Introduce Yourself

Some time ago I went out to a dinner party / birthday party for a friend of mine. This in itself is something of an anomaly in that I am not renowned for my witty conversational capabilities and hence do not get invited out to many parties. I suspect they actually wanted my wife to attend and couldn’t figure out a way to get her to come that didn’t involve inviting me, so they went ahead and just invited me but made sure to tell me that they wanted me to bring my wife.

I had met this friend many years ago when we were in a dads and daughters organization that was designed to get dads to spend time and develop relationships with their daughters. We started when our daughters were in kindergarten, and it was one of the best organizations I have ever been involved in. I would tell you the name of it but it has since been declared to not be a “politically correct” name, and they have changed it. I liked the politically incorrect name and won’t relate the new “corrected” name here. I will say that the old name had something to do with Native Americans and princesses, and I think my daughter and I had a great time together in this organization.

The point of that somewhat lengthy introduction was to bring up the point that there were several people at this birthday party that I had never met before. I suspected that these unknown people were friends of my friend’s lady friend. I hope you followed that. I suspected that this had to be the case since my friend was not friendly enough to have that many friends. As you might guess, it was a friendly get together with many of his friends and several of her friends.

Another interesting point that I noticed was that due to apparent comfort levels and familiarity his friends tended to sit together on one side of the large table and her friends tended to sit together on the other side. This generated two sets of conversations but with little to no interaction between the groups. It reminded me of several customer meetings I had attended in the past where the customers sat on one side of the table and talked amongst themselves and the vendor sat on the other side of the table and talked amongst themselves until the actual meeting got started.

The actual party had not really gotten started yet either, so there seemed to be only one thing to do, and I did it. I stood up, now with all eyes upon me, and walked over to the other side of the table and started introducing myself to each individual that I didn’t know on that side of the table. I introduced myself to everybody. Men, women, friends, everybody got an introduction and a handshake. I don’t think the waiter really cared who I was, and his hand was still damp from wiping off the table but that didn’t stop me from introducing myself to him either. The only thing missing was the exchange of business cards, but who brings business cards to a friend’s birthday party?

That being done, everybody else joined in and started to introduce themselves, and like the customer meeting where everyone does their own introductions, the energy level of the party started to rise.

Of course it could also have been the abundance of wine, but for purposes of this discussion I am going to go with the increased human interaction as the primary catalyst for getting things moving. I have witnessed this same phenomenon at the aforementioned customer meetings, the vast majority of which did not serve wine.

The fact is that given the opportunity, people will interact. They will interact even better if they know who they are interacting with. The best way for them to know who they are interacting with is to take the first step and introduce yourself.

As I think more about it, I find it interesting that my daughter (now in college) has also recognized my view of introductions to the point where she now instructs her various boyfriends to walk up to me, introduce themselves, shake my hand and look me in the eye, if they truly wish to receive a passing grade from me. I can’t possibly be as fierce as she has made me out to be, but I find I do like the ones that do provide an introduction without being asked. On the other hand, those that have shown up at our house and honked the horn out by the curb in order to get her to come out in anticipation of avoiding this friendly contact have been known to wait for a significant amount of time, and then eventually having to come to the door and go through the face to face introduction anyway, before they are allowed to escort my daughter out on their planned activities.

I have since started to apply this self introduction process in several instances other than customer meetings and parties. While working in a large company it is not uncommon to see or pass by other people in the hallways. In the past it seemed it was proper protocol to just nod or smile at these people in order to acknowledge their existence, and not much more. I now stop and introduce myself. I start the conversation. I ask them what they do and where they are located in the building, and provide them the same information.

In doing this I have met several interesting people in the organization and have gotten a better idea of who has which responsibilities. I have also found that it is in fact possible to engage Co-Ops, new hires and other members of the so called “millennial” generation in at least basic conversations. In the past I had just assumed that there was something more interesting occurring on their smart phone than in the interpersonal surrounding of the office environment.

It seems that subconsciously we all understand and accept the premise that if we are really going to work together, we are going to have to know and understand each other. It was interesting to me that it truly became a conscious approach to this topic for me as a result of my friend’s social event. I assume I had been only partially aware of it at any of the previous business events that I had been party to. Perhaps this was due to the fact that as a matter of course there is usually a formal introductory portion of any business meeting agenda. It can be handled by the leader of the meeting or each individual may be allotted the opportunity introduce themselves to the group. We all get the opportunity to inform each other of who we are and what we do before we get started, right?

But it is not the same.

Standing up and being introduced, or introducing yourself to the crowd is not the same as walking over and introducing yourself personally to an individual and shaking their hand. It doesn’t carry the same interpersonal value. It doesn’t show the same amount of care and effort to make that connection. It is about as impersonal way to meet people as is possible. As I noted before, it is just a protocol for a meeting.

As we continue to become more of a virtualized society, where more and more of our communications are conducted electronically, we seem to be losing the ability to make that face to face interpersonal connection. It is interesting that as I continue to push myself back into this realm with the people I meet and those whom I used to just pass by in the office hallway, it seems to be both unexpected and well received.

It is a small step, but I think we all need to get back into the habit of introducing ourselves and making that interpersonal connection with those people we meet, and those people we work with, and especially those people who want to date my daughter. I know I think better of those boyfriends of hers that make the initial introductory effort, and I think the same applies for those of us that make the same introductory effort in our professional environments as well.

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