Mission For Today: Have Coffee With Someone New

December 20, 2012

Mission for today: have coffee with someone new.

If you have been with your company or your team for a while, you have probably developed your own social circle. These are the people with whom you talk about the weekend or share photos of your children or pets. You probably take your coffee or lunch breaks with them, too. What about the other people you work with? Do you ever talk to them outside of meetings?

Grabbing a cup of coffee is a simple way to connect with someone new. If you have never talked with that person outside of meetings, you will want to start with something as simple as declaring that you are getting a coffee at your nearby coffee machine and asking if he would like to join you. You may get turned down, but at least you asked. Next time, he may take you up on it. Then again, he may accept and you have an opportunity to chat a few minutes. You can stick with topics related to the meeting or even venture into asking about holiday plans. If you have talked with the person before, take the initiative and invite him to coffee at a nearby cafe. In a more relaxed setting away from the office, you will learn more about him and what he thinks is important… or not. As you build these relationships, your meetings may start getting easier because you will know what is important to those around the table.

When you accomplish the mission, please share in the comments the results. Who did you invite for coffee? Was it a quick chat or did you sit down for the whole coffee break? Was it a positive experience?

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About Liza Wood

After a dozen years leading video game development projects in a variety of roles, I decided to pursue a Master of Data Science at the University of British Columbia. Studying data science doesn’t mean I’m moving away from leading people. Growing data science teams need collaborative, pragmatic, Agile leadership to connect data to all areas of the business. I would like to share that point of view, along with my experiences, on this blog.

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