Being a good networker pays off, but it requires skill as well as shamelessness
economist.com
economist.com
Most good networkers I've seen are very much interested in people, whether or not they can be useful to them. They will speak to everyone in the social hierarchy, and remember important details about their lives. While this may not be "necessary" to gain some advantage from networking, I don't think you can do this long-term without just deriving pleasure out of just getting to know other human beings and learning from their experiences.
However, the best networker I know (we call him "el trepador", that would be "the climber") spends a disproportionate amount of time on his superiors.
It's incredible the amount of time he spends networking or at social events, when he was at the company I work for he learned the President's and CEOs favourite sports and activities, organized an in-company tournament of the President's favourite sport, played golf with the CEO, played football (soccer) with his coworkers, organized outings, invited other CxOs to barbecues at his house.. he hardly had a night to himself. He also kept track of everyone he met at any kind of event.
He was hired as a programmer, but he managed to avoid any kind of task that involved working in the backend and always maneuvered to work in client-facing or high profile tasks, his favourite trick was building a fancy (but simple) web interface on top of complicated backends (and getting designer time, which was key), which usually resulted on his getting most of the credit.
He's now a CEO (at another company in the group of companies which he's buddies with the president), and he has no university degree and didn't spend any time studying - at the same time he was doing all that stuff, I was working towards an MBA and spent about as much time after work as he did, his time investment definitely paid off a lot better.
I'd call him a douche, but this is a clear case of don't hate the player, hate the game.
- " Be flagrant in your pursuit of the powerful and the soon-to-be-powerful, and when you have their attention, praise them to the skies"
- " Discover similar interests or experiences." he did that
- "you need to work hard at networking" he did that, he put an incredible amount of effort at networking after hours, managing events, organizing dinners and barbecues, etc...
He was a bit of a douche, mostly by shirking low-visibility projects and getting disproportionate amounts of credit - he didn't shirk "hard" projects per se, but he'd only take them if they were very high visibility, and he'd priorize small but visible over obscure but necessary work.
He was also very good at getting credit without being obvious about getting other people's credit.
However, he did put in the hours, and he is a very good motivator and very charismatic. He was just very good at playing the game.
That kind of skills are pretty good for a CEO, I'll give you that.
But I've seen another CEO at work with the same general style (oodles of charisma, very strong networker, no studies or technical background) and he really messes up technical and financial decisions, he basically has to blindly believe whatever his CFO or CIO say (and the CIO messed up pretty often, the CFO seems pretty solid OTOH).
An actual example: he spent an entire meeting speaking about returns on "bonuses", buying "bonuses", etc.. when he meant "bonds" (he was blindly parroting what the CFO told him, only he messed up).
I implied no such thing. I'm making a generalization. Your statements so far consist of "Yes, but what if he's an irredeemable sociopath? It's better to have a non-sociopath who doesn't understand software than a sociopath who does." I agree with that, but those aren't the only two options on the table and I refuse to believe the worst in somebody I've never met and only know through an anecdote in a hacker news comment.
That example included a detailed description of the ways the person achieved advancement, which fit the characterization I gave.
You are just choosing to ignore that.
Wow, you really don't see it, do you? Huh.
It sounds like he avoided responsibility for anything that might have carried risk
That directly contradicts the description GFisher gave, which was "he didn't shirk "hard" projects per se, but he'd only take them if they were very high visibility". You can't take projects without assuming responsibility and you can only say they carried no risk unless you assume that any and all high visibility tasks were low to no risk. I can speak from experience and say that's very much not true.
It sounds like you've projected onto him your disdain for people that move up ladders instead of make things. And you don't even realize it.
You'll notice I've said absolutely nothing about whether or not he assumed disproportionate amounts of credit. That kind of thing is murky at best. How do you measure credit? Is it something your boss gives you because he likes you or is it something you actively vie for? In some cases it can be one, some the other but in most cases it's a little of both.
You still haven't admitted even a little bias, despite being shown your quite obvious bias in at least one context.
I admit that I am biased against people who assume disproportionate amounts of credit as CEO. I think that is a highly undesirable trait in any kind of manager.
In other words: put too much effort in networking, and hate yourself for being a douche. Put too little effort in networking and hate yourself for missing out on opportunities.
Like most things in life, it's about finding a balance that works for you.
That, at least, seems valuable to me. Turning the complicated into the simple is a valuable skill.
He personally did very little programming or designing himself (I guess that does make him a good manager :) )
A great example of this is this type of leader is Ron Conway - actually, great article from yesterday "The Ronco Principle" by PG.
