Why Is It So Hard to Talk to Strangers These Days?

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Young children are often eager to talk to anyone who will listen. It’s a natural instinct, one they want to practice. In fact, parents tell them not to talk with strangers when they are not there. 

But as people grow older toward adulthood and beyond, that often becomes a challenge, and not just for introverts. It then has to become a learned or relearned skill. With the isolation and remote work during the pandemic, many individuals find they have lost the art of verbal connection. And those that enter the world of work now, or move on where they don’t know their co-workers feel at a loss to make the necessary or desirable networking connections. 

Clearly there are greater obstacles now combined with the emotional blocks. People may be waiting for permission to reach out. They wonder who should start the conversation? They may lack space for meaningful conversation. They may fear conflict or inadvertent transgressions given heightened DEI sensitivities. It’s often necessary to be very deliberate with no “water cooler” chance meetings and gossipy chat. 

Given the need to seek new jobs or teams being reconstituted to meet new needs, positioning oneself for meaningful conversation may take greater effort than ever. And we’re out of practice, even if we spend hours every day on Zoom calls. Working from home for over a year and possibly much longer, or in hybrid situations, there is a lot of fear and resistance to meeting people in person. This is especially true in highly structured, hierarchical organizations. As a champion of cross-generational conversation at work, and having written a book a few years ago about that, fortunately I don’t suffer from forgetting how to talk with people. So, I offer some tips from my experience, the book, and other experts:

  • Exercise your curiosity muscle. Curiosity is one of the essential skill/traits for success you can’t learn or acquire on the internet we explore through the lens of five generations in my book, You Can’t Google It!.

You can learn to ask good questions to open people up and build rapport. Prepare current affairs, non-imposing personal and small talk questions in advance if they don’t tend to come spontaneously to you. Empathy and conversation are two more of those essential skills.

  • Work on storytelling skills. And encourage your “conversation partner” to tell you stories that will convey experience you’d like to learn about, to reveal what matters, unwritten rules and expectations in an organization’s culture.

  • Get comfortable with showing vulnerability and emotion. It builds bonds and has become a desirable way of showing up since the start of the pandemic. Don’t be afraid to appear awkward. Admit it.

  • Observe boundaries, be ethical, non-manipulative, trustworthy. People will be drawn to you and make conversation easier.

  • Offer your experience or story first when asking to learn from others. Look for commonalities and build on them.

  • Be positive and pleasant to be around.

Reaching out gets easier with practice.

I confess that I love meeting new people and networking. I am an extrovert but walking into a room of strangers wasn’t always easy until I got the hang of it. 

How will it pay off? A number of studies attempting to measure the ROI have found that the ROE – return on Engagement, Emotion, Experience, Empathy – also pays off in financial terms for companies that focus consistently on ROE. 

Call to Action: Make conversations to get to know both co-workers and strangers in networking a regular habit and integral part of organizational culture. Let me know (at pwhaserot@pdcounsel.com or on http://www.youcantgoogleit.com ) how the experience changes individuals and the organization. 

© Phyllis Weiss Haserot  2021.