I should be good at it, but sadly I really suck at this skill. It has nothing to do with being able to stand long hours at cocktail receptions (after four years in Germany I believe I have learnt this from the best - the Germans!), being able to hold a full dinner plate and wine glass and eat, drink and talk while standing (thanks to those most convenient plates with the crazy hook/hanger/ring that holds your glass on the rim of the plate), or being able to make small talk with utmost sincerity (if nothing else the almost 30 years I have spent living the diplomatic life have taught me that!)!
Okay okay okay I think I've probably completely lost you now so let me reveal the name of this skill that I don't have - it is called "working the room"! You are highly skilled in this area if you manage to hold a conversation with eighty to a hundred per cent of the people in a gathering of anything above ten people! Just kidding, but I am sure you know what I mean.......
Believe me, working the room successfully is not for the faint hearted .....and faint hearted I am! For this reason I feel my heart sink a little when I enter a party in which everyone is standing and talking to someone or other, and I begin to wonder if anyone's going to talk to me. Funnily though, while at first glance everyone seems to be busy enough to make you feel lonely and out of place, on closer inspection, nine out of ten people in that room seem to me to be invariably looking for a way to end whatever conversation they are engaged in, with kind phrases like "I'm going to let you go", "I just spotted someone I need to meet", "don't let me keep you" or whatever! It's almost palpable, the anxiety to mix and mingle, the need to move on and talk to a person other than the one one is currently talking to, the tendency to quickly mark the people one absolutely must meet before leaving the party, the half listening-half searching expression on the faces of the "working the room" experts! While this knowledge helps me to sometimes catch an "expert's" searching eye and steal someone's conversation partner, from here on I am a non-starter!
More often than not, I don't make any headway at all after this coup! I must be the person who tots up the lowest score in terms of "the number of people met" during the party. For fear of hurting or abandoning whoever it is I am talking with, most of the time I find myself losing the race I call the "Who's going to excuse him/herself and move on first - him or me Race?". Not that I am particularly boring, and I don't think people want to run away from me, but then neither do I have a great need to move on to someone else every few minutes, which makes me a sucker and a loser in this race! While I am steeling myself to try to be the first one to move on, my partner in conversation has usually already beaten me to it in the most natural, easy manner that reflects none of the struggle, guilt or mental preparation I go through even when I desperately want to extricate myself from a conversation!
So what do I do on arrival at a stand up reception? Just pray that I will get lucky and run into someone just like me who is happy to have an extended conversation about something, or who is worse than me at "working the room"! Who knows, this person might be the trigger I need to push me into perfecting this valuable skill! Hahahaha......
Okay okay okay I think I've probably completely lost you now so let me reveal the name of this skill that I don't have - it is called "working the room"! You are highly skilled in this area if you manage to hold a conversation with eighty to a hundred per cent of the people in a gathering of anything above ten people! Just kidding, but I am sure you know what I mean.......
Believe me, working the room successfully is not for the faint hearted .....and faint hearted I am! For this reason I feel my heart sink a little when I enter a party in which everyone is standing and talking to someone or other, and I begin to wonder if anyone's going to talk to me. Funnily though, while at first glance everyone seems to be busy enough to make you feel lonely and out of place, on closer inspection, nine out of ten people in that room seem to me to be invariably looking for a way to end whatever conversation they are engaged in, with kind phrases like "I'm going to let you go", "I just spotted someone I need to meet", "don't let me keep you" or whatever! It's almost palpable, the anxiety to mix and mingle, the need to move on and talk to a person other than the one one is currently talking to, the tendency to quickly mark the people one absolutely must meet before leaving the party, the half listening-half searching expression on the faces of the "working the room" experts! While this knowledge helps me to sometimes catch an "expert's" searching eye and steal someone's conversation partner, from here on I am a non-starter!
More often than not, I don't make any headway at all after this coup! I must be the person who tots up the lowest score in terms of "the number of people met" during the party. For fear of hurting or abandoning whoever it is I am talking with, most of the time I find myself losing the race I call the "Who's going to excuse him/herself and move on first - him or me Race?". Not that I am particularly boring, and I don't think people want to run away from me, but then neither do I have a great need to move on to someone else every few minutes, which makes me a sucker and a loser in this race! While I am steeling myself to try to be the first one to move on, my partner in conversation has usually already beaten me to it in the most natural, easy manner that reflects none of the struggle, guilt or mental preparation I go through even when I desperately want to extricate myself from a conversation!
So what do I do on arrival at a stand up reception? Just pray that I will get lucky and run into someone just like me who is happy to have an extended conversation about something, or who is worse than me at "working the room"! Who knows, this person might be the trigger I need to push me into perfecting this valuable skill! Hahahaha......
