How to work the room when you’d rather hide in the toilet

Kristen: Now I was just asking how you’re doing, and we both agreed that we’re a little bit worse for wear. Um, and for no reason other than we had two events yesterday and traveled. I mean, for no reason other than getting into bed at eleven thirty after waking up at six AM and being on all day. Other than that, we both feel — I mean, I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck. You?

Nat: I just think it’s really funny that we operate — I think I’ve been thinking about it a lot this year because there’s been a lot of people in my life who’ve had hard work years. And mine on the surface seems like a really chill job. And I look at what we do, and I’m like, I think we’ve just adapted to living this lifestyle where, yeah, you get up at six, you do two massive live events in a day, you’ve got coffees and racing around, you get to the airport at nine, get home at eleven thirty, go to bed, and then you wake up the next day and start it all again. And we’re like, well, why are we so tired?

Kristen: This is literally called the charm offensive hangover, I think. Because, I mean—

Nat: Oh, I like it.

Kristen: Well, that’s what it is. This is actually giving all day, being at our best, and we no longer have the energy to do it day in and day out. Here we are.

Nat: I know — we know this from traveling around a lot. We’ve learned a lot of lessons. And if anyone is new to traveling for work, I would say the two big ones I’ve learned: one is don’t try and do any work while you’re traveling if you can at all avoid it. We’ve talked about this. If you’d seen us back at our last company, we would literally be in the back of taxis with our laptops open on our laps trying to do the things we needed to do between meetings. I just find those days excruciating, and I think you can’t always get a lot done. So now we block out time the days before and after and plan for a day that we are just present. So I think that has worked quite nicely. But yesterday, what I failed on is water — my second big tip. When you don’t have a stationary place throughout the day and you’re moving from cafe to office to cafe to event, you do not drink enough water. So I carry a water bottle, but I did not drink nearly enough yesterday. And I think that just threw me by the end of the day and then this morning as well.

Kristen: Yeah. Fair.

Nat: I did have a really lovely meeting I’d like to shout out to, because I walked into her office and she said, “I know that you’ve just been running around all day — would you like to use the bathroom before we start talking?” And then she laid out the table with beautiful snacks and drinks, and I was like, please give me some. I just thought, what lovely hosting, when you’re empathetic enough to know it’s a grueling schedule when you’re racing around a different city.

Kristen: I can relate, given that I’ve just noticed in the last couple of months that I need to go to the toilet far more often than I’ve ever had to in my life, plus I go from feeling fine to hangry quite quickly, in short order. I’m like, this is the dream meeting. So thank you to all those who are very thoughtful. What we’re chatting about today is — now, after our little preamble here of feeling like we’ve been hit by trucks — we’re talking about one of the events last night, which was fabulous. It was for women in infrastructure. It’s a fun one, we’ve done it a few times before. And we just thought we’d chat about a few of the things that came up and talk about some of the hooks when it comes to networking, our biggest fears, our biggest awkward moments, and how to navigate through them. That’s what we’re chatting about today.

Nat: I feel like the two big things we want to address in this — and I think it’s worth raising them at the top even though I know you like to reorder our podcasts and do things differently — one is that kind of “you’re walking into a room full of strangers” barrier. That’s one of the big barriers for a lot of us. How do you kick-start a conversation? And it may not even be a room full of strangers — it’s like you’re at a park, at a cafe, whatever. How do you start a conversation and get to know someone? Especially because we met someone last night who’s new to New Zealand and talked about how hard that job can be.

Kristen: But the second one—

Nat: —is the one I’ve been pondering a lot. At Powrsuit, we work with a lot of organizations in male-dominated industries, and they measure a lot of success this way — like, what is our gender mix at this level, this level, this level? And those stats are amazing, but we often talk about all the invisible barriers to progression and the invisible challenges women face. One that was raised last night, and I think this is very common amongst Powrsuiters, is that when you’re in an environment where people talk about stuff all the time — the banter, the chats, the pre-meeting chats — it feels really exclusive, like you’re not included in them. How do you break in or manage those chats? So those are the two specific scenarios I think we should cover today, because it’s not good enough to just go “talk about sports with the men” — that’s actually not cool, that we have to adapt that much.

