How Do People Find Talking To Strangers So Easy?

He has been working at LinkedIn for 3 years now. He walks into office at 9 am, works through the day and leaves for home at 7 pm. He is a very dedicated, hardworking and focussed guy. Only break he takes during  the working hours is 30 minutes lunch with his team mates. He doesn’t indulge in unnecessary chit chat and chai sessions. He is quite friendly to the people who know him, but never the one to start the conversations.

He has been sitting right beside the photocopy machine for all these 3 years.

At LinkedIn there is a strange tradition wherein every person who comes for interview is asked to take a xerox of his resume on his own and then submit it to the hr. Almost all the candidates struggled to operate the machine. He has been sitting right beside the photocopy machine for all these 3 years. While making a copy, almost all candidates will look at Ronit for help. Being a shy guy, he would try to hide himself when he sees someone approaching the photocopy machine. However if someone approaches him, he does help them and leaves after answering their query.

Sometimes candidates try on starting a conversation with Ronit and this makes him very uncomfortable. He even starts shivering and becomes extremely nervous. Public speaking, expressing his ideas or communicating freely with someone is not Ronit’s cup of tea, he finds it extremely hard to do.

His promotion is also being held because his seniors think he is incapable of managing people.

Ronit, aware of his feaf of public speaking, approaches our expert. Our expert comforted him and helped him open up. In various sessions, experts realised that Ronit was once humiliated by his friends for his performance and that has created this fear in him. He has lost his confidence after this. It has created a fear in him that people will laugh at him if he will talk. He has closed himself up to the outside world. The counselor started giving him small tasks like asking names of people who comes for xerox. Once he started interacting with the candidates, his next task was to ask them how they were doing and so on. In few sessions, ronit started opening up and became more confident.

Subsequently he also got his much deserved permissions.

Sometimes small incidences in past affect us in a way we cannot imagine. We fear things which can really be controlled. If your are stressed, it is best to reach out to a counselor who can help you realise the cause and solve the puzzle.