Can Introverts Delegate Social Connecting?
Many introverts dislike meet-and-greets, especially introducing themselves to strangers. Can social connections be delegated to more gregarious friends, colleagues or relatives?
Careless People, Sarah Wynn-Williams’s tell-all memoir about the social networking colossus Facebook, opens with a hilarious scene during the 2015 Summit of the Americas in Panama. The author, a former New Zealand diplomat then in charge of international policy for Facebook, does her best to engineer get-to-know-you conversations between Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and various heads of state. But first, no matter how cleverly she switches name cards to position her boss next to some country’s president or prime minister, the name cards quickly get switched back.
Wynn-Williams then tries for, in embassy jargon, pull-asides – face-to-face encounters where she can gesture Zuckerberg over for a chat with one of the targeted figures. These do not go well, either. She approaches Stephen Harper, the prime minister of Canada, introduces herself and asks if he would like to meet Mark Zuckerberg. “No,” replies Harper flatly. Unfortunately, another Facebook muckamuck has brought Zuckerberg over just in time to get smacked by that bald refusal.
For Zuckerberg, the whole situation is excruciating. An introvert to the core, he doesn’t know how to approach a VIP himself and start a friendly conversation. And the person to whom he has outsourced this task, who normally has it well in hand, unaccountably keeps failing. Delegation brought about the fiasco.
“For the rest of the cocktail hour, the political leaders avoid us. No one approaches Mark. He’s not used to this, to being ignored. Usually he’s hounded by people who think he’s the most interesting person in the room. Now he stands awkwardly in the middle of this fancy party, a fish out of water.”
This scene got me thinking about what can and can’t be delegated by introverts who lack social savoir faire or who can’t initiate or manage important interactions because their heads are up in the clouds.
Most of us know couples where the more extroverted partner manages social activities for both of them, which may involve arranging get-togethers, keeping track of birthdays or anniversaries and smoothing interactions with small talk. During actual interactions, the introvert speaks, listens and cares about the connection. He or she engages despite being absent in the setup.
The delegation may work as long as the partnership remains intact. Such an arrangement may go from convenient to problematical, however, when the relationship ends for some reason and the less involved partner sits out in the cold. Afterwards, the more introverted partner can suffer for not having developed the habit of initiating.
Some well-to-do or well-positioned individuals set up a comparable system where a personal assistant makes connections for someone who then relates well during the interactions. However, the assistant cannot make the actual interactions flow well if the boss holds back out of indifference or awkwardness. Likewise, an intermediary usually can’t afterwards straighten out a situation that went poorly. These represent some limits of delegation.
As for romance, stories abound of intermediaries who are tasked to set up a match but whose very social skills create a connection between the target and themselves instead of with the behind-the-scenes hopeful. Most charmingly, the dynamic appears in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem, The Courtship of Miles Standish, where Myles Standish enlists his friend John Alden to court the lovely Priscilla for him, only to have Priscilla gently reply, “Why don’t you speak for yourself, John?”
Delegation may seem like a convenient or efficient solution for an introvert who would rather think about business, science or their own creative projects. But relationships involving trust, bonding, shared interests or intimacy can’t really be delegated. So stretch out your hand and speak for yourself, ye introvert!
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