Not quite a real person

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I am looking at a series of videos on Lynda.com about pitching creative ideas to executives.

They talk convincingly about the need to get to know both the leaders you seek to persuade and the engineers and managers whose support you will need to realize your idea and the need to de-emphasize that it was your idea and promote a sense of it being "our idea" --shared with the key stakeholders who can get it greenlighted/approved/budgeted, etc.

For the team you must work closely with, you should try to take them out to lunch... so you can get to know their interests and understand the passions that motivate them...

I began to feel terrible at this point. I like to eat lunch alone, or with people I am very comfortable with. I don't really understand other people's drives, even when I know them and I don't think they are the same as my interests. I don't feel like I am enough like other people to make the kind of connection these experienced, successful people are describing as essential to success.

Somehow, this excellent training became very depressing to me and left me feeling alienated and not quite a real person.

I guess I have to learn to do these things to the best of my ability, and I can develop some kind of process for taking that on. I am in the last third of my career and have done a lot, but I don't know if I can ever achieve anything at a higher level because of this relationship stuff.

I am not sure why I wanted to post this now.

Wow, talk about the right place atthe right time, your post helped me a lot.
I was just talking to my therapist about my job.
I am a manger of 4 other accountants, although I only have two employees at the moment.
I had two employees quit within two weeks of each other. One was not really an accountant, more of a MBA type, but he took my accounting position because we were going thru a reduction in force. Then he founf a new job and left. The other person was approached by a friend of the family and took a job at a smaller company.
But I digress, my boss is concerned about my management style and said in my annual review that I need to rethink the way I structure my employees jobs and the way I challenge them to promote employee retention. I have probably had 15 different employees over the last 9 years. My boss is alsmost never critical of my management style because I have always acknowledged that I am more of an accountant than a manager of people. I have come to her before for help and she knows I have aspergers and I struggle to understand other people.
It is stupid I know, but I felt like it was a big swing in her approach to my struggles with management. I know she is just trying to help me, but it still feels like she is saying I am just not good enough.

I dont know what the answer is for you and if you find it, please share with the rest of us. But I think part of it is my lifelong struggle. I dont know how to put things on an emotional/social scale of goodness to badness, so I tend to put it all on the bad side I hope I am wrong and it ends up on the good.
That probably does not help you, but now hearing your story I came back to earth for a few minutes at least(even if it is the wrong planet)
Hope you have a good day and hope you find the answer, even if it is just to keep quiet and act like an NT.
Thanks again

I believe your post, especially, is helpful to Aspies who do not, intrinsically (though they do intellectually) discern how to relate in a business environment.

How is everything going?

I would say that if you feel like less of a real person, then it is most likely you are more real of a person than those around you.
You were born a real person.
Your only deficit is failing to reach as far into the imaginary world of identity as those around you.

Thanks for the responses.

I had a good day yesterday because I got my timesheets in on schedule, a frequent struggle for me!

The social thing is an inescapable problem. I realize that it will always be there, even though I have sought situations where "the work speaks for itself." Somewhere the social side is always really important.

I think the trick is to recognize my strengths an weaknesses and play the game in the required way in that knowledge. I will make myself have lunch with people periodically. But I have to plan it so that it doesn't interfere with other work processes because it takes so much effort that I really am not good for anything but that lunch in any given day. At least, I can't do anything that requires real creative imagination or sustained energetic concentration after a business lunch. And I need to make sure I get plenty of sleep that night.

I have reached that point in my career where I think I am a bit of loser for merely doing my job well for several decades. It is expected of me that I should be in some managerial or leadership position, but I am missing some key attributes of people who do that well. What I need to do is define myself as an expert consultant/specialist in certain areas. I think my bosses are helping me to do this--or setting up the right conditions to fire me (it's really hard to tell sometimes!)

Anyway, that the situation. I wasn't sure about that post yesterday and almost deleted it, so it was good to see the responses.

Thanks for the kind words, olympiadis.

LOL....I've been on my job 34 years as of next month. I'm not even a supervisor.