The networking question that should be banned...

I am on a one woman mission to put an end to the networking question that should be banned: "so what is it you do?" People who are new to networking often wonder what type of question they can ask someone that they've just met - a question that doesn't elicit an answer that tells us very little about the person in front of us.

Here are some of the ones I use. I hope you find them useful: 

• What do you fill your time with?
• What brings you here?
• Why did you come today?
• What do you do for fun?
• What do you hope to get out of this?
• Did you come with anyone?
• How did you find out about this?
• Where would you be if you weren't here?
• What do you enjoy doing?
• What did you do/are you doing at the weekend?
• What would you like me to ask you about yourself?
• What question would you most dread me asking?

I am fortunate to have a slightly strange name, so often the first question I get asked is where my name is from. You will be amazed with how many different ways I can answer that one!

I am sure you have a few questions you would like to have the answer to. The thing about networking is that it works best when you are sincerely curious. In my experience, if you ask questions in a respectful and polite way, you can ask things that most people would say you shouldn't.

Find out more about the people you meet and you will find you have more interesting conversations and find out a lot more about the world. All I ask is that you don't make the first question "so what is it you do?"

Find out more about our guest blogger Ghilaine Chan

Ghilaine is passionate about allowing people to do their best work and delight others

Ghilaine helps people to operate fast growing businesses in a productive and streamlined way, keeping an eye on time and money, whilst increasing motivation and improving customer relationships in a fast paced, changing environment. She brings order to chaos and creates scalable processes around the business, empowering them to delight their customers.

She works with tech based or enabled companies who are looking to disrupt their industries, but know that people are at the centre of their success and helping them manage their teams to: 

• Do their best work and delighting others
• Create some boundaries, but not cages
• Know they are acting for a purpose
• Determine which part they play, that what they receive enables them and what they produce is useful
• Have autonomy over how and when they produce

She has over 15 years' experience in scaling international business functions for technology companies, within their support and consultancy organisations.

Ghilaine is a graduate of London College of Fashion (now part of University of the Arts: London) with a degree in Product Development. She is a Mentor with Microsoft Ventures,UpRising and Outbox Incubator as well as an Approved Business Coach with Growth Accelerator, now part of Business Growth Services. 

Want to know more? Connect with Ghilaine on LinkedIn, follow her on Twitter and visit her website, Ghilaine & Co.