Mingling, Mixing, and Meeting Audience Members After Your Ideas Presentation

(#26 On How You Communicate Your Ideas Series)

Mingling and mixing is a communication skill that can lead to networking and continuous interactions in merging, and then future meetings that can yield unknown and unprecedented results for all interactants. It calls for poise, grace, and the ability to engage folks from a variety of backgrounds in social as well as professional settings.

FROM GUEST SPEAKER-PRESENTER TO FELLOW HOST AND AUDIENCE MEMBER

This may sound like a difficult transition to make. But it is the most critical and vital to connecting with the audience, after the questions-and-answers session (Refers to #24 in the Series — Fielding and Responding to Questions After Your Ideas Presentations). This is the time to network and make new connections.

Make others feel less pressure to relate to you as the expert.

Make them comfortable around you.

Start conversations on non-serious topics.

Talk about things not related to the topic of the event.

Unless anyone brings up the topic of the day’s event in a conversation, stay away from continuing on the day’s topic.

Even if and when the day’s topic is brought up in the after- event conversational exchanges, steer the conversations away from the topic of the day. Make the exchanges light.

Show considerations to others who may cluster around you during the mingle-meet-greet-merge socializing and networking.

Invite more people to come and join your small groups of conversationalists.

Transition from one group of conversationalists to another.

Avoid lingering around any particular group of ‘fans’ for too long.

Keep the conversations flowing!

GRACEFULNESS AND POISE

Introduce someone you just met to others they never met before.

Offer to refill people’s drinks or beverages, as a sign of humility and inclusiveness.

Create and keep a positive atmosphere around everybody to make them at ease in your presence.

Communicate the presence of a confident, comfortable, and pleasant person to be around.

You will come across as a helpful professional to many onlookers.

MERGING POINTS

Observe keenly the “flow” of guests from one corner or place in the event mingling area to another.

If you can follow the “guests flow” and offer to help others meet new people, do it gracefully.

I call this the “merging point.”

It is where you mingle, meet, match, and merge. Here, you become one of the audiences.

At the merging point, you become a part of the participants, without losing your guard as an expert who just spoke.

It is very risky but a demanding skill to be a friend, and not a close chummy buddy-buddy with the people you had just talked to or taught a certain skill.

I was a university professor for thirty years. In my beginning years, I was instructed by my mentors to be friendly with my students. And later, I was told I was becoming too friendly.

So, it requires mental calculation and emotional maturity, to know when to draw the lines, and how far you can get vulnerable and still maintain your position as an authority in your area of expertise.

BE PURPOSEFUL IN MIXING AND MINGLING RITUALS

Your mingling and mixing must have a purpose.

Determine ahead of the event that you are going to meet, say, ten new people today.

Decide you are going to meet, mix, merge, and build relationships with ten of them.

Avoid seating or hanging out with old friends and acquaintances.

Venture out in an adventure to meet totally new faces.

Out on your own, introduce yourself to new people.

Tell these new persons who you are, and what other bio data you want them to know about you.

Do not be too pushy or aggressive.

Observe their body language and let your interactions and exchanges flow naturally and reciprocally.

It is talking and meeting new people.

That is what networking event is all about.

It is about establishing and finding common grounds with totally new people.

It is building rapport with strangers.

It is an art in conversation.

It is a skill in studying and knowing the vulnerabilities of all human beings.

All humans are in desperate needs of connecting with others.

Be prepared to be rejected or shunned. And do not take it personal.

MAKING CONNECTIONS AND NETWORKING AFTER YOUR IDEA PRESENTATIONS

When mingling, as a speaker and presenter, your comportment must to be different.

Remember you are more than just an ordinary attendant or participant.

You must stand erect and poised.

And when extending your hands in greetings, you must maintain a comfortable one-foot distance.

The key is to avoid being too close to any fan or interactant.

Look for emotional and professional connections with the other person(s).

Avoid personal and physical attractions and connections as much as possible.

Ask open-ended questions.

Explore answers to every open-ended question you posed and their answers.

Learn to follow-up.

Do not ignore some others, to concentrate on the most convenient and most talkative conversationalist.

Do not exclude anyone in your exchanges.

When you make connections with anyone or someone particularly, exchange your business cards.

Insist they share their business card as well; if they had none, ensure you have their contact phone; and call or e-mail or text, a day or two after the event.

Maintain a high-level conversational posture and tone.

Be friendly and not aloof.

Communicate empathy and emotional intimacy with your audience members.

Move from one person or groups of persons to another.

Make sure you make that special connection; and sustain and maintain it.

Listen very intently for topics to converse with during that early introductions when you meet an individual or groups of individuals, who have become your ‘fans’.

Remember the introductions when you met an individual or group for the first time on the floor.

Be pleasant.

CONVERSATIONAL TOPICS

Avoid controversial topics.

Concentrate on common areas of interests, such as traveling experience and current affairs.

Talk about celebrities’ gossips.

Talk about new books read.

Exchange views on latest films watched and interesting characters in movies, books, and so on.

Avoid politics and sexual topics.

Talk about foods.

Banter on music, dances and well -being

Health and scientific developments are pleasant topics.

MERGING

After your speech or idea presentation, the mingling segment allows you to meet others.

Be emotionally and physically available.

Greet every member who comes into your peripheral view.

Do not rush after anyone.

Stand very poised and composed.

Maintain an eagle-sharp eye contact with everyone, with a corresponding nodding and smiling.

Invite them to come closer with your smiles and body posture.

You may need to wave at some groups and gently and elegantly move in to join the group.

Introduce yourself again and let them initiate deeper exchanges with you.

Remember that your name tag would still be on your left upper chest to let everyone know who you are.

Make sure you can pronounce their names correctly and greet everyone by name.

Do the first self-introduction this time on one-on-one level and make it very personable.

Look and express points of convergences and commonalities with any or every member you speak with.

Carry your purse, or phone or drink in your left hand, to free your right for open-hand waving, and handshakes.

EMERGING AND RE-EMERGING

Do not linger too long with any particular person or group.

This is like in a cocktail for you.

The goal here is to meet and mingle and merge with as many people as possible.

Excuse yourself after 3–5 minutes with an individual or group.

Don’t monopolize the interactions or conversations in any meeting.

Merge and re-emerge into new and several conversational groups.

Use your facial and nonverbal cues to invite yourself to a group of three or five in a conversation.

Try not to but-in or force yourself on the group.

Observe from a distance their mannerisms and their tone of conversations.

Gradually move closer to get the vibes of the conversation.

And move in gradually after establishing eye contacts with one or two members in a cluster or group.

Be always willing to merge with others and invite others into your groups of conversationalists.

FOLLOW-UP

After the event, quickly send an e-mail or a phone call to the group or specific individuals you met.

Acknowledge those who were responsible for your attending the event.

Invite them to connect with you on other social media, such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.

Make the connection a two-way street; ensure there is reciprocity.

Make three attempts to connect; if no reciprocal response or interest from the other side, break it.

Then you use your judgment to give them time.

Disassociate or discontinue badgering them.

CALL TO ACTION

1. Share this read if you found it valuable

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4. I am available for speaking events presentations at seminars, workshops, conferences; for individual, profit, non-profit, corporate, and community speaking and event presentations, speech coaching, and speech writing. Reach me at www.solomonwobotetukudo.com

5. Buy my books at amazon.com

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Solomon Williams Obotetukudo
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