Let me start by saying this: I love professional development. I feel sorry for anyone who sees professional development as a chore - a way to keep their licensure active, something mandated by school administrators, the list goes on. But I can't get enough of it. It's a wonderful way for me to enrich my teaching practice and enhance the work my students do every day.
But here's the catch. (There's always a catch, isn't there?)
I'm horrible at networking.
My father is a world-renowned educator, known in circles across the globe for his work in instructional technology over the past two decades. Whenever he takes the Myers-Briggs typology indicator, he consistently scores 100% on extroversion. He is simply brilliant with people, and loves spending the evening hours after a full day of conference sessions chatting people up in the hotel bar. To me, that sounds like utter torture.
So here's the thing. I know that networking is the best way to build your professional learning network, develop connections, and find opportunities for the future. And obviously that is something that I want for myself. But after a full day of attending workshops or conference sessions, as a social introvert, I find myself completely spent. It's all I can do to make it back to my hotel room and order room service. I want to challenge myself, to push myself, to go to the networking party or grab that free drink from the hotel bar. But motivating myself to do that after a full day of "people-ing" is usually more than I can muster.
I always prefer to end my blog posts by summing up my ideas or with a wise statement - but here I end with a question, and I really want to know the answer...
How can introverts network more effectively?
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Current high: awesome weekend at the Google Summit, including a new professional website and becoming a Level One Certified Educator!
Current low: seven straight days of waking up before the sun, and five days of it to go...
Currently reading: between books, but Ms. W has started faculty book clubs for January - looking forward to delving into Bryan Stevenson's Just Mercy, Todd Rose's The End of Average, and Wendy L. Ostroff's Cultivating Curiosity in K-12 Classrooms
Recognizing how much effort it can take to stay focused in a crowd, here are some quick extroverted thoughts. (As Ernie Johnston once said, "You can ignore the first two things extroverts say because they're just warming up anyway.")
ReplyDelete1) Pace yourself: do you really need to attend something in every session? This is a question to ask when compared with the relative value of the wide variety of post workshop schmoozing opportunities. You can have lunch alone. You can skip the 2:00 session for a quick restorative stroll. You can find people to meet later and eat dinner alone.
2) Have a wing person. The introverts typical preferred number is one and the second favorite is two. So if there's someone else you know who's attending the same conference, have a "take a break" plan and a "rescue me" signal. When it's getting to the point where your energy level has faded to the point of no return (or before then), have a signal so the two of you need to go somewhere - even if you split up immediately after you're out the door.
3) On the number of people being two, if there's someone you want to know better, just focus on that. Something like, "I'd like to get to know you better, and it's tough to focus in crowds, could we (go for a walk, go somewhere else for a beer, sit in an unused conference room).
4) Don't set too high a bar. Better to learn what you set out to learn than be so drained you miss most of day 2. Don't set the goal of becoming an optimal schmoozer - maybe the goal is to make one substantial connection rather than five casual ones.
As with most extroverts, I've just thrown out a bunch of stuff. Keep the ones that fit (if any) and ignore the rest.
Because the biggest message for outside the session time is to have fun doing what's good for you.