Taking the Blah, Blah, Blah Out of Networking (an Introvert’s Guide), with Karen Wickre

INTRODUCTION: My DREAM THINK DO guest this week is Karen Wickre. Karen has been in leadership of a few companies you may have heard of. She was the Editorial Director of Twitter. Before that, she was with Google. She's a 30-year veteran of Silicon Valley and has been an advisor to multiple startups as well. She's a lifelong information seeker and serves on the boards of organizations like The International Center For Journalists, The News Literacy Project, and The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. She's a proud introvert.  And as a result, she felt compelled to write a brand spanking new book called Taking The Work Out of Networking. It's a guide for anyone who wants to trade in the much-loathed and often abused common practices of networking and replace them with the valuable habits that can lead to better relationships, stronger connections, and kick butt networks. Karen has captured some innovative new ways for anyone, introverted or not, to embrace their true nature and create enduring, reliable, and critical connections. Listen To The Podcast: RESOURCE: Book Taking the Work out of Networking (Click here) INTERVIEW: Karen, welcome to DREAM THINK DO. Thank you so much, Mitch. I'm glad to be here. So… I get a sense that this book is one that you wrote that you wish you would have had at the beginning of your career. I think that's right. In fact, I kind of wrote it because I thought, "Why don't I just put down all the stuff I know since people are always asking me for introductions and career advice." I don't even have to be the only one who does this. Other people can do this, too. Yeah, it’s like you wrote the book to save yourself some time, like, "Just read the book. It's all in there." I love it. And it was an interesting exercise. How do you explain this stuff? So I tried to unpack it. You know, some method to the madness. I love it. So you write from introvert's perspective. I am also an introvert who's learned to do extroverted things, but when it comes to reenergizing, taking care of my inner introvert, there's a lot of alone time, lot of quiet time that's needed. Would you say that you have always kind of known you were introverted, understood that about you or is that something that's more of a newer revelation to you? HELPING INTROVERTS STAY ENERGIZED I think it's not super new to me now, but I think as a kid I thought of myself as shy and my friends would say, "Are you kidding me? You're not shy." Because I always had information, I always knew what was going on. In high school kids would say, "What's happening on Friday night?" And I would know because I was friends with all the kids. So I was like the information source. That was an early signal about this kind of thing, but I didn't want to be the center of attention, and I did hang back. I liked to be in the background. So that's always been true. Anyway, it took me a little while to divide off the stereotype of shy from what's an introvert. An introvert, as you just suggested, is someone who recharges and get their energy from alone time and quiet time as opposed the other end of the spectrum, the extrovert, give me another party. Yeah. Exactly. I'm going to get my 10 closest friends together and we're going to re-energize, which, to me, is not energizing. Yeah. Enough already. Right. That's really the young definition from the 20s that a lot has been built on. Now I've read a lot about this, thanks in part to Susan Cain, whose 2012 book Quiet really paved the way. We're all on a spectrum. It's not a sort of you're either this or that. Now I've done enough reading to tell you that you are probably like me, a social introvert, which is a different flavor, but along the spectrum. Exactly right. I love it. I do some speaking, especially on college campuses. Nothing against extroverts, but I actually think introverts tend to be better networkers, tend to be better connectors just for that point that y...