As I get older, I find myself looking to avoid crowds and those rooms where you need to create conversations. But what do you do when you can’t avoid the crowds?
It is weird that in most social settings people tend to gravitate toward the public officials in the room, unless of course, you’re that political robot who is standing in the back closet furiously texting on the blackberry and avoiding the crowds all together – we all know that person.
I don’t know why individuals think that the pols are the interesting ones in the room, and it is often the case that those synthetic drones are the biggest bores on the planet. While I’m at it, many politicians think that they aced the charm school class and it bestows certain benefits of domination in those conversations in those rooms. Wrong!
I find if you let others speak first, the conversations move quickly and seamlessly and there are no empty spaces. But if you are caught in a meeting or a conference with individuals and you have run out of cool conversation material, I have a couple of ideas.
For those of us who want to appear social in those community meeting spaces you need to create a few habits. You need to visit a variety of newspapers, columns, and magazines so you have material at hand. Besides the Wall Street Journal, NY Post, and 4 other newspapers, I spend time daily on the following: TMZ, Huffington, New Jersey Globe, Politico, Buzz Feed, USA Today and a few others.
Lee Atwater was the top GOP political consultant in the 1980s, headed up the political machinery for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush and he was a genius who had an edgy and some say hard core manner of running campaigns. I remember hearing Lee talk one day about connecting to the common folks and he offered an opinion that political leaders should read material that the average voter would read. He specifically cited the National Enquirer as a source of connectivity to average voters.
I remember that advice like he dispensed it yesterday and have followed it ever since. To successfully create conversation kindling, you should be well versed in all different types of news, entertainment, science, finance and sports. You need to be aware of the top movies that are playing, which Broadway plays are killing, and which new restaurants opened recently. What are the hot stocks and which Dow favorite is facing a restructuring. What is trending in the news and what is the viral streaming show and on and on. Getting the point?
I offer the above as suggestions to the political or corporate class who will inevitably be in that room where conversations will need to be jump started. With social distancing and generational spacing, now more than ever we need to find ways to communicate and find common ground.
Lee didn’t do everything right, but he was right on the connectivity thing.
P.S. Lee Atwater died of brain cancer at age 40 and while he was sick, he wrote personal notes to those he offended during his moments as the top political hit man. That is a whole different column.