This is an excerpt from the book I am writing, which you can
download for freeClosing Triangles: The Lost Art of the Introduction:When you get engaged, you learn a whole lot. Even women are overwhelmed by all the supposed details and formalities of the marriage process. There’s a whole industry catering to alleviate some of the burden on the intending bride and groom, wedding planners. The funny thing is that that is a vicious circle. The more people that hire wedding planners, the more complex even basic weddings become. Then more people hire wedding planners because they can’t handle the details, etc. It is like an arms race in trying to keep up with, and surpassing, the newly wed Joneses, which makes it harder for everyone else. Oh, am I on my soapbox again. Pardon moi.
My fiancée bought a cute little book that covered the basics and etiquette concerning invites, haberdasheries and all that stuff that men are culturally allowed to ignore, thankfully. One thing that she mentioned, which piqued my interest, and I only read that part of the book, was the protocol or polite way to introduce two people who have never met.
Protocol dictates that the introducer says something to the effect of “X, I present y”. Yep, that is it. But it is all in the wrist.
The protocol or etiquette is to present the less important person to the more important to you, as you would present someone to a king or queen, and a defendant to a jury, so would you present your friend to your relative. Remember I said ‘important to you’. that means you present your boss to your family, and not the other way around. I guess the logic behind this is that the more important person assesses the other person.
My little addition to this, based on what we have observed from Gladwell’s profile of Weisberg, and my own experiences in life, you should say a little something to both parties about the relationship each of them has to you. instead of “Bob, I’d like to present to you Jaime,” you’d say “Bob, my dad, I’d like to present to you Jaime, my accountant.” This short bit of introduction signals each of the people just how you are connected to the persons you are introducing.
Now that we have the basics: 1) present the less important to the more important and 2) add a word or two about how exactly they are connected to you. At this opportune time let’s take this a step further.
To this I’d also add a short compliment about each person you are introducing. As you are the person in charge of the introduction, you have the unique privilege of setting the tone and shaping the first impressions of each person towards the other. They say you never get a second chance to make a first impression, and as you are doing the introduction, the quality of the first impression is in your hands.
If, in the introduction, you call your father a deadbeat and your accountant a swindler, how do you think that interaction between them would play out? I suggest straying away from jokes at this critical moment due to the old adage that says in every joke there is a nugget of truth. You do not want them investing time and attention in trying to find the truth behind the joke (pun intended)?
Even though I just painted something of a worst-case scenario, let’s turn it round. If you were able to land a compliment that both surprised and delighted the person you are complimenting and the person hearing the compliment, then you set the stage for a delightful interaction between them. Instead of calling them names, which unfortunately is practiced to a high art in some circles, you can use your power as relationship broker, connector and network weaver to infuse this relationship with a little light-heartedness and class.
Note: just like a joke, your compliments only have to have a plausible grain of truth. For instance, the person that is hyper-critical of everything you could say is “good at looking at the consequences and details of things.” You can probably bet that the hyper-critical person probably rarely hears that about themselves. This compliment both surprises and delights the receiver, and gives a good amount of information about the recipient of the compliment to person they are being introduced to. And you will also get kudos for complimenting them in public.
Warning: if you are to pull this off consistently, you can’t talk bad about someone behind their backs, remember, no gossip. If you talk negatively about your dad to your accountant, and then compliment your dad in front of your accountant, you lose credibility for being untruthful and phony, and your compliment will not work. That means that you have to wean yourself off of talking negatively about people behind their backs.
What next?What happens when you complete the introduction? Should you slink out, or should you stay and talk? It depends on how well the introduction goes. If you see that the people you introduced seem to be interested in talking to one another, then you have done your job. If they seem averse to each other, then you can move one of them to another introduction by saying “oh, I have someone else that I want you to meet too, there they are”, even if you had no intention of introducing them to that other person. This maneuver keeps the responsibility on you, and perhaps small thanks from both of them later on.
What to talk about?Keith Ferrazzi, in his first book
Never Eat Alone, says that nothing is better than a good deep conversation. Most books on networking, he says, tend to steer you away from talking about important issues such as politics and family problems. He counters this with many vignettes of him having lively conversations with such ‘innocent’ starts such as “I just got divorced.” Of course that conversation can go wildly wrong, but the potential for people to connect on a human level about tumult in relationships is even larger. what do you talk about? Anything.
I am an advocate of this because I like to talk, argue and disagree. I argue with people as I like the liveliness of discussion, and the opportunity to explore that person’s values, thoughts, evidence and actions in relation to whatever we are talking about. If you are uncomfortable with talking about politics or personal things, get over it. Life is too short. Remember, you’re reading this book so that you can become a network weaver, so you have to be prepared to talk about whatever your network wants to talk about.
As a network weaver, you intend to create a robust network that can handle ups, downs, good times, laughs and pleasantries, and strains, arguments and disagreements. Just as during the introduction, you set the tone for how each person views the other through your compliments, at the same time you set the tone for the acceptable range of conversation, both between those two people, and others. Especially to build a robust network you need create bonds between yourself and others that can handle sensitive topics. Polite and small talk does little to build robust and strong ties between people.
I recommend that you ignite conversations with marginally controversial topics that you have talked to both parties about. If and when the people you introduce hit it off, which is almost never because of the first thing they talk about, it will be mostly due to how each person assesses the other’s ability to think, listen and empathize with their position(s), if not flat out agree with them. go ahead, start the fire. It was always burning since the world’s been turning.
