Energizing and Strengthening Your Personal Network
Energizing and strengthening your personal network
Networking is all about interacting with others with an intention to exchange information and develop professional contacts. Individuals develop networks with others intentionally or unintentionally all the time. The networking strategies adopted by individuals can be classified into 3 major heads:
- Operational: This form of networking is usually carried out within an organisation across all hierarchy levels. It is necessary to establish a connection with all the important stakeholders for a particular task which ensures the smooth functioning of various units and timely delivery of results.
- Personal: People sometimes resort to personal networking to ensure their own development; by doing so they try and inculcate some attributes of others which they perceive to be important factors in one’s success. Also they leverage this form of networking for referrals when looking for jobs or other favours. This kind of networking can be forged with a diverse range of individuals starting from siblings to corporate partners.
- Strategic: Strategic networking is the process of developing a network strong and reliable enough to get repeat or new business through word of mouth. Usually the individual members of a network inherently form an ‘inner circle’ which is in possession of information seldom known to the outside world.
On evaluating the Network Structure as part of the course outline, I realised that I usually network with people whom I have known for long or have been introduced to by my acquaintances. I rarely network with people who I happen to run into in conferences, random office conversations or other such gatherings. Even during my corporate stint, my relationships and network with my peers and other employees was more of a transactional nature. My developmental network range is 5 which includes social arena such as family members, family friends, childhood friends and college/institute friends and community activity. As a part of the Recruitment Committee of the institute I have to regularly interact with various stakeholders of the firm and have built up a rapport with them over the years.
Some of the other prominent observations that emerge from my network analysis are that nearly 33% of my network is redundant which means a third of my acquaintances are merely mutual networking and doesn’t contribute to any net increase in the number of people that I network with. This is starkly evident from the group that I usually hang out with at IIMA. We are a bunch of 9-10 friends who network with each other extensively but it turns out that there are a lot of mutual friends who we count as part of our network circle independently while in reality it is only a common network. Also, the proportion of opposite sex that I interact with is a mere 20% which indicates a possible existence of inherent bias of thought process and the way I generally respond to people. This is corroborated by the fact that I usually seek information from a guy and not a girl in my network, even though she may be aware of it.
Another not-so-surprising observation is that the people in my network, who I consider are really close to me, belong to the social arena of family members and family friends. This can be attributed to the fact that I value feelings more than intuitions. This is a bit unsettling given the fact that in a B-School I should be open to interacting with a lot more people and increase my network horizon. The individuals in my social arena ‘college/institute friends’ are less than close which is indicative of lack of aggressiveness in networking skills with people who I will be rubbing shoulders with a few years down the lane. This poses a serious impediment to my personal and strategic networking front.
The assessment of my network structure also reveals the fact that I am pretty good when it comes to gathering information and getting advice on career development (~ 55%) from the people that I interact with on a regular basis while I lack advice on decision making and personal support (~ 20%). This reinforces the fact that the underlying purpose of my networking with people is centred about extracting some benefits for me.
Another observation that stands out is the fact that the psychological help that I receive from the people in my network is way more than the career help received from the same set of people. This points to the fact that I generally network with people who share the same set of emotions, feelings and thought process as mine. Also, for each of the options available under psychological help and career help , it is observed that my family members and college friends contribute more than the individuals in any other social arena which reinforces my inclination towards connecting more with long time acquaintances rather than people that I have for a short period of time. This inference is corroborated by the following ‘Psychological Help-Career Help’ matrix:[pic 1]