Networking Fundamentals
By Colin Wright
To avoid any confusion, let’s talk about what networking is, and what networking is not.
For the purposes of this book, ‘networking’ is the establishment and nourishment of healthy, valuable relationships. It’s about meeting the right people, connecting with them, and perpetuating that connection.
Networking, contrary to popular belief, is more than collecting business cards as if they’re baseball cards. It’s not knowing of everyone without really knowing them. And it’s not having 5000+ connections on LinkedIn. Networking, for the purposes of this book, eschews these old, empty, metric-based goals in favor of a connection that is legitimate, fulfilling, and truly valuable for everyone involved.
That definition will mean something different for each and every person, of course, but it’s a nice, loose description for us to start with. The idea is not to feel like you know everyone, but rather to know people who add value to your life, and to whose lives you can add something, as well. That’s what we’re aiming for here.
There are plenty of tricks you’ve been told are the key to success, and I’m going to ask you to set those aside for the time being. Some may be useful to you and your goals; some will not. It could be that shaking hands with just the right amount of pressure and with precisely the right amount of eye contact actually does make the difference between being memorable and forgettable; it might also be that even thinking about something so specific is wasted energy.
Like most other things in life, when it comes to networking it’s best to start at the beginning. The crux of why you want to network in the first place, and what you hope to achieve by doing so.
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Information
Publication Date: April 19, 2010
Genre: Nonfiction
Edition: 2nd
ISBN: 978-1-938793-68-4
eISBN: 978-1-938793-67-7
Pages: 90