Coaching Tip: Increasing Social Contacts

Originally Submitted on 4/10/2000.

Introduction

Clients who are career-successful sometimes find that they are lacking in their social lives. If they turn to a coach for help in remedying this, some solutions are simpler than might be expected.

The Coaching Tip

Sometimes very successful people - successful as judged by their careers, job-titles, their incomes - find that they are sorely lacking in people with whom to share that success. They look around, and believe that in order to increase their social support they will have to entirely change their life patterns. Sometimes such drastic changes are not needed.

For example, one sees them hurrying to meetings, on the elevator, off the elevator, eyes front, every inch of their bodies clearly communicating that they are in a hurry, and that you delay them at your peril. These habits can become pervasive, carrying over into our behavior even in situations where there are people who we could like to get to know better. On the other hand, these habits can be changed, albeit sometimes slowly and with difficulty.

A coach can suggest that perhaps all that is needed is to slow down, to facially and physically focus on the folks who are also going into or out of that meeting. The client might try gathering one's papers together less swiftly, looking around, making eye contact, following up on a remark that someone makes about their vacation or other personal information. This will not produce instantaneous social success, but it will communicate that you are interested in the individuals as people, and over time personal contact may well grow from there.

Other possibilities include personal follow-ups by e-mail - a congratulatory note on a presentation well made, a request for additional information that includes mention that you were pleased to see the person at the last meeting, etc.

These are simple steps that are made almost automatically by those who are "people focused" but are skills that need to be learned by the more "task focused" client who yet yearns for more social contact. They may appear to be normal networking skills, but in fact are more person focused than much of the networking that is done in business situations.

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