While I hate the word, I spend a lot of my time “networking”, though the more “networky” the event, the less likely I am to attend. It’s important to expand your circle of contacts, but standing around trading business cards isn’t likely to do much good.
In his book “Integrity“, author Henry Cloud compares traditional networking to “leeching” (which sounds about right), and suggests this instead:
Alliance building is key to success and leadership. It is more than ‘networking,’ which is often just a synonym for leeching. Alliances are about creating leverage to take what you do to a multiple.
Over the years we’ve grown a lot of great alliances, and those people are far more important to than people I meet at a random networking event. Some of them have been great sources of business for us, and we’ve been great sources of business to