3 Steps to Boost Your Network
We all agree that having a good network is essential for a good career. However, knowing the importance of something and actually spending time and effort on it are two different things. Do you feel that you have been neglecting to nurture your professional network? If yes, in this article you will find 3 simple steps and a few ideas that will give your network proper care and a boost it deserves.
Step 1. AUDIT IT
I've adapted the idea of a network audit from Herminia Ibarra's book "Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader".
Start super simple. Browse your agenda, social networks, emails - who in the past few weeks have you talked to about the matters related to your career? Make a list.
What Kind of Network Do You Have?
We can roughly break down our network into three categories:
Our operational network is essential to get things done. Our relationships in this network are mostly within our current organization and also expand across key suppliers and customers. Our operational network largely depends on the short-term needs of our current jobs.
Our personal network is really a matter of our interests and affinities - besides friends and family, and possibly mentors, it can include various people we meet through our "extracurricular" activities. Our personal relationships are where we typically start when we are looking for a new job.
Our strategic network includes relationships that help us develop our new directions. It’s where we look for information and resources, explore ideas. It is future-oriented and goes beyond the short-term needs of our job or personal relationships. It might be less clear who belongs to this network - the key is really its medium- and long-term focus.
3 categories of networks. Source: “Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader”, by Herminia Ibarra
Now look back at the names on your list. How would you qualify each of the relationships - operational, personal and/or strategic? And as a whole? Chances are that operational and personal relationships came out the strongest, and the strategic network appears underutilized… Before we see how we can shift our network towards being more strategic, let's audit the BCD of our network.
What's the BCD of Your Network?
Now look at the list again and ask yourself three questions:
B - Breadth: How diverse is your network?
Is it too internal? What is your outreach across the teams and organizations? Does it include relationships in various age groups, especially your juniors?
C - Connectivity: How connective is your network?
Key idea is that the more people in your network know each other, the more dense it is. If nearly everyone on your network knows each other, it's inbred and it might have significant drawbacks if you attempt a change and need wider perspectives and more ideas.
Visually mapping & Calculating the density of your network.
It's easy to make a quick visual assessment and/or calculation of the density of your network. Make a triangle grid on the right side of your list. Put a checkmark or shade the area of the grid if 2 persons know each other. Person 1 knows person 3? Check. Visually, the darker your triangle is, the more dense is your network. A quick formula for your network density would be C / (N*(N-1)/2), where C is the number of checkmarks and N is the number of contacts on your list.
D - Dynamism: How dynamic is your network?
Has your network evolved with the time or remained static? Are the people on the list the same as they were several years ago - your strong ties? Or are there also weak ties? Many studies point to the importance of the weak ties especially if we are attempting a major career change - our strong ties may not necessarily encourage or support us in the new direction.
Step 2. SHIFT IT
Based on the audit you’ve done, ask yourself a question: how your network should shift to help you with your career goals? Should it be more strategic? More diverse? Less inbred? Have more weak ties? In this step, we will look at a few strategies that will help us shift our network in the direction we need.
The relationships for the shift will most likely come from the two pools: dormant ties and "fresh water".
Here are a few ideas that help getting both types of relationships onboard.
Activate Dormant Ties
Start with dormant ties. Just as selling to an existing customer is way easier than winning a new one, it's much easier to reactivate a dormant tie than look out for a new connection. To quote the MIT Sloan Review article "The Power of Reconnection: How Dormant Ties Can Surprise You",
when people reconnect, they still have feelings of trust and a shared perspective — which are critical for receiving valuable knowledge from someone — and our research shows that these feelings do not fade much, if at all.
Research shows that reconnections are extremely efficient.
Reconnection conversations are shorter but just as helpful as everyday conversations; that is, they offer more “bang for the buck.” In addition, after reconnecting, these relationships demand only minimal maintenance for the same reason they required no maintenance at all during dormancy: These are not people you see every day. So even if these relationships do not slip completely back into dormancy after a reconnection, they only rarely become a high-frequency contact.
And then, quite importantly,
dormant ties are great sources of unexpectedly novel insights. After all, just because people lose touch does not mean that they go into hibernation. Instead, they continue to encounter new and different experiences, observations and information, which makes them particularly valuable resources for information and advice. Reconnecting can tap into a wealth of knowledge that other people have discovered.
