Networking and the Modern Day Misanthrope

There are a billion personal interactions that we make during a lifetime. As kids, we start by meeting people at play school, then on the playground, in the class room, at the movies, in college, during graduation, at work, at meetings, in the nightclubs, at weddings, at funerals…




For the typical misanthrope this must be absolute torture. It's possible to be secluded for a short period of time. People will call you an introvert, but then you won't hear that much because you never meet them. But shunning society altogether is something requiring life altering arrangements in epic proportions.




The modern day misanthrope is not however looking to shut out everyone. He admits - and this is the tough part - that there are some people with whom he needs to interact and some with whom he simply will not. The list of the latter is by no way finite or static. You could, for example, add 'plumbers' into your list (though, having recently fixed a toilet, this may not be the wisest choice) and find the list suddenly exploding because you happen to be staying in the same hotel where the 'Plumbers Convention' has chosen to base itself. More sensibly you could add 'people with hyphenated surnames' to your list and dissolve yourself of the risk of ever meeting individuals odd enough to allow a dash to be part of their names.




I came across the word 'networking' in a rather rude way. It was at a party which, being the modern day misanthrope, I had obviously been dragged to. In this case the perpetrator was an uncle who had taken it upon himself to turn me into the life of every party I set foot in. On this, one of his many unsuccessful nights, my foot was firmly set in the corner of the room. At such times I like to amuse myself by observing different people and trying to decide which animal they most resemble. It was at such a juncture (I had the lady in the far corner pegged as an emu) when a gentleman I could only describe as an East African Water Bison stomped my way. He was a friend of my uncle's and appeared to have been recruited by the former in his efforts to turn me into the future king of the playboy mansion. He initiated conversation with a loud grunt (thereby freezing his animal of choice in my mind) and started off about how at my age he was setting the dance floor on fire. This, of course, conjured up images of fires and crumbing foundations in my head (the man was gargantuan; you could hardly blame my mind for wandering). It was amidst the rubble (in my mind) that he unleashed a simple statement that would go on to torment me endlessly.




"Son, you have to network; Its not what you know… it's who you know"




I can't remember why he said it - though in retrospect I probably had it coming. The words hit me across the face like a wet sock, leaving me stunned.




It is imperative to outline the fundamental (and most agonizing) point of that statement. It was true. That's what really made me uncomfortable. Everywhere I looked after that I saw examples of the bison's proclamation. As if the words had drooled out of his mouth and followed me wherever I went in order to prove he was right. Executives, shopkeepers, delivery boys, people with hyphenated last names… They all seemed to survive merely by pleasing the right people - nothing more.




For a modern day misanthrope this comes as an absolute shocker, a spanner in the works. Here I was, thinking I had things well sorted out; that society could operate background as I did great things with my life. Suddenly, it was looking like I had missed the bus completely. That I actually needed people to get ahead and I'd not even started getting to know anyone.




And thus began my quest for the holy grail of networking for the misanthrope. In a nutshell, I needed to make amends, but not at the expense of meeting too many people I didn't want to meet.




There's only one way I knew how to approach the issue - academically. I began to categorize people into different buckets. People I liked, people I didn't like, people who annoyed me - but I still liked, people who were really helpful - but for some reason I couldn't stand (this was odd - does it ever happen to you?). People, who were useful to know, people who pretended they were useful. People I was related to, people I had no connection to, but somehow felt related to. And so on..




It took me a while to come up with the following theory:




There are 4 kinds of people in this world derived by mixing and matching two sets of characteristics.




The first set - Skunks and Seals - relates to whether you can stand the person in the first place.




Skunks: the school bully, that pompous guy you meet at the gym, the cousin from abroad who flaunts his foreign toys. In general, skunks are people you just don't get along with. Sometimes you try; sometimes it's obvious from the start that it's not going to work. Generally you want to make any excuse to avoid meeting them.




Seals: your best friend, the guy you meet at the grocery store and end up talking to for an hour, your colleague from work with whom you make it a point to have lunch. Seals are the opposite of skunks. They're the ones you actually like hanging out with - for no reason other than that you feel happy in their company.




