Different Ways to Work a Room
I've been to a lot of events over the last 20 years. I've seen a lot of people work a room trying to get alliances for politics, sales for income, financing for business, employees for growth, allies for various kinds of battles, goodwill for their careers, approval to get hired, interest for dates, and connection to feel human.
In observing myself, I'm odd in this respect, which comes as no surprise. I'll give an example to illustrate. This happened a couple of years ago at Acton University in Grand Rapids put on by the Acton Institute, which is a great educational think tank.
Main speeches and presentations are conducted in a large room. There are also breakout sessions in smaller rooms, like classrooms. Many of these sessions are filmed to be put online. In the main room there's a professional cameraman. Almost no one talks with him. He's just a function, the guy that runs the camera, almost like another piece of apparatus.
Many people are trying to do something with their social interaction. Most of these people have one, or two, or three university degrees. Many of them are from a fairly high socio-economic level. The ones that aren't are trying to appear to be, and trying to get there. In all of these cases a single connection can change your life. One job offer, one reference, one offer for financing, can be the difference between being poor and rich, between running an organization or not, between success and not success. Some people have of course already achieved these things. Many of them are still ambitious though, seeking the next opportunity, the person with ambition in their eyes that can carry on the mission, grow the company, take the organization to the next level, elevate the legacy.
In some people and in some places this becomes very clear. I remember seeing a line at a different event in Grand Rapids to talk with Rich Devos. And, you guessed it, everyone was pitching him on different businesses to fund or partner with. When I talked with him later the first thing I said to him was, "I don't want any money from you, I don't have a business for you to fund." After that single sentence he noticeably relaxed, and in the next few minutes of conversation I was able to realize how differently he thought about the world than I did, which was my goal, understanding.
Now, back in the main room at Acton, I walked to the side of the platform that the cameraman was stationed on. The platform is a few feet high against the back wall, and the cameraman sits on a tall chair with a very large camera on a stand in front of him, like you would see on a movie set. I wonder, who's this guy? Just the worker in the room. He's seen a ton of these events over the years, all of the main presentations. Dances, singing, speeches. Does that person become jaded? Does that person resent the people that come to fancy events? Does that person like being able to see and experience it all?
I start with the prototypical opening, "Hi, how's it going?" He responds in like fashion, "Good. How are you?" I give the normal "Good." reply, but then I follow it up. "So, do you like being able to see all of these events, or is it kind of boring and just a job after awhile?" This gives the cameraman a choice. He can go in two basic directions. He can give a simple answer and cut the conversation short, or he can give a real thought out answer that will lead to a deeper conversation. In this case, he gave a real answer. He started talking about how he likes some things and doesn't like others. How at times he has to focus on the work of keeping things in focus and in frame and he can't really listen that well, but how at other times it's an interesting topic and it's easy to shoot the video so he really pays attention to what's going on. It led to a great conversation.
At that same event I talked with a group of homeless people across the river who were planning where they would get their next meal from, while I was planning how to avoid eating too much. Then I talked with a professor of social work who had flown into the event who had no idea how I could just walk up to homeless people and talk with them, even though he was apparently supposed to be able to teach about that type of thing, and felt like an imposter even though he was successful and rising in his field.
I've done this in a lot of places. I've had great conversations with security guards, secretaries, ushers, and many others, including the forgotten workers of events. When I was in London for my graduation I had a good conversation with a woman that just sat by a back stairwell so no one got lost finding their way to the auditorium in this giant building. She was from the UK and loved to travel, and had been to the US once and wanted to go back. We talked about different areas and things to see and do, different cultures across the US and the UK. I had been scoping out the area to make sure I could find my way without getting lost. When I came back an hour later to take my seat I saw there was a different woman there. I talked with her, she had come to London from the Ukraine to study art. She showed me some of her art on her phone. It was good, but she wasn't sure how she could actually make a paying career out of it.
At that same event I talked with a woman from Russia worried about telling anyone because she was afraid she would be ostracized because of the war. I talked with a man that was born as a Christian domestic servant or slave in Pakistan and now lived in South Korea.
On that same trip I talked with teenage boys in Cornwall during a rainstorm who were amazed that I had heard of Cornwall, a couple of women at a subway station in the middle of the night about a soccer team manager, a guy on a train about how he moved to the UK to escape the Chinese lockdown in Hong Kong, a couple of guys who delivered boats by sailing them and then would get drunk and ride trains back home after, a bus driver about his vacation in Istanbul, a restaurant owner about the greatness of Turkey, a guy from Cornwall about foolishness in the British education and tax system, and many others.
Only once, in an old cemetery and after he had brought it up, did I try to make a career or business connection. I'm not advocating for not being career and business oriented, I think I probably should work on making these connections more useful, but the encounter is an experiential value in itself. One life is so small, so limited, so short. There are billions of people all living different lives with different perspectives over tens of thousands of years, and we're only going to experience one life from one perspective for a few decades. The possibility of expansion amazes me. That's part of what fascinates me about books in general, and memoirs and autobiographies in particular. You can live a thousand lives inside your single life. These conversations are the same thing. And when there is no agenda, when neither party even wants anything from the other party besides understanding, it's a sincere expansion of experience and the growth of conscious awareness of a larger and more encompassing perspective. If you have a specific goal to achieve, then it makes sense to work a room with that purpose in mind. If you don't, then it makes sense to follow your curiosity and expand your understanding of the meaning of life, the universe, and everything.
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