Kristen: Yes. And I think it’s worth pointing out that even someone entering a conversation where people are exclusively talking about kids, and you don’t have kids — that’s another example of the same scenario. How do you redirect the conversation? And on the other side, how do you include others?

Nat: I think there’s also another hack there, and we should talk about that too when we get to it.

Kristen: We should. Okay. I just want to start with something to make everyone feel better about networking. There’s something called the liking gap. Most people want to be liked by others, particularly when meeting them — you want to leave a good impression, walk away feeling good about it, maybe you’ve made a good connection. However, this is what happens: the liking gap. You walk away and go, “oh my god, that was weird,” or “I didn’t make a very good impression,” or “that was awkward, I dropped Trump into the conversation” like I did last night. So I walk away rating my performance a C. However, research time and time again has found that the other people actually rate you a strong B or an A. They like you more than you think they did. They’ve tracked strangers in five-minute conversations, long after the conversation, in multiple scenarios, and you always think you did worse than you did. Most people like you more than you think. So I just want to set everyone’s mind at ease that we’re constantly our own worst critics. We’re judging ourselves. Just calm down, everyone — everyone likes you.

Nat: I think that’s a really nice thing to say. I looked this up once, because I say “um” a lot and have lots of little vocal things I do — which you find out very much about when you listen to yourself on recordings a lot. One of the things I found is people do expect more “ums” the less formal a conversation is, because it means you’re being more authentic — you’re not polished, you haven’t rehearsed it. So I took that to heart: on this podcast, we’re just chatting, so there are going to be a few ums. I think that also goes hand in hand with some of those “stupid” things we say. I noticed this because we make little shorts of these videos for Instagram and YouTube, and sometimes we finish a sentence halfway through or go off on a tangent, and I’m sitting there thinking, just stick to the point, you two. But in normal conversations, those are the things we cling onto — why did I say that thing about Trump, or whatever it is? You’re sitting there wondering why you said it, but for everyone else it just fades into the noise, because conversation patterns actually have a lot of half-finished sentences, a lot of little tangents, a lot of words that were the wrong word for the situation — but our brains just adapt and fill in the blanks, and we walk away feeling like that was a perfectly normal conversation. If you analyzed every word, you’d think, this is gobbledygook.

Kristen: I say “like” a lot. Every video you post, I say it every third or fourth word. And again, it’s completely automatic.

Nat: I need to get my editing robot to edit out the “likes.”

Kristen: [Pauses] And I have nothing left to say. I even text “like.” Unreal — my favorite word. Okay, someone said last night that they’d found themselves hiding in the bathroom. I found myself getting to the doorway of a networking event and turning around and saying, “I just don’t have it in me.” So this is the walk-in plan — we think everybody needs one. Upon arrival, what do you do? So start to think about your most recent networking event and what worked for you. Let’s break it down: the arrival — actual concrete steps, helpful tips to get you from the door to wherever — then entry points into conversations, and then how do you get out. Let’s chat about the arrival. What do you do in the first two minutes?

Nat: Well, you know I’m an introvert, so I am very much a hider in the bathroom, and I actually think that’s a good tactic. Sometimes when I’m feeling overwhelmed or wobbly, I’ll go and sit in the bathroom, have a couple of deep breaths, calm myself down, regroup, and get back out. So I actually think hiding in the bathroom is not a terrible idea if you walk in feeling really flustered or out of sorts — removing yourself temporarily is actually not a bad idea. I have a plan when I walk in. Once, I walked in and thought, I just can’t today, but I wanted to go to an event — it was a panel sort of event, and I wanted to hear what the speakers had to say but didn’t want to network. So I just sat down and tried to get over my social discomfort of not networking. But I don’t think that’s appropriate for this podcast! So my usual plan is: do I know someone there? Have I got a pre-lined-up “safety person” — someone I’m probably not going to hang out with, but if I’m feeling wobbly, I can find a friendly face or the person I go to say hi to first, and break into their group from there. If that’s not a thing, I’ll have an opening line, and mine is really basic for networking events: “Hey, I don’t know anyone here, can I join you?” And I know I’m going to say that to the first group I see, or someone who’s on their own.

Kristen: Okay, I do one thing before that — before the breathing in the toilet. I don’t breathe in the toilet, but I might feel the butterflies. The very first thing I do is head straight for the drinks. I walk into the room and look for the drinks table, because it gives me something to do. I don’t walk in with a deer-in-the-headlights look — I have intention, and I can walk straight to the table even if it’s just for water. Also, holding something in your hand is helpful.

Nat: Yes — when you’re trying to think about what to do with your hands.

Kristen: So I go straight for the drinks, for two reasons. One, it gives me intention and something to do while I’m scanning — while I’m getting my drink, I’m scanning the room and assessing the vibe. I’m looking at how people are broken up — small groups, large groups, is there someone sitting alone — and I might think, oh, I’ll go sit down with that person. So I’m concocting a bit of a plan while I’m waiting in line for drinks. The second reason is you can start chatting with the person in line in front of or behind you, because they’re waiting too. So that’s my entry plan.

Nat: I love that you do that, and I’ve seen you do the talking-in-line thing quite a few times. I thought, what an easy tactic — because most of the time, everyone in line is doing exactly the same thing, scanning, waiting for their first conversation. I also go get a drink as soon as I arrive; I forgot that step. One of my new favorite people in the world, I actually met because we were at an event and food was about to be delivered — really cute little snacks coming around. I was so hungry, I subtly went to stand close to it so I could get some. She was there too, and she said, “Are you waiting for food?” I said yes, and we bonded over that. To this day we’re close — she’s just gone away for a couple of weeks, we chat, we’ve been to comedy together — and it all started because we were both waiting for food.

Kristen: I love it.

Nat: I really like her, and we had that instant thing in common. So that tactic works really nicely. The other one — I was out for a drink the other night, waiting in a queue, talking about a TV show my friend wanted to watch, and the girl in front of us turned around and said, “Oh my god, you have to watch that show, my flatmates just finished it!” Sparked a whole conversation. Queue chats — very, very good.

Kristen: I love it. I do similarly to you — I might ask to join a group, but before that I assess the groups. If there’s a gap in a circle, so it’s not a perfectly formed circle, I look around — little groupings of three are easy to join. Two can be tricky, because they can be chatting intently about something, so I take that as a cue that it’s not my group. But a loose three or four, with a bit of a gap, is easier. If it’s a really tight circle, forget it, too hard. The second thing I do is look at faces — who looks friendly. I basically judge people on the openness of their demeanor. Do they look kind? Are they smiling? Then I walk up. Even if they’re friends catching up on work — the generosity of people is amazing, they do open up, and I mean both genders. It can be more intimidating for me to walk up to a group of guys. We were at a party a few weeks ago, a lot of sporting lads there, super intimidating. I walked up to a group of three guys — pretty sure they were reminiscing about their high school cricket team — but I rocked right up, and because the event was about a person’s birthday, I said, “How do you know [birthday person]?” You can employ that tactic at a financial event, a data event, an AI event too — just ask, “How do you work in this industry?” Take the relevance of the actual event and interject with that. The birthday thing really worked, because then we all got chatting about the birthday boy and stories about him, and that was a way of getting in — people are curious how you fit into the thing.

