Authentic reach-outs

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.