I'm Ysa, I do the strategy at EA Sweden and I have a few EAGx in my record now. I was advising a friend on how to make the most of it, and apparently this advice has been hard to find on the forum, so here's a list of my personal learnings that have been useful for my EA members and good to hear beforehand (EAGxIndia coming up this weekend, might be useful!). This might not resonate with everyone's experience of course, it's A way to do things.
Networking: tone, content and intentions (things to do)
- Speed friending is good to relax after focused-heavy 1-1s, and it doesn't have to be about technical things. It's good to talk about things people can relate to and get personal with anecdotes (convincing friends to become vegans? handling all these potential career choices with so little certain data? etc).
- Come with an agenda. Have some questions prepared in advance, so that you can get the most out of the meeting, while being mindful of the pace (see the don't-do after). It's always embarrassing to have big blanks, especially when you are the one requesting the meeting, because you're not prepared. Everybody wastes their time. Tying to this point:
Don't assume that prestigious people won't talk to you because you're a newbie. Be ambitious in your requests. People LOVE to give back, and I can confidently say that once you have a bit of experience, 50% of your 1-1s are about giving back.
Send requests to all the people that have a job/path that you find interesting or that can answer specific questions for you, no matter their rank. Worst case: they ignore, and you'll survive. Best case: you get a kick-ass 1-1, and potentially a very good ally for later.
And of course, come with an agenda. They don't have much time, so be specific.
- Women tend to be much less braggy about their path/successes and won't put on display their achievements as much as men do (there's literature on that, and I've seen it repeatedly in EA). When you have two people with a similar profile/job, take this info into account when choosing who you talk to, and try to avoid going for the traditional markers of success. You might stumble upon amazing people that did not seem so amazing when just reading their description on Swapcard.
- Make people feel good when they talk to you. Studies show that people do not remember what has been said, but how they felt when they talked to you. You can talk about specific things while being pleasant, I dare say, agreeable. Smiling, laughing, sharing vulnerabilities, talking about this book that made you reconsider an opinion. And pragmatically, people will be much likely more susceptible to help you if they associate you with someone who is fun/agreeable, rather than trying to appear smart/knowledgeable.
- About wanting to appear smart/knowledgeable. Of course, you want to be taken seriously. You might worry that you are in a early-stage and don't have much to bring to them, and the imbalance feels hard. But most experienced people are also here to give back, and they're happy to do so. Which is IMO what makes EA conferences so much better than traditional conferences. Be specific in your questions, and avoid droning on and on about a project of yours; don't get into anecdotes to show off your knowledge, but focus on bits that might be useful to them too. I can say this confidently now: even the most impressive people I met worried about being perceived as unknowledgeable/smart. It's not a battle about who gets to say the most clever thing: it's about finding a common thread/interest/methodology and learning from each other.
- Adapt/mirror people's behaviour. If someone has a very focused way of talking about things, speaking fast, being curt and concise, mirror this. If someone likes to expand on personal anecdotes, shows a slower pacing, comments on the food, do that too. They will feel more comfortable. Be adaptable. The vibe is frankly, in my opinion, more important than the content. If the vibe is good, it means that you'll be able to reach out later for more content.
- When they ask 'how are you' as a conversation starter, be honest about your energy levels and give a real answer. This will help them balancing out the information they provide to you, increase bonding, and lessen expectations on both sides.
- Follow-up on their advice and be grateful. If you ended up doing what they said and it brought good results, send them a Linkedin message/email. If you ended up reading this article and took something from it, thank them too. If you just met someone that this great person could benefit from, connect them. People love to feel useful; it makes them feel good and positively-inclined towards you.
Emphasise on the things they do well. I had this 1-1 with this amazing woman, she would answer my question incredibly on-point, signal immediately when she could not answer, and highlight just the right things to make me feel intelligent/promising. I complimented her for that, because it's exceptionally rare and useful. That doesn't mean being hypocritical of course, because that will be seen immediately and give a bad vibe from you. But we don't compliment people enough, and studies show that a compliment goes a long way to make people feel good.
In sum? Ask relevant questions, be attentive to your interlocutor's style/energy, seek for unspoken cues (are they looking beyond your shoulder for someone else? They're bored!), be vulnerable, and try to be as agreeable as possible.
What you should probably avoid (things that gave me bad impressions of people)
- Being overly detailed about your CV/career/projects and eat up all the time of the 1-1 to show how amazing you are. This is the worst one, and it happened a lot to me. I understand you are enthusiastic, I understand you want validation, but it is not strategic. It wastes people's precious time, and you don't get to learn anything, which is why you are having these meetings in the first place. The good balance is you speaking a third of the time, and them speaking the rest of the time, if you are seeking something specific. If you are the advice-giver, of course you should talk more, but even then, be sure to ask questions to the other person to make them feel seen, and you never know how beneficial it could be anyway!