Action: Go on LinkedIn and see which of your dormant ties you could reactivate to shift your network in the direction it needs? Add these persons to your list. Do your homework: take time to think about the type of information or advice you would like to get from them and reach out to them to schedule a call in the coming days.
Bring in "freshwater"
Which new people do you need to meet to get the information, advice, and insights you need for the next step in your career?
Do you think of concrete persons you wish to contact but have not yet met? Add them to your list.
Or do you have just a general idea (industry, company, role, etc) of someone to look for advice and insights? Add those descriptions to the list.
Finding the Contacts - Warm Calls and Introductions
When we are just at the beginning of expanding our network in the right direction, the first step is to look for warm calls & introductions: we ask our existing network for the contacts we are looking for.
Later on, it's good at the end of every new conversation to ask for the introductions of 2-3 people the new contacts would recommend we get in touch with.
Finding the Contacts - Cold Calls
The success rate of cold calls is notoriously low (<5%), so we need some good methods to increase it.
Start where it is the least cold
The first idea comes from the book "The 2-Hour Job Search" and gives a hierarchy to seek alternative starter contacts. The higher on the list the source of contacts is, the higher is the potential "average rate of return".
Most recent alumni database. Alumni are usually the most easily accessible source of information and internal referrals.
Undergraduate alumni database (if different). It may be less relevant than the most recent alumni database and the rate of return depends on how large the undergraduate school was. If you cannot immediately access this database, just move on.
LinkedIn. A must. The lower your degree of separation with the contact, the higher the chances that the person might help. Reach out to your second-degree connections through your first-degree connections and ask to make introductions. Group connections come next and it's usually the minimum connection-level worth pursuing on LinkedIn. Based on their details available on LinkedIn you can google and backsolve into their likely email address.
Facebook. The first step is posting a FB status update and asking your friends if anyone knows a contact you are looking for. Use this strategy sparingly and first make sure there are no obvious contacts you're overlooking.
Fan Mail. You Google a set of terms designed to find off-the-beaten-path articles & interviews with the people at companies that interest you but where you do not yet have contacts. After finding those articles you reach to the person interviewed, thank her for the specific insights you gained from the article/interview, and ask for fifteen minutes of that person's time to discuss the topic in more detail and ask for a specific follow-up question.
LinkedIn Backsolving. The hybrid approach between LinkedIn and Fan Mail. You find the contact that is likely to be relevant using the information you find on LinkedIn and then googling to see if she has made any recent interviews featuring insights that you could use as icebreakers and fan mailing her.
Cold Calls. Although this approach has low odds of success, the advantage of it is that it's very fast.
Engaging with the New Contacts - Three Commonalities
This method is about constructing a message that could work best on cold contacts and comes from the book "Captivate". One person described in this book found that his most successful messages he used to engage with cold contacts mentioned at least three commonalities he had with the person:
I would try to find at least three things we shared - usually a mutual connection, a mutual interest, and a mutual organization, like a school, league, or sports team.
The messages were short and straight to the point. A strategy for follow up messages was also straightforward:
I told them I loved their work and wanted to learn from them. I was direct and said, 'My goal is to learn about you and your success'. He ended every interaction with a specific question they could answer.
Step 3. WORK IT
The "work" in networking is not there for nothing. Networking is 1% inspiration and 99% WORK. It's easier to regularly cultivate a diverse network than start anew every time you realize that your network has become stale and irrelevant.
In the previous step, we have figured out the WHO and how to contact them.
This step is about forming new habits that will give our new extended network good regular care. The ideas for this step come from a recent INSEAD webinar with Prof. Noah Askin "Networking in Our New Reality".
Depending on your career goals, make a list of maximum 50-100 medium and weak ties to cultivate over the next 1-2 years.
Sort the list into B's (medium ties to contact 3-4x/year) and C's (weak ties to contact 1-2x/year). After all, 80% of networking is simply being in touch regularly.
Start "pinging": sending short, sweet, informative, and friendly messages to 2-3 people per week. Before pinging, do your homework: why should someone respond to you? What's your story?
Use the principle of reciprocity: to get connected, make connections.
Track your connections and conversations.
Finally, REPEAT. Six months or one year later, repeat the audit and see how your network has shifted and which boost it may need this time.