Both seals and skunks derive their designated roles purely by virtue of who they are by nature - nothing to do with their position in society or in your life. It's important to highlight that this is all relative. I've seen a gathering of skunks and I'm sure they thought of each other as seals. You may even have two seals who view each other as skunks. It is an entirely 'self-referral' snapshot of society.




The second set - Czars and Bums - draws on how useful a person is to you.




Czars: your boss, your rich uncle, your high school professor on whose recommendation you get into the college of your dreams. Put mildly, czars influence - or have the capacity to influence - your life. They are the reason networking is necessary because it's them you need to keep happy in order to get ahead. It takes a lot for a misanthrope to admit to such a truth, but it's necessary.




Bums: Mostly, bums are people who have little or no influence on where your life is headed. They would be entirely uninteresting if not for two factors. Firstly, a bum may not know he is a bum and spend his time trying to be a czar or may have realized he is a bum, but pretends to be a czar in any case. This, if caught early, is rather amusing. If not you could spend your time trying to please him without realizing what an utter waste it is. Secondly, a bum could become a czar by some cruel twist of fate, leaving you to rue the times you ignored him completely.




The distinction between the two allows one to decide who is worth schmoozing with. True, you may get it wrong and find your czar is really a bum and vice versa. But assuming you have enough good sense to distinguish one from the other and assuming fate is not cruel enough to swap the two by circumstance and leave you in the lurch, it's a pretty good roadmap for a misanthrope who wishes to be choosy about who he interacts with.




Putting it all together gives an interesting picture (see exhibit below) and allows us to illustrate the 4 basic people types for networking.

Skunk-bums: worst of the lot. It's a wonderful feeling to not want to go for a party (for lack of enthusiasm) and find that you can blow it off because the guest list comprises largely skunk-bums. The sooner you identify this lot - the lot more time you will have for more useful things.




Seal-bums: most of our really close friends fall in this category. Not to suggest that they are useless, but that most of our really close friends serve no purpose as far as our careers and ambitions are concerned. The more driven individual might seek to turn these bums into czars or else eliminate contact with them altogether in the race to get ahead in life. I personally feel it's great to know a bunch of people with whom you have no hidden agenda.




Skunk-Czars: the scariest of the lot. Your boss might be a skunk czar, as might your rich relative. The problem is - how much czar is needed to outweigh the skunk? This is another key decision one makes in networking. True, if you need to meet someone you despise once a year and being nice to them makes life easier - maybe it's a good idea to suck it up. I've come across a few instances when a czar has been so much of a skunk that it stops being worth it anymore. It's a personal choice - but be sure you have assessed this category properly before rejecting any of its members.




Seal-Czars: friendly bosses and nice rich uncles; easy to get along with and influential. The more you can drag to this category, the more you stand to gain. The Seal Czar is a rare breed because many czars assume a skunk like form once they know you need their help. Still, there are some of them around if you look hard enough.




The diagram above has been drawn to depict each segment as being of equal size. However, a modern day misanthrope probably has lower level of tolerance when it comes with people. Hence his 'seals' space will be much smaller than his 'skunk' space. Furthermore, not everyone has the good fortune of having access to many czars. So a highly misanthropic individual with limited opportunities to meet czars would have this picture:






Obviously, this only further proves the truth in the statement of the water bison (he turned out to be a pretending bum, so I never bothered to find out his name). The misanthrope restricts his chances of success by limiting the seal-czars in his universe. An extrovert or 'people's person' in contrast, would create more seal-czars by virtue of the fact that he would view more people as seals than skunks.

Conclusion




It would be good to point out (in the hope of a wide audience) that in no way does this advocate anti-social behavior. The czars-bums-skunks-seals theory is merely a framework to allow people to better plan their networking. For the people's person such planning may be irrelevant since - and I really admire this trait - they tend to find something interesting in most other human beings and hence have very few skunks in their consideration set. For the modern day misanthrope - who really dislikes socializing except where really necessary - it serves as a useful tool.