- Name-dropping. I'm happy you got to exchange a few emails with the head of insert prestigious org, but unless you show me how solid this connection is for me to use it, I don't care. It comes across as arrogant and not particularly useful.
- Suddenly change the topic because you have 154 points to address and want to maximize efficiency. This happened to me a lot, and my best conversations were when I was able to get deep into a specific thing where we both ended up learning about a different aspect. It's OK to have an agenda (you should), but it's not OK to interrupt your interlocutor. Some people need time to think. Let them think.
Making all kinds of certain claims (like I've done in this post, yes :D), especially political. Little comments here and there that can be very off-putting to your interlocutor. If you are in governance/advocacy, you will talk about politics. You might meet people that have vastly different opinions. Yet you might need them on board. Focus on the common points, and be careful about sleazy generalisations. Consider each political comment as an arrow; often, your interlocutor will assume that because you've shot one arrow, you have 75 others from the same political batch, and this will make you appear unnuanced/full of ideology/ruin your credibility.
Hope this was useful! Good luck, take breaks, enjoy the ride!
a few pieces of this advice seem to be about how to manipulate others in subtle ways.
i interpret 'try to be agreeable' to mean 'try to appear to agree more than you would if you were being fully honest' - because, given this is advice i.e. meant to be actionable, it's not just saying that people who (by coincidence) genuinely agree have a natural advantage. it's saying, actually intentionally try to seem agreeable, to cause them to associate you with a positive feeling, to make them 'more susceptible to help you'.
i don't know if others may not mind this, but at least personally, i would not want people to do this with me. if someone is trying to influence my mind in ways i am not aware of, i want to know they are doing this so i can try to account for the effect (or, realistically, ask them not to, or not befriend them if they seemed to practice a wide range of such techniques - i've unfortunately met people who do).
i'd guess that mirroring behavior causes the one being mirrored to subtly intuit that they are more similar than they really are, leading to feeling more comfortable around that person.
i think {the net effects we'd observe on how friendships/allyships form in worlds where all EAs try to subtly manipulate each other} are not net good. i imagine it would lead to friendships/allyships being determined more (relative to before) by who's good at applying these (and other) tactics, and so less by the substantive factors which should matter.
also, i think there is possibility for nuance about where the line is between {being kind and trying to create a positive environment} and manipulation. some forms of trying to influence how someone feels seem okay to me, like if someone is sad, and you want to make them feel less sad, (and they know you'll be doing this and that's why they're talking to you). i guess the relevant line to me is whether it's intended to help the person, like in that case, or whether it's intended to influence how they perceive you to gain some sort of advantage from them. the two pieces of advice i quoted seem to be the latter kind.
(to be clear, this criticism doesn't apply to most of the points, which are probably good advice; i write this because i know criticism can feel bad, and i don't want to cause that.)
if someone told me they were doing it, i would actually ask them not to.
if it seemed like they were someone for whom this was just one thing in a wide arsenal of other such subtle tactics, i'd also probably want to not become friends with them.
That's a fair comment! I had this exact same discussion when I gave a workshop about it when some attendees.
No, I don't mean 'fake agreeableness'. A survey from RP showed that EAs scored lower in agreeableness compared to a sample of random American people (I think), and this makes sense when I see how a big part of the community interacts. People tend to be very data-oriented/sharp, which comes with good traits, but can also come across as unpleasant. There is a lack of social skills in the EA community--pin this to youth, pin this to evolving in a very intellectual environment where agreeableness isn't always put as a priority, but I've noticed that many times.
What I'm saying is put some effort in being agreeable, even if it doesn't come naturally. Not only because it helps tremendously in policymaking, but also because everybody benefits from it--you bond better, you connect better, and you pay attention to your interlocutor's body cues.
Creating a better environment is a win-win process for everybody involved, even if it means you putting more effort into this, which you would not usually do. Not only it makes EA more accessible and warm, which we need, but it also helps you, on a personal level, to interact with people, in and outside of EA.
Having worked on diversity within EA, I can safely say that putting intellect beyond being mindful and warm is unappealing and counterproductive. Which I why I titled my post 'soft-skills'. I think they're widely underrated, and I've heard many people say 'I don't need to be kind/warm when I'm working, what matters is the content'. The content only comes if it's packed under a pleasant cover, otherwise people dread doing business with you.