One thought this article does not contemplate is the impact of people who are not self-aware. There are many people I have met who truly believe they are great networkers, but they lack the leadership trait of authenticity.. be afraid, very afraid.
Carnegie doesn't teach you how to get over that. The only thing I can think of that might is Theater; acting or improv classes. But I'd be very curious to hear how others have overcome social inhibitions and learned to go for it.
Maybe this is a "low-hanging fruit" of conversing, but better than nothing.
One technique that worked surprisingly well for me was that one of the pair would pick the person that the other would have to go up to and try to converse with.
Somehow that created the feeling of a dare that I could get into, even though if I had been considering talking to the person on my own, I would have talked myself out of it.
Actually I think you nailed it. For me it was both giving briefings to executives and leaders, which ended up driving me to have the confidence to try my hand at stand-up comedy. If you want to bathe in fire of getting over talking to people cold there is no better way.
That being said, starting out in less challenging settings is definitely the way to go (ex: if you don't like loud bars, don't practice getting better at approaching at loud bars! Try programming meetups or interest meetups where the ambiance is more natural to you are likely to have things in common with the people there).
The emotional side of the equation is to have a history of success that you can draw on for courage. The rational side is to know and repeat to yourself that it's a numbers game just like dating. At "networking" type of settings, I personally expect to meet one interesting person with whom I'll have a sustained relationship with every 2 hours. There will be many friendly people along the way where we will mutually forget each other after 2 days, and that's just the way it is.
My experience has been exactly the opposite. It is much better to not have a friend with you. Whether at a computer conference, backpacking through Europe, or trying to meet the opposite sex, starting alone has always been better for me.
Typical problems that comes up if you're with a friend:
- You're more likely to sit there talking only to your friend. This is the biggest problem.
- If you're brushed off by whoever you meet, it feels awkward to return to your friend, explain what happened, and try to resume your earlier conversation.
- If the person you meet suggests going for coffee or you get involved in long conversation, what do you do about your friend. Ignore him? Tell him to wait? Ask him to join you even if he's not interested in the person you met or topic you're discussing? You can end up looking rude in so many ways.
- If you're with a friend, you yourself become less approachable by others.
I agree with the rest of what you said, but it's funny that the "friend" part is 100% different for me.
But I completely agree with the problems you listed when being attached to a friend at the hip and have suffered that collateral damage as well myself.
Theater (or any other activities) might work if you are genuinely interested in it, but if it's just an excuse to meet other people maybe you won't enjoy it as much, and you will be less likely to stick with it.
Meetup is a great resource: find meeting groups for hackatons if you are a techie, running groups if you are a jock, language learning, cooking groups...
So for me it is just forcing myself to be social. Repeatedly. Still! It won't happen overnight, but after a while you hopefully will notice changes.
Small steps. Your first event you know no one. Meet one person, and then next time you visit you have someone to at least say hello to, buy a drink for, or sit and talk/eat with.
It never gets easier for the socially awkward, but soon you build a network of people who "know you" and networking becomes a much more comfortable environment. You also find out, that others are just as anxiety ridden as you. You start to recognize "noobs" and see their anxiety... which is another good opportunity to help and network by initiating contact with this people.
Theater, acting and improv are all awesome ways to get exposure to social pressure in a positive environment! I'd also recommend dance classes, particularly partner dances like salsa and tango.
Learning to talk to women helped me. I'm still not perfect but I used to have intense social anxiety in my late teens and early twenties. At age 26, a lot of people would describe me as confident and outgoing (it does take a lot of energy).
Exposure does two great things:
- Teaches you that rejection does not kill you. If ask a girl out or ask someone to invest in your company the right way, even if they say no they'll respect you more. If you ask the wrong way and it goes horribly, life goes on and you'll feel more self-respect for having tried. :)
- Gives you positive reference experiences. It takes time to get them, but they are truly the fruit of laboring at improving an anxiety. I still get nervous before first dates and I've gone on a lot of them. Recalling all the good ones I've had doesn't make the nerves go away, but it makes them wayy less intense. Same deal with ambitious engineering projects. I'm still nervous before them, but I've succeeded in spite of nerves before so I can definitely do it again.
Putting exposure into a wider context, there are a lot of therapeutic approaches to treating anxiety—all the successful ones have substantial exposure components. I went through CBT for anxiety but the cognitive component is mostly there to help you productively process experiences when doing the behavioral component, exposure. Another interesting modality is systematic desensitization [1]. I'm a huge nerd so I got a kick out of making exercises for myself (eg. go tell 5 girls that they look really cute today) that took me through a systematic desensitization process.
