How Do People Find Talking To Strangers So Easy?

5 minutes
Ronit is a technical lead at LinkedIn, an IIT Mumbai alumni and an extremely brilliant guy. He is considered as a technical genius among his peers.
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.
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 department. Almost all the candidates struggle to operate the machine and will look at Ronit for help. Being a shy guy, Ronit would try to hide himself when he sees someone approaching the photocopy machine. However if someone approaches him for queries, he does help them and leaves.
Sometimes candidates try on starting a conversation with Ronit and this makes him very uncomfortable. He would start shivering and becomes extremely nervous. Public speaking, expressing his ideas or communicating freely with someone is something Ronit finds extremely hard to do.
His promotion is also being held because his seniors think he is incapable of managing people.
Ronit extremely frustrated with his inability to talk, approaches our expert. Expert comforted him and helped him open up. After various sessions, experts realised the cause of his behaviour which shocked Ronit too. Ronit, as a kid, was once laughed by his friends for his stage performance. That incident has created this fear in him. He has lost his confidence and always thinks that people will laugh at him if he talks. He has closed himself to the outside world.
The counselor started giving him small tasks like asking names of people who come for xerox. Once he became comfortable at asking names of the candidates, his next task was to ask them how they were doing. In few sessions, Ronit became comfortable at starting conversations and regained his lost confidence.
Subsequently he also got his much deserved promotion.
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 instead of getting stressed.

Richa singh

Richa is the Co-founder and Conceptualizer of YourDOST – an emotional wellness solution where users can anonymously seek support from psychologists and other trained individuals. Richa holds a bachelor's degree from IIT Guwahati. Before YourDOST, she worked in the areas of product management, and user experience design.

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