How To Talk To Jerks

This meetup is for people who want the benefits of meeting people and networking without the pain of conventional networking events.

Take: One part workshop, one part support group, and one part mixer. That's the recipe for a WHN meetup.

At every monthly meeting, we all participate in a different guided activity designed to connect us with one another and get some conversations started.

This month, our topic will be "How To Talk To Jerks"

In networking as in life, it's impossible to avoid running into the occasional jerk; whether they are loud and angry, or whether they simply have wildly different views than we do, such encounters can make us want to run away ASAP.

But hold on - there can sometimes be great benefits to hanging in there for a jerk conversation, at least for a little while. And that's what we'll be talking about this month.

• Here's a great short video by undercover CIA operative Amaryllis Fox about the perspective of the 'bad guy'. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqo1IR6_KtI)

• Here's my blog on How To Talk to Jerks (http://www.nadineriopel.com/how-to-talk-to-jerks/)

The activities will never be silly or humiliating, just simple exercises that give us a topic and/or framework to get introduced and start talking.

After the activity is done, we will have a short group debrief on how it went and what came out of it.

Then, everyone will be welcome to stay and keep talking, or call it a day. It's entirely up to each person.