A random sidenote, once I got past my own insecurities I was able to pay more attention to whoever I was talking to. You start to notice their insecurities! Everyone's got em! Very attractive girls will be self conscious about their braces. Speaking specifically to professional networking, everyone is trying to impress each other but you don't have to let it affect you. I talked to a cousin of mine this christmas that has had extreme success. He sold a business for more than $40M in his twenties. I just chewed the fat with him and listened and he was trying to impress me, a definite tell for insecurity! My business doesn't make anywhere near that much. I can feed myself lol.
Getting out of your own head and over your insecurities is difficult but totally worth it. Keep at it!
"Be flagrant in your pursuit of the powerful and the soon-to-be-powerful, and when you have their attention, praise them to the skies."
That's one strategy, there's also the "hard to get" strategy. Successful people get "sold to" and flattered all the time and are generally sick of it or at least aware. In my networking, sometimes I will specifically avoid the alpha of the room, and build contacts around them, possibly leading to a more qualified introduction. Found it works better than the direct approach "I'm a huge fan" tactic.
Reading articles like these is like reading the underpants gnome plan in South Park: 1. Network 2. ??? 3. Profit
Can somebody explain what step 2 is? For instance, I have a handful of very successful acquaintances. I always think there must be some way to leverage them, but I have no clue to what end. This is probably a really obvious and stupid question to most people, but completely eludes me.
You get a job offer without sending an application.
You get a contract offer out of the blue.
You hear of some great event, you would have missed otherwise.
You get invited somewhere, you would not have had access to.
You have more people to pitch for funding/investment.
You have more people to show your side project to.
In general, I think it mostly increase the amount of opportunities you receive. Note that most of those opportunities are probably crap/spam. Nevertheless, if you found a profitable game, it helps to play it more often.
Be helpful, and make sure people know what value you can create/provide. And they'll make the referral, often in valuable situations you can't even foresee or imagine.
2. Give (and Trust)
I'm not a fan of networking, but that's a long story I'm in the process of writing up. For any relationship building, however, the key to 'Profit' (whatever that means for you) is to give first. If you don't want to give - the relationship won't work. And if nobody wants to give ... Well, that's why most networking groups don't achieve 3. Profit
Then, either:
2b1. While networking, you find an opportunity to use the wonderful skills or talents that you have. Yay! Win!
or
2b2. People know you. People like you. Even if you have no particular skills, talents, or assets, you will be given responsibilities. If you don't screw them up and keep networking, you will be given more. Yay! Win!
[Edit: This is all theoretical; I only have actual knowledge of the "lonely and shivering in your cube" part. I chose to pass the test, to diminish, and to remain Gladriel. 'Tis better to reign in my own personal hell than smooze in heaven.]
You might be surprised what might pop up.
E.g. almost all my jobs have been referrals from connections or people who I've worked with, or even who have worked for me, that have later hired me another place, but in several cases they didn't realise I might be an option until I made it clear I was looking. Don't assume friends will seek you out for jobs etc. just because it's a fit - they may think you're happy where you are and don't want to be presumptuous, or it may simply not have occurred to them.
2.1 They gain your trust
2.2 "Something" happens where they need a person (or, someone they know needs a person) they can trust and with your skills
Like going from CV to face-to-face, or better, person you actually talked to and knows more or less what they're good at
1.??? 2. Network 3. Profit
Where 1. could be all sorts of things - come up with amazing business idea, write a book, start a new job, send your child to school (annoyingly, if you get on well with other parents at school, you child is more likely to be invited to birthday parties etc...), need some help decorating your house, etc..
Just so you know, you don't actually need one. Friendships are their own reward.
"Reward the self-styled “thought leaders” in each session by adding them to your Twitter “follow” list. "
Really? Part of the reason I barely use linkedin anymore is because the essays/thinkpieces people post on that site are so incredibly self indulgent and empty of content. Everyone there is so transparently trying to emulate the style and content of a Thomas Friedman column, while painting themselves in an amazing light. It's reached the point where if an article has the word 'leadership' in the title, I assume it will be garbage.
I actually despise the artificiality of networking so much I wrote my own tool to optimize it and automate it, and used it at a conference I helped organize: http://elifesciences.org/content/3/e02273
Are not the connections built in this way fragile?
To that end, of course, the "speed run" strategy for building a business involves roping a whole lot of people into various tenuous obligations, delivering enough on your promises that the whole thing doesn't collapse, and then terminating contact with people as they cease to further your life plans [0].
