Seth - How To Network: The Party

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Penguin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.

Copyright Suhel Seth 2011

The moral right of the author has been asserted

This digital edition published in 2017.

e-ISBN: 978-9-386-81507-1

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

RULE 1

The Conversation Rule

(dont try to impress people)

WHAT THIS RULE
WILL TEACH YOU

How to talk in a way that
makes maximum impact

What to never bring up in
public situations

The importance of being a
good listener

Theres a work dinner to which youve been invited and youve been seated next to the sales director of the company. This is your big chance to impress him. How do you do it? I get asked variations of this question all the time. You know what my answer is? I dont believe in love at first sight. People never need to be impressed. If you are smart and worthy, it will happen eventually. Let me assure you that the harder you try and impress people, the more they will be unimpressed.

However there is a corollary: you may never impress a person in the short term but you can wow them in the long term by being consistently intelligent, thoughtful, and by holding on to your opinions. My dear friend Mala Singh, the publisher of Seminar, once said to me that I was the only person in the country who had any balls. She was reacting to something that I had said that evening on television and the reason I raise this is that I know Mala loves me because I am forthright. More recently, on this whole Baba Ramdev fast issue, I stood behind the government and was pilloried on television and twitter but I loved what Mani Shankar Aiyar said to me post one of those debates: he said, I now know you speak your mind and you are brutally honest.

Mani and I have crossed swords all our lives: for him to say this while rushing into the studio gladdened my heart. My dear friend Pavan Varma, author and diplomat, once said in an interview to Nikhil Khanna, who was doing an article on me for Mans World, that one of my qualities was my ability to write. Now, that was a comment I loved, particularly because it came from a man of Pavans intellect and craftsmanship. You have to earn peoples trust and admiration. Thats why were friends. So keep in mind that theres a difference between impressing in the short term and creating a lasting impression. Try and work on the latter. That is what will help you go far. The former is very short-lived and people move on.

Also, no matter what anyone says, theres never a sure-fire way to impress someone. Its ultimately what the other person feels about you and you cant control that. Russi Mody was the first influential and older friend I made. Ive talked about him earlier. I met him at my friend Gita Kumars eighteenth birthday. We were both interested in opera and food. He was a literature and humanities student like me. As he famously said to many, he was an MBW, a master at the business of walking around.

Those were not the days of Google where you could immediately research one another by logging on to the Internet. I didnt really know who he was and we became friends unselfconsciously, drawn to each other by our common interests. When people come to see me, they often remark that theyve Googled me, thinking I will be impressed or perhaps flattered. I am neither. Google hampers social interaction because we know so much more about other people without interacting with them and consequently, we then dont approach them as equals. Whats worse, we meet them with preconceived notions, which is again silly.

My friendships with Khushwant Singh and R.K. Laxman were equally natural. I met Khushwant in 1981, when I was working on a book on Kolkata. I sought an appointment from him and then went across to his home at Sujan Singh Park to meet him. We got talking and one thing led to another. Not only did he agree to work with me on the book, he also recommended me to R.K. Laxman, the cartoonist, whom I then went and met in Mumbai.

Laxman and I became friends and have remained thus ever since. Weve taken holidays together; weve drunk Old Monk rum together and chatted about the world with one another. People often ask me why a man of either Khushwants scholarship or Laxmans acumen would want to spend time with someone like me. I dont know. All I can say is, when I first met them, I did so as an equal. I did not approach them as if I was in awe of them and over the years, I have treated them with affection and respect. People want to be treated with dignity and affection, especially those who are powerful and accomplished. A lot of the time, people treat celebrities with respect but the affection is missing and that shows. When R.K. Laxman was given the CNN-IBN Lifetime Achievement Award, I went up to his suite and brought him down to the venue. I could have easily not taken the trouble of wheeling him around. After the event, I went up to his suite and we had dinner together. This is affection because this is what they least expect and most deserve.

Have I just made things harder for you? Well then, let me help you out a bit. If you are sitting next to the boss and want to impress him, learn to cultivate two things: having an opinion (weve covered this already) and being witty. Of all the talents in the world, a sense of humour is the most important. I was once chairing a session about art in the India Today Summit with Sonny Mehta, the legendary publisher of Knopf, and Aishwarya Rai. The hall was obviously packed and Sonny was a bit uncomfortable because he knew the power of Bollywood. So I began by saying, Ladies and gentlemen, I am delighted with Delhis intellectual capacitythat each one of you has come to hear Aishwarya and see Sonny. The house collapsed in laughter and we had a session laced with wit and merriment. It also made both Sonny and Aishwarya feel instantly at ease. People want to be amused and they dont enjoy malice or silence. Both are persona destroyers. But wit is a talent and like all gifts, not available to all of us, in which case you are best going back to the Impact Rule.