves, we’d trade the usual openers — what do you do, how long have you been doing it, isn’t this venue nice — and somewhere in those first thirty seconds, I’d already decided. Worth continuing this conversation, or find a graceful exit and move to the next name tag.
I was deciding based on what they said.
The problem is, what people say in the first thirty seconds of a networking room is almost never the truth of who they are. It’s a performance. Everyone’s doing it — the version of themselves they think they’re supposed to bring to a room like that. Polished. On script. Safe.
So I was filtering people out — and staying stuck with people I should have moved on from — based on the least reliable information in the room.
What changed it for me was learning to feel the person instead of just processing their words.
