Productive Coffee Chats

Want to meet for coffee? That little phrase can mean so many things: meeting someone for the first time, networking, an informational interview, reconnecting after a while, or maybe just a general catch-up. And now, having a Zoom coffee chat doesn’t necessarily even mean coffee is involved!

What a great tool to have at our disposal, when so much of our job as communicators relies on knowledge-sharing and building meaningful relationships– up, down and across our organizations.

Yet, coffee chats in the professional sense without a clear purpose can often be unproductive.

The goal can be simple, but still, it’s important to have one. Are you in learning or intelligence-gathering mode? Do you want the other person to actively work with you differently? Or maybe you want to be kept in mind for future collaboration or job opportunities?

As Scott White recently advised during Ticket to Biotech’s AMA session, prioritize the top 3 things you want the other person to know.

In our experience, it’s helpful to establish who’s driving the conversation. While a formal agenda is usually atypical in a setting that’s meant to be informal, most of the time, wouldn’t you agree that the invitee looks to the person doing the inviting for guidance?

Especially in our industry and even more so in our profession, people generally want to be helpful and don’t mind talking about themselves when asked, but folks are busy.

So, even if the coffee chat objective is pretty simple, how do you make sure it’s still worthwhile for both parties?