Siva Kumar shares his thoughts on reaching out to former co-workers.
“Keep in touch” is a phrase I’ve heard quite often whenever I say “Goodbye” to people when I leave a place of work or a town where I’ve lived. It seems like a simple term and, for someone like me, is a phrase I take to heart and follow through.
So, a few weeks after leaving a company, I reach out to my former co-workers. Some are surprised and others are touched that I did reach out to them and those are the friendships that have developed over the years. When I was much younger, I would be slightly hurt by people who maybe weren’t as serious as I thought that they were when they uttered the phrase, “keep in touch.”
Over the years, I’ve accepted this as I realize people say things when they don’t know what else to say. I, for example, always say, “best of luck in your next endeavor,” when I don’t intend to keep in touch with someone. What I now realize that in any encounter, each person views and experiences that encounter differently.
Maybe it was your first job in a new city, so it may hold a stronger memory for you. Or you had good relationships with your co-workers. The other people in such encounters may not have the same association with these experiences and that’s what makes “keeping in touch” difficult.