The survival truth is that if you were going to behave socially like most mammals do, you'd remain shy and hesitant before trying to interact with a stranger - you'd keep physical distance, take a gentle posture, run away if startled, and only gradually get closer. And in a group, you wouldn't try to push other members around too casually, lest they catch on and get you exiled.
But what we keep telling ourselves is to encourage trade with everyone from the first instant, which is ripe for aggressive strategies like the ones depicted in the article, and also more opaquely predatory ones like panhandling, cons, blackmail, or protection rackets. It's so ingrained that we can barely see how toxic and abusive an environment it creates.
You can do business the slow way. It takes a lot longer, you miss a lot more opportunities, and it diminishes your probability of being part of the global elite from "slim" to "none", but you'll also rest easier at night, and you're less likely to be taken in by someone who will use your good nature against you.
[0] http://kernelmag.dailydot.com/comment/column/9497/why-i-rank...
Edit: And I should add that sometimes you can find a good, solid reason to step up and socialize - just, you need to plan it in advance with the understanding that you're going to be making win-wins.
I sincerely do not want or expect any favors or benefits from them. If we're in a setting that begets conversation and I know that we don't have tooo much in common, I'm going to go out of my way to make the conversation enjoyable for them, because their enjoyment of the conversation will make the conversation enjoyable for me as well.
The alternative is often either side taking turns about subjects that the other person has no interest in, and those conversations don't do any good for either person.
Don't kid yourself into thinking they wouldn't do the same for you -- instead, think of it as a mutual agreement to provide services to each other when needed.
E.g. to ask you if you want a particular contract (when it needs to be fulfilled regardless). Not to 'come up' with a contract because your 'bro' is out of work.
Examples of what I took to be humour:
"It is a mistake to lecture people on your own pet subjects, as this columnist has discovered."
"Brown-nosing ahead"
A couple of years back I was working with a guy who had grown a consulting shop into 70-80 folks. I was helping with sales into an existing client. The deal was I'd help do the sell and then I'd pick up a few months of work to add to my runway for my startup.
We needed another consultant, so the main office sent us some candidates. The guy I was working with immediately picks the one with the most connections, even though his skills weren't a good match. When I mentioned this, he said "Yeah, but it's not important whether his skills match. We need his network." If you're looking to grow a business, it's all about finding people with good networks and mining their contacts.
This guy continues to do very well in the business, and now he has a huge network, but there's always that slight feel of inauthenticity about him. It's nothing that anybody would point out, and it doesn't prevent him generating business. It's just there.
Contrast this to me. I follow and try to be friends with people because, well, I like them. I like what they're doing and I want to hear more about what's happening in their lives. My network is not very huge, but my goal is to get to know folks and have them get to know me, so it can never be that huge.
I'm not saying my way is right and this other guy's is wrong, but I am much happier doing it my way than if I did things the way this other guy did. The minute I start feeling like I'm conniving? I'm doing something wrong.
I'm reading "How to win friends and influence people" right now. The author would disagree. He would recommend compliments, not flattery. Compliments are sincere, flattery is transparent brown-nosing that makes you lose credibility. I'm paraphrasing the book not giving my opinion: I have no idea what I'm doing.
That said this is very relevant to me because I've recently quit working as a full time employee for 10 years and want to have a go at consulting for companies. I jumped in head first and it has not gone as smoothly as I would like. My biggest issue so far is I don't know where to go to network with the people that I should be talking to. I can go to free networking events with founders of companies, but all of them seem to be at the pre-funding stage and can only pay me in equity. I'm looking for people that can pay in cash. Any advice would be appreciated.
I know I am busy and don't feel like I should be wasting other people's time with trivial pursuits when in reality they are probably thinking the same.
I would take a engineer / scientific approach. Adopt one methodology at some events and use flattery / shamelessness at another. Compare results.
The first book on that subject, Scoremanship, by Frank Gray (1969) was written by a salesman and follows the classic approaches from sales manuals.
Personally, I've used them at holiday parties to engage in civil conversation with other guests, or even young children guests.
The print link, despite the inconvenience of having to close a print dialog, is SOOOOO much better. Why aren't all websites like that? As a bonus, it works on mobile too, since it's only what is needed and wraps at the side of the screen: the text.
Often times I come across a problem inside an organisation and take it upon myself to dig down to the bottom and sort I out - happily introducing myself to HR or accounts or sales just following the trail. I seem to have no social blockers because I am working for the same company and therefore there is already a common aligned interest.
For networking that crosses organisational boundaries it's harder - but I try to remember we all have an interest in a better world.