The event took place in 2018, in Helsinki, and was hosted by a company called Nordic Business Forum, where they'd gathered together a whopping amount of CEOs, top executives, and entrepreneurs from over 40 countries. The organization that invented this interesting coffee cup method is primarily focused on assembling a bunch of events, plus, they offer a variety of learning experiences in a form of online courses and large conferences.
On their website they reveal that at their conferences, "the world’s best business experts help leaders take their leadership skills and business to a new level. Through our community of international leaders, people can find new connections and widen their networks. Finally, we wrap the learning and networking into an extraordinary experience in order to inspire and empower business leaders to change the world."
Despite many Twitter users joking about being unimpressed with the whole forced socialization idea, the strategy could be extremely useful, especially now that organizations are slowly bringing their staff back together.
Many employees have lost their formerly outstanding interaction skills due to the pandemic and that endless isolation. Folks have been working from home for a couple of years and it's definitely hard to just ignore the habit that you've developed for the last couple of years. So, it's for sure an interesting method that could encourage people and get rid of the unnecessary nervousness during social events.
However, many people seem to disapprove of networking events in general. For instance, a lot of people think that it's a waste of time because establishing true and beneficial connections is not something that happens relatively quickly, as you can't just give someone your business card and ask for a job on the spot. It's a time-consuming process and most frequently, even if you'd be able to develop a meaningful connection with someone, you don't have any power over the company itself, so you never know when or even if the network can actually help you to progress career-wise.
And most importantly, people struggle with their talking tactics, so it'll also take some time to perfect those in order to start attracting potential connections. Though, if you believe that networking is something that works for you, it wouldn't hurt to have an additional plan on the side that will also impact on your career. For example, develop random skills that will draw your candidate in during interview processes and focus on creating a terrific portfolio.
Nevertheless, talking to random people, even if they could greatly affect your professional growth is not something that could be done easily. Most of us are polished introverts that don't want to talk to anyone and are happy with standing in the corner of the conference room with our work bestie, just waiting for this emotionally excruciating time to be over.
However, if all the formalities and professionalism could go away for just a moment, the examples that this hilarious thread has offered us would probably cure the introversion of the whole entire planet. Work culture would become more exciting and, who knows, maybe the efficiency and the performance of the companies would skyrocket to unimaginable success. I mean, who wouldn't want to talk about dogs during some networking event?
