Are You Networking, Networked or Network-Minded?
Networking is a necessity, but being network-minded is powerful.
A glance over an email forwarded to me by a friend - wherein she was the recipient of a big, and I mean big, likely time-consuming, definitely reputation leveraging, and seemingly unreciprocated networking ask - has inspired this week's musing.
Networking is the busy work, the action, the verb, the activity.
The conferences, coffee-dates, or conversations whether IRL or on Zoom we calendar as we prospect for new opportunities, insights or information.
Networked is whether you're tapped into information flows.
Are you a member of a group, association or society – or are you a member who knows what is going on? Do you, as a by-product of your involvement, have access to insights beyond the publicly available information circulated in a newsletter or group website?
Here’s how to start cultivating a “network-minded” reputation:
🗝️ Listen and find out what other people are interested in. This includes listening online - what are they posting, sharing, talking about...
🗝️ Provide critical information, expertise, or connections to get someone closer to the critical information or expertise they are seeking.
🗝️ Share resources and become a source of information about issues and opportunities in your school, workplace, or ex- tended social community.
🗝️ Cultivate a willingness to continue making relationships and to pass on information.
Being network-minded does not mean tagging on a limp "and let me know if I can ever do anything for you in the future" after you have received what you were seeking from a networking exchange - it means being sincerely proactive about it.
And in the story that sparked this week's networking rant?
Well, the person making the request should have said it up front, as in "I have a big ask of you so we should talk about what that means and what I can possibly do for you in return".
Instead of viewing their ability to easily make an intro, take a moment to consider how their connections came about - that is, the years of hard work they invested in their career and professional relationships – then consider how you'd feel if someone waltzed in from left field asking you to hand all that over...
🚀 Order The Social Billionaire: A Networking Roadmap for Women Seeking to Flourish and Achieve More on Amazon or Barnes & Noble or Bookshop.org (or place a customized or bulk order on IngramSpark). For ebooks you can also find The Social Billionaire on Smashwords, Apple Books, Thalia, Kobo, Fable, Vivlio, and Hoopla.
I'm a networking strategist, and author who has spent her career making the case that the right relationships change everything. Behind all my posts and musings are years of research, extensive client work on the power of social capital, and my personal experience - that is, my own hard-won reinvention to the subject. The Social Billionaire: A Networking Roadmap for Women Seeking to Flourish and Achieve More - is my second book on networks — and is the advice I wish I'd had when navigating numerous career twists, turns and transitions.