Nat: I like that — context cues. You can also talk about the venue, the parking, whatever — those are all context cues. But the big thing I want to take away is that both sides are true. I also realize I subconsciously look for groups of around three, maybe four or five, who are smiling or laughing. That makes me think, you’re having a good time and here to meet people and chat — which means, vice versa, you have to make sure your body language looks open and inviting. When we’re feeling shy and uncomfortable, we hunch down, avoid eye contact, physically remove ourselves — all of that sends the social cue “I don’t want to talk to you.” Instead, shoulders back, head up, a smile, eye contact with people you pass — you create your own reality. If you do those things, you’re more likely to have people talk to you. I remember a friend from my twenties who was gorgeous but also made so many friends everywhere we went — we went to a wedding once and I think she got five dates out of it. I was like, what are you doing? I monitored her behavior — she smiled at people, held eye contact, sparked conversations in the coffee line. She didn’t do anything outrageous, she just presented this really open, welcoming, friendly presence. I know there are a lot of introverted, shy people using all their energy just to turn up — but doing those final tweaks helps. I used to do dancing as a kid, practicing in front of a mirror — it feels really awkward. Or film yourself and review it — brutal, but you’ll start to notice things you didn’t know you were doing. Do it in the privacy of your own home, obviously. Because the flip side is true too — you want to attract people to you as well, and if you look like you don’t want to talk to anyone, people feel less inclined to approach, because they think, I’ll have to carry the conversation, or what if it’s awkward.

Kristen: Before moving on, I forgot about the single person. If you see someone standing solo, that’s such an easy entry point, because they’re probably feeling pretty panicked.

Nat: Doubly true if you’re in a group. So many times, if I’m in a group and I see someone on their own, I’ll go over, grab them, and say, “Hey, do you want to come and join us?” If you’re in a comfortable environment where you feel fine, spot the people who don’t and bring them in — because you’ll be on the other side of that one day. If we create that culture, life will be so much easier for all of us.

Kristen: I have three moving-on tips. The first is I’ll just hit the toilet — if the timing’s right and I want to get out of there. Number two, I’ll just grab another drink. Those are two exit points. But what I’ve found — and this has been normalized, because you’re there to network and meet people, everyone knows that — is a third exit line: “It was really nice chatting with you, enjoy your evening.” It’s so acceptable now, and I’ve noticed it’s become normalized. So you can do that too.

Nat: I also like — if you meet someone you really like at an event, or think you might want to talk more, I think that was a great chat, please utilize that in combination with grabbing each other’s LinkedIn details: “Would you like to follow up with a coffee later?” or “Let’s connect on LinkedIn and continue the conversation there.” Very complimentary if you’re telling someone you want to keep chatting, and there’s an element of moving it forward. Networking isn’t just about how many people you meet, it’s about forming relationships. So if you want to, organize a loose follow-up, and you can do that the next day.

Kristen: Moving on to our second topic — how you might change the topic or feel included in a conversation that isn’t of interest to you. This came up again in the male-dominated context, but equally it can be around people who just aren’t part of the “club” — they don’t identify with the thing being discussed. I’ve got a few tips, but I’ll start with my favorite: the bridge question. I’m actively listening, picking up hints from the conversation. Immediately I might think, oh god, cricket — that was an example last night. It could be a sport I know nothing about, or simply a conversation I find really boring — an oil rig, mechanics, cars (oh god, can we please not talk about cars). But I’d be listening intently for cues around the topic — a location I’ve picked up on, where the club gathers, when they first started doing the sport, something that happened on the weekend. I grab onto that breadcrumb, because they’re the ones who entered it into the conversation. If they say, “I started playing cricket at [high school],” I’ll say, “Oh, [high school] — I knew someone who went there.” It’s literally bait and switch, and the entire conversation turns to high school. Even if you don’t really want to talk about high school, it gets you away from cars or cricket, and you’ll move on to something else. But it’s my favorite bridge tactic.

Nat: I like that. My tactic is a bit different — I want to back up a little, because I think sometimes we get confused about conversation, and think it has to revolve around something we’re interested in for us to participate. There are two sides to this. One is patterns of behavior — we’ll get into that later with organizations and environments where the conversation is exclusive because it centers around the dominant group, like sports chat amongst men, baby chat amongst mothers, whatever it might be. But in a networking event, we wrote our newsletter on this a couple of weeks ago — the difference between interest and curiosity — and I think we all have to embrace curiosity. Your example is fabulous. Why, if I walk into a group talking about cricket or cars, do I feel it’s my responsibility to change the topic to something I care about? What if instead I get really curious about what the group cares about, and learn something from them? I think we have this sense — probably true, because women do often feel excluded from conversations — that we need to change it to something we want to talk about. But I’d counter that with: get curious instead, find out about something you may not know you’re into. I don’t care about cars, but if someone’s really passionate about them and tells me about it, I’ll find something out I didn’t know — about cars, or about them. I thrive off other people’s passions, learning about what gets them out of bed. We can sometimes think, if I’m not interested, I’m not included — but we need to switch from interest, which is “I benefit from it, it’s related to me,” to curiosity, which is “I’m going to learn a broad array of interesting things about other people without any benefit to myself.” That makes you better at conversations, because people love someone who asks questions and wants to learn about them. It also makes you more interesting going forward, because now you’ve got more facts and insights in your toolbox. Networking and connection is all about going broad — the more interests you have, the more topics you have to talk about, the more you’ll connect with a diverse group of people. I think we all tend to want to bring it back to the five topics we care about — but let those go sometimes, and open up your world to new topics.

Kristen: One hundred percent. Get in the driver’s seat with curiosity. I love learning random facts about people — I’m genuinely curious, so it really helps. With the cricket example — it’s a great one because it’s something you don’t understand.

Nat: It could be somewhere else too — yachting is one I’ve seen.

Kristen: Sure. So you could simply say, “Hang on, I’m lost — what actually happens in a test match for five days? Five days? Come on.” And you go from not caring about the subject to at least learning about it and giving it a crack. It’s funny — I think of the Tour de France with this. At first I thought, oh my gosh, so boring, people biking for twenty-one days, seriously? Then I watched the Netflix documentary, and now I tell everyone there’s so much strategy involved, it’s fascinating, because I learned about the sport. Now I’ve said to Kyla, we must travel through France one day and do the Tour de France route, just to taste the wine and cheese and different food, and of course appreciate this incredibly complex, strategic sport, because I learned about it.

Nat: Same with Formula One. We’ve both become Formula One fans, and I would have said, it’s just cars going around for a season, why does anyone care? That’s so uncurious. I had a fixed mindset about a sport I knew nothing about — why did I think I had expertise on it?

Kristen: Yeah. I love it. So you breadcrumb away and bridge to something else, even if it’s not something you massively care about — if a conversation’s gone on too long, the bridge and the breadcrumb, moving to something you might all have in common, is entirely appropriate. But I also like this concept — I’m going to call it “forensic scientist,” because I was called that once. We were at a networking event two weeks ago, and I didn’t have a lot in common with two people in the group who worked in public service. I don’t know a lot about it. One of them said, “I work for the elections service,” and I thought, whatever, you do our elections — I’m a voter, that’s interesting. She said they’re looking at how to digitize it, so I shot back, “Who does it best in the world?” Turns out it’s Estonia — not Lithuania — because they’ve gone really digital. We got chatting about Estonia, and I just kept peppering questions because I was genuinely interested — also sometimes that’s my MO after a beer. This person said, “Oh my gosh, you’re like a forensic scientist” — but I was loving it. That conversation is why people call me intense, twenty questions and all, but I extracted so many random facts. I told my son yesterday, do you know how much an election costs here every three years? Three hundred million dollars. That’s what I learned from that conversation. Fascinating.

Nat: Yeah, I agree. That reminded me — years ago we worked with someone heavily into crypto, doing blockchain elections. Apparently the UN was a customer, and it was all about one verified vote. I think curiosity is a great thing to practice because you never know where it’s going to go — you have no skin in the game of where it goes, and it can lead somewhere really fun. My other recent example is Dungeons and Dragons. Less networking-related, but my girlfriend loves D&D and listens to a podcast about it, and my immediate response was, “I’m just not into it.” She said, “How do you know?” So I’ve started listening — I’ve listened to two episodes of a podcast, because I thought, how do I know this isn’t a thing? I identify as someone who’s not interested in fantasy stuff, and she asked why I’m making that call. So now I’m listening and learning a little bit about D&D, and maybe I’ll really like it. When you have that gut reaction of “I’m not interested in this” but you don’t actually know anything about it — we used to say this all the time in the finance world too. We all have an idea of what we think investing is, and then when you start learning about it, it’s so different from what you thought.

Kristen: Yeah.

Nat: Always be open-minded to learning.

Kristen: My last tip for today, then over to you, Nat, for your last one — it’s the pull-in. Be aware of people who aren’t in the conversation. Just like pulling someone into a group who’s standing alone, or looking nervous or lost — recognize those who aren’t engaging, and pull them in somehow. It could be, “What do you think?” or “Have you done that before?” — ask them a question and pull them into the conversation. It could be that you know something about that person: “I heard you just went to Japan, tell us!” — and immediately you’re pulling them in so they get airtime too. I’m a relatively dominant person, but I’m quite conscious of that — I’m very socially aware, I rank pretty high on that meter, and I like people to feel good about themselves. So it’s something I’ve honed, just with a redirect or pulling someone in with a question.

Nat: I love that one for two reasons. One, it’s another great way to move the topic to something else — if it’s someone who’s been silent, it’s easy, even if you don’t know anything about them: “What brought you here tonight?” You can quickly flick away from whatever you were doing. But the second reason is that’s such a leadership skill. If you’re in meetings, leading diverse teams, being able to understand who’s not contributing and pull them in is such a critical skill. Practice it wherever you can — otherwise we just don’t, and then you land in situations facilitating meetings, big groups, trying to pull out amazing knowledge, and you’ve never even practiced how to do it. I want to end on a final note about poor patterns. There’s a real difference between being at a networking event where nobody knows each other and you’re randomly popping into conversations that may or may not interest you, versus being in workplaces and environments — golf courses, members’ clubs, places that may be dominated by one group, the majority. This is often the case for Powrsuiters in engineering, infrastructure, and finance. What happens — and we’ve been here so many times — is there’s a group of men bantering, all in on it, and you walk in already in the minority, already a bit uncomfortable, and the conversation feels designed to exclude you. It’s not — it’s just a lack of awareness and comfort. Two things: if you’re in that position, it’s not your job to jump in and fix it or change the conversation. You can raise the pattern directly or indirectly — actually name the behavior: “In the last three meetings, I’ve noticed the conversation has just gone to sports and stayed there. We operate in a male-dominated environment — do you think we should be more aware of these conversational patterns that might exclude people?” Raise it directly, maybe not in the moment, or indirectly to a manager or trusted peer who can represent you. The second thing — if you’re an ally or in the dominant group, it’s easy to relax, but it is your job, not the minority person’s job, to be aware and stop, rather than just falling into your patterns and talking about cricket. It’s our job to ask questions of people who don’t look like us in the room, because we’re in the power position, and it’s the power position’s job to make other people feel comfortable.

Kristen: Love it. Thank you for those last tips. Everyone, check out powrsuit.com — I counted in my head during this conversation, there are about four sessions inside Powrsuit related to networking. Rather than just chatting and picking up a couple of tips here, there are actual cheat sheets you can work through, so you have a bit of a plan — areas to improve on, tips for next time, but actual practical homework. It’s not something you just listen to and forget. So come and join at powrsuit.com. We’d love to meet you in person at a future networking event.

Nat: And I’d add — if you want to network but feel a bit intimidated, the best and easiest place to do it is in Powrsuit, because everyone is trained up on the Powrsuit way of doing things — open questions, peer coaching, people asking about what you’re interested in and keep asking rather than changing the topic. It’s such a low-stress, easy way to build your networking skills in a really safe, comfortable environment, often from the comfort of your own couch.

Kristen: We’ll see you soon, everyone. Thanks for tuning in. Chat soon. Bye.