Stronger connections

The most common question I receive is, "What do you do?" I use this opportunity to establish a deeper connection by tailoring my response to my audience. Perhaps you should too.

Let's start with being new to an area.  You have just moved to a new location and are meeting your neighbors for the first time.  When approaching the answer, hooks in the introduction will push the conversation forward.  Mentioning local businesses that I work with, office locations, and a hobby.  The introduction becomes less job title dependent and more on my local contributions to find shared interests.

What about a charity or an investment dinner? Here I emphasize my company's values and steer my audience to the big picture of what we are trying to accomplish collectively.  In my case, we create communication networks lowering the barrier to entry for communities to connect and enrich their lives with global knowledge.  While that doesn't speak to my day-to-day, its purpose is to keep my audience engaged so we can find an investment opportunity.

What about internally in a large company?  I would focus on internal groups and connections that I have made with multiple Business Units.  Whether working with Finance, HR, Operations, or Product, it is vital to find joint missions that we have been working to engage. Adding enough to the introduction so that your audience walks away with,  I should talk to Seth about Agile, Programming, Product, P&L, and Supply Chain.

Lastly, what about being approached by a Sales group? Here most sales teams are identifying decision-makers, influencers, and gatekeepers. My approach is never to go into a conversation without understanding and creating a strategy with my leadership to guide an eager sales team through the company.  I always include why the sales team is here and my expectations from the relationship within my introduction.

Let's put it into action to give your audience enough to work with to continue exploring your relationship.

"What do you do?"

"I work as an Expat from the US here in Canada for the next three or so years.  Our office is in St. Laurent at the old Provigo headquarters. We have done work for the Bell Center and Metro. We help service providers design in-building wireless systems, so our cellphones work no matter what the environment is around us. And on the weekends, I take my kids skiing."

Or "What do you do?"

"We make connections so the world can make them. We do this by developing software to help service providers design high-capacity indoor networks.  My software helps reduce the network build cost, allowing for Operators to streamline operational costs passing the savings and better network performance on to their end customer."

Or "What do you do?"

"I manage a large international team of developers out of our Montreal offices.  Together we use Agile processes to iterate and extend our global value prop quickly.  I assisted in reducing our operational supply chain costs using software practices with our operational teams in Texas. I also worked with our design teams when constructing the new HQ in Charlotte."

Or "What do you do?"

"I am responsible for Software Monetization. You are here today because we have a problem scaling, and we believe that your solution can help. By providing our customers a better user experience when accessing our multi-tiered application across all domains. My expectation from you today is to demonstrate how you can facilitate our use cases within your solution."

I encourage us to build on the opportunity of introducing ourselves to create stronger connections with our audience.  It is our responsibility to reveal enough to enrich the conversation, making for better outcomes.

Tailoring my introduction landed me a beautiful wife and kids, along with a job with people I genuinely enjoy.  What will it do for you?