I try to stay in touch with many people in my life, as relationships of all kinds are generally a great thing to have. I also notice when others reach out to me, which is always appreciated.
While there are a lot of people that I know I need to reach out to, I also use some tools to remind me. Over the years I’ve used “Nat” and “Dex”, and later “Nimble”, but now I just have a list in my notes app to go from.
What’s interesting to me is the authenticity level of people who reach out to me. Two in particular stand out:
Regular, authentic calls
There is one person that calls me roughly once a quarter to check in, and it’s always a great chat. He honestly wants to hear what’s going on, shares about himself, and follows up with an email (if need be) with anything we might have discussed.
Clearly just a name on list
There are others that clearly just have “check in with people” on their to-do list, so they hustle through it. A few years ago a colleague reached out separately to both Ali and I with a nice message. We both replied with some questions back to him to keep the conversation going but he never replied back at all. I have no doubt that he was just running through a list and had no real intention to honestly reconnect.
They can lead to more
It’s fantastic to me when one of these reach-outs can lead to more. There’s a guy I reached out to a couple months ago, having not spoken directly to him in about five years (other than a random LinkedIn comment from one of us), so catching back up was great. From there, we played a round of golf together, he joined us later for an evening at Topgolf, and I’ll be on his podcast in the near future.
That’s what “reaching out” is really about. It’s not just checking an item off a list, but really trying to reconnect with people that you’ve met in the past that you like and respect.
It’s something that I’ll continue to do, and I’ll also always be pleased when someone else takes the time to authentically reconnect with me.
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