Those of us who have grown up with the sciences, either through self-selection bias or through the rigors of training, have learned to be comfortable with the concrete. Just the facts, ma'am.
So if I said, your value and your contributions are based on i) what you know, ii) you credentials, iii) your track record - in general you would be comfortable. Through a dint of hard work, smarts, some luck you have made your way into the right schools, got the right certifications and made your way up the ladder if a corporation, or established and growth your business if an entreprenuer.
Let's say in general that you are reasonably well situated professionally - give or take. The enormous strain to the financial system this past year with its attendant dislocations forced not just me, but many, many of us to ponder some fundamental questions that included, why did we keep our job while other equally talented people lost theirs, how much faith do we have in markets when we are feeling its maw on the downturn, what is our true worth, what are our real priorities, etc.
Back to my original point, even today, inspite of dislocations, what we know, our credentials and our track record will position us well. And yet we need to be ready for dislocations in the workforce. When the dislocation happens five years from now - good luck! This is true of corporate life and entreprenuers.
We have a strong foundation. Yet the threats in the future loom - to our personal careers, to our personal self-worth and to our livelihoods.
So what do we do?
I think a key to combating this threat in addition to fortifying our foundation with continuous education, is networking.
It is possible that when I use the networking, that half of you who are reading this will go - yucky yuck. Networking feels very 'salesy', indeed snake-oil salesy, selling ourselves short, kissing up and not concrete.
Yet I believe, these notions are wrong. And indeed networking is both the way not only to power to the next rung, but also protect ourselves from threats of age as well as threats of the young whipper snappers at our heels.
Four key points on this theme:
1. Accumulation of network nodes:
Let us say you have a rule. Every assignment you ever had - be it a project, a trip, a transfer, you decided you would make 3 friends. Not colleagues. Not good business partners. But friends. What a friend means, is that you are able to get along, meet, talk about stuff other than work. It could be about music, about golf, about wine & cheese, about children - any shared interest - other than work.
If you had 2-3 such opportunities every year you could potentially collect 6-9 friends. Over a 10 year period that would be 60 to 90 friends. Not someone you would call to talk shop. But someone you would call, who would take your call with pleasure because you are not calling about business, but about pleasure.
If you are an extrovert say 100 friends over 10 years. If you are an introvert say 40 friends over 10 years. Remember, that over these 10 years these friends have 'grown professionally' along with you. If you are a mid-level guy, they are a mid-level guy. if you are trying to break through to the next rung, they are too.
Now here is the power of this number - if you contact one or two friends a week to have a meaningful pleasurable friendly conversation, you need to call them only once a year (50 weeks in a year) ! Once a year. If you keep up your habit of calling your friends once a year, who are your professional peers, who are growing up with you, with whom you have a shared experience - do you think when the time comes, they can be of help?
2. Ask only once, only if you have to:
If you ask for help, you have used up your points. The next time you call, your friend is going to say, well we have now moved to a business relationship. So when you make the ask,if you need to make the ask, make sure that it is personalized, relevant, unique and sincere. (With this in mind, we need to ask ourselves if a blast email works. Or in light of this above thought, how much damage it does to our network!)
3. Add value:
On the other hand, never avoid a call for help. Any call from the friends we have made, and their looking for help deserves attention. It is not because we can necessarily fulfill the ask. i.e. if a person is looking for a job, we may not be able to get them the job.
But we can help in some way or the other. We could help them with their resume. We could help them with interview prep. We could send them industry articles. We could put them in touch with a friend of a friend. We could be a sounding board.
The very act of listening to a person who needs help is helping. The worst fear of someone who is dislocated, I believe is one of rejection. So if the friend calls, take it. We are all so professionally competent that we will help ourselves. But that act of listening gives an immediate boost of confidence.
However rule#2 holds on the flip side as well. No matter how generous we are with our time, network, expertise - if someone repeatedly calls us for help, guess what happens? We will shut down that node (human nature).
4. Mentor and mentee:
I am slowly but surely realizing that, with exceptions of course, that the majority of successes that I am seeing is because someone has used a network node, mentor, a friend or a sponsor.
- If you are an entreprenuer and looking for funding, who is going to give you the money? Who is going to trust your idea and take a risk on you? Someone who knows you.
- If you are looking for a big step up promotion and somebody has to make a bet on you, who is going to trust you with that? Someone who knows you.
- If you have built a relationship with one or two individuals who know you. But suddenly they get laid off or fall sick or retire. Now what? Who knows you?
Thus it seems to me, building a mentor relationship inside and outside your firm, inside and outside your industry, and getting known is very very important.
Mentoring and being a mentee takes time. For example I am a mentor here to two professionals (in addition to my informal mentees that I have collected over the years). I spend 1 hr each month with them during working hours. In turn I spend 1/2 hr each month with my mentors (2-3 of them). Plus 15-20 mins with two-three friends each week.
5. Friends and True Friends
True friends know you well and dont expect anything from you. Those are true friends. If we are lucky each one of us can count finger on one hand the number of true friends we have. But we can have many good friends. And then outside that circle many more friends. And outside that circle many more acquaintances. And outside that circle many more potential acquaintances.
The question is are we investing the time and energy to expand the 2nd, 3rd and outer circles.
Conclusion
The concern might be, apart from not liking networking or not being comfortable doing it, that it feels like one is cheapening oneself to do so. However that is a mythical notion. If we take the approach that we are social animals, we can add value in each interaction, we can tap the power of the network.
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