Brilliant Influence

CHAPTER 9

How to

network to

help people

help you

B

y now, you should be feeling confident that you can influ-

ence the people around you. Building up your influence

further means making opportunities to give, and in Chapter

8 you saw a five-step process for creating and strengthening your

“reciprocation economy”. This chapter is about having more

people whom you can influence. It will focus on steps 1 (how

you can build your network) and 5 (how you can maintain and

extend your network). In doing so, we will introduce five key

attributes you need to cultivate in yourself – patience, courage,

curiosity, enthusiasm and commitment.

How to build a network

The essential personal attribute for building a network is

patience. We need to build our networks one person at a time.

Any attempt to do otherwise will

leave you with weak connections that

will be of no use to you. You will

have no influence over people with

whom you do not have a personal

connection so, unless you think of

networking as a form of stamp-collecting where numbers have a

value, this approach will waste your time.

Be wary of people who claim many hundreds of contacts.

Unless networking is fundamentally their business and they are

the essential personal

attribute for building a

network is patience

170 brilliant influence

making real time for those people, they will be merely names

on a list.

Where to build a network

You can build your network anywhere: everyone is interesting

and everyone may one day be a useful contact. There are,

however, some excellent places to start.

Here are four places where you can build your network.

At work

The best way to extend your network is to volunteer for discre-

tionary activities that will give you a chance to meet and work

with new people. If that is not an option, then make good use of

times when you can meet people you don’t normally speak with

– at the starts and ends of breaks, at starts and ends of the day,

and when you get refreshments.

At play

Social groups and sports clubs are great opportunities to build a

network of people with different backgrounds and jobs to yours.

If you are in a sports club that competes against other clubs, look

brilliant

tip

Everyone is interesting, so make a point of getting to know younger

people, more junior people and people at the starts of their careers.

Just because they don’t have seniority or experience, it is unwise

to think of them as being uninteresting or of little value to you.

You have no way of knowing how their future and their career may

progress. If you take an active interest in people at the start of their

career, or at a low point, then as they rise, so does the value of

their friendship. Remember that networking is like investing.

How to network to help people help you 171

for the chance to meet some of your competitors – this will open

your net even wider. Voluntary activities like fundraising, caring

or environmental groups usually attract a particularly diverse

range of participants. Some of them will seem to have little in

common with you, so they may well add something new to your

network. That quiet old gent who says little could once have

worked with just the people you would love to speak with. If you

don’t start a conversation with him, you’ll never know that; nor

that he meets them all once a month.

On the margins

There are a range of activities that feel a bit like work and a bit

like play. Whether it is training, trade association meetings, exhi-

bitions, conferences or meetings of professional bodies, these

activities are often designed to facilitate networking. Do not

waste these opportunities.

On the web

In Chapter 8 there is a set of examples of websites that can help

you with your networking. Online networking takes time and

care. Approach this as any other networking opportunity: with

patience. Choose which services to use, learn about them and

start slowly, building up your skill and expertise. Remember that

your objective should not be to build a big number of contacts

but to enhance existing networks and use them to create some

more high-quality links.

How to build a network

Meeting people and talking with them is only the start of

building your network. There are two further things to do: you

must remember them and you must make yourself memorable

to them.

Remember them

Not only is it important to remember names; you must also