3 Keys To Intentional Networking
Happy Monday! Also, Happy Birthday to me! As a result of great feelings of gratitude, I am offering these keys as a gift to you. Networking is very important to me. Why? Because it has helped in ways that other aspects of my life have not. For instance, the summer after my first year of law school I worked three jobs. All of them came from connections I made while networking. Without them, many bills would have gone unpaid. I even wrote an article about networking for the law school newsletter because it became something I was known for. Not much has changed. A couple of years ago at a previous job we received superlative awards and I won the award for "Mover & Shaker". I do understand however that not everyone likes to network or sees the value in it. One of my goals is to give those who feel that way a reason to reconsider. An intentional professional doesn't network just for the sake of networking. For us, it's not about handing out countless business cards and being at every luncheon or happy hour. It is about connection, where quality means much more than quantity. If that sounds like your speed, here are the keys.
Key #1: Weigh the value of the groups/events that you attend. This may entail walking away from some and diving deeper into others. The bottom line is that sometimes we stick to certain people or gatherings because they are comfortable and familiar. The problem is this can cause us to be stagnant and miss out on better opportunities elsewhere. The questions I ask myself to weigh the value are those like Does this align with my values or the values of my business/company/mission? Cui bono (to whom is it a benefit)? Is being here causing me to miss out on other opportunities? What is keeping me from moving on? These are all really important questions that need honest answers in order for us to find the groups and events that fulfill us and our purposes.
Key #2: Look deeper. It's really easy to get caught up in the culture of groups and organizations. Sometimes it can be wonderful and other times it can be risky. When you are participating with groups and events, are you going beyond the surface with the other people involved? Do you seek opportunities to make personal connections beyond the board meetings? Are you open to learning more about what shaped them in their lives? Are you open to sharing your experiences with them? You can learn a lot about someone one-on-one without the distractions. Though a great benefit for you can be learning about other people, you can also learn more about yourself and put your values to the test when they don't align with what is going on beyond the surface.
Key #3: Be willing to teach and learn. Perhaps this one goes without saying but here we are. It can be nice to be in a room with really smart people that we can learn from. It can also be nice to share our knowledge with others to help enrich theirs. How often are we willing to do both in the same environment? Are many of our commitments just one-way? Can we discover more opportunities to share even when it's not our expertise? Can we be willing to truly listen to other points of view on areas we know very well? This makes me think about Bruce Lee's suggestion that we be like water. There's a certain level of flexibility that comes with these keys that somewhat fly in the face of how some perceive professionals to show up. But I don't see it that way. It's great to be knowledgeable and assert oneself about what they know but that is not a trait that attracts most people to us.
Being more intentional brings a level of care that helps build trust and exhibits quite a bit of humility (which I recently learned is more important for leadership than previously assumed). Eventually, what I discovered is that I would prefer a shorter list of colleagues that I truly know, trust and respect versus an endless list of loose connections that require recaps of our last meetings to ring a bell. Perhaps, I am just a rebel but I suspect that you and I might be on the same page.
Sincerely,
-M