A521.8.4.RB
Making
Contact
I
grew up in the 1960s and 1970s and came from a loud Italian family. I was the kid who went outside in the morning
and did not return home until the street lights came on. I would meet people throughout the day and
never acted shy. If they were close to
my age, I would try to make friends. As
new friends, we would go to the amusement park, arcade and beach that very
day. These new friends had no problem
knocking on our door the next day to see if I could come out and play. My grandparent’s beach house was always
filled with strange faces that my brothers and I had just met. My grandmother would feed us all lunches of
sandwiches, pastina with butter and parmesan, leftovers from the night before
or whatever was on hand. I think this
kind of dynamic holds true to even kids today.
However, our world have changed over the last 30 – 40 years and parents
are much more cautious about allowing their children to wander the streets all
day long.
Fast
forward to the 1980s and I found myself in the US Army surrounded by hundreds
of perfect strangers from all over the United States. Tall people, short people, pudgy people,
black people, white people, Asian people, Hispanic people, handsome people,
ugly people and a sprinkling of odd people.
Every kind of person you could imagine.
I was definitely out of my element and comfort zone. I had grown up in New England…Massachusetts
to be exact…and honestly, I had only been around Italians, Irish and
Greeks. This may sound ridiculous but up
until I was in my teens, I had never personally met a black person or Hispanic
person. I had seen Asian people at
Chinese restaurants but that was my only exposure to culture.
Finding
myself in a melting pot of people, I drew on my former behavior as a kid and
made many friends. As a matter of fact,
I am still close friends with many of these people that I met over 30 years
ago.
I
found that I was naturally comfortable around just about anyone. If there was any discomfort, I would kick in
my humor. Humor was and is my way of
making myself feel more comfortable and the people around me feel more
comfortable. Will Rogers said it best
(Goodreads, 2016), “I never met a man that I didn’t like”. I completely relate to Will Rogers. I find friends around every corner.
I
believe I really learned to “work a room” when I became a Recruiter. With the training that was provided to me
over the course of my eight year recruiting career, my inner-type A was truly
released.
In
chapter 14 of the book, Messages: The communication skills book, McKay, Davis
and Fanning (McKay, Davis & Fanning, 2009) lay out ways of making contact
when there is a fear of strangers.
During my experiences as a Recruiter, I received training from Zig
Ziglar, Lee DuBois, Brian Tracy and many more.
I believe that McKay, Davis and Fanning were on the same sheet of music
as these motivational speakers. These
three put emphasis on the following:
·
Analyze what you say to yourself
·
Reframe your approach behavior
·
Reframe rejection
·
Deal with the emotional blow when rejected
·
Plan to get rejected
·
Use body language
·
Use Icebreakers
·
Questions
·
Active listening
·
Self-disclosure
My
former training offered all of this advice and I use it to this very day. It was a great refresher reading chapter
14. I continue to use these tools even
with my JROTC Cadets.
References
Goodreads. (2016). Will
Rogers quotes. Retrieved on July 22, 2016 from https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/132444.Will_Rogers
McKay, M., Davis, M. & Fanning, P. (2009). Messages: The communication skills book. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications
No comments:
Post a Comment