I usually never feel awkward. If anything, I’m usually the one that causes the awkward moments.
But yesterday was probably the first time in a long time that I felt awkward.
Here’s the story.
My school club introduced a new program where we help the newer club members make friends by pairing them up with the older members.
Because so many people signed up for the program, we had to figure out a way for all the new members to meet all the old members. And the best solution we came up with was a speed networking/speed dating session.
Throughout the session, I had a lot of fun conversations with the new members, with the exception of two people.
We’ll call them Alex and Wen.
They both joined my audio call.
“Hello, how are you two doing?” I said.
Complete silence from Alex.
Wen, who had her mic muted, unmuted herself and said, “Good,” then muted again.
Ok, this is going to be an interesting session, I thought.
I proceeded to ask another question.
“So…What brought you two into this program?”
This time, complete silence from both of them. I repeated the question once again. Then suddenly, Alex spoke up.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s going on here.”
And that was the first and last time I heard him speak.
Wen, on the other hand, unmuted herself, and said, “I signed up for this program to make new friends.” Then muted herself again. That was the last time I heard her speak too.
At that point, I wanted to be blunt and say something to both of them that probably would’ve hurt their feelings, but I held back from saying anything. I muted my own mic and waited until it was time to rotate.
That was most likely the most awkward, the driest conversation I’ve ever experienced.
If they were shy, or if their social skills weren’t the best, then fine, I understand because that was me at one point too.
But it’s not good to stay like that for the rest of your life, especially if you want to go into business.
In business, you’re going to have to talk to people all the time.
Networking, meetings, sales, hiring employees, interviews.
All these things require talking to other people.
If you ever get invited to speak at a podcast interview, let’s say, and you speak as much as Alex or Wen, then it’s not going to be fun for you nor the host.
What’s that?
You want to be a guest on a podcast show, but you don’t know any podcast hosts?
No worries, I got you covered. There are many resources that help guest experts connect with podcast hosts.
It’s a great way for you to build a quality email list, and establish credibility and your authority in your market.
One of my favorites is Matchmaker (It’s not a dating site, I promise).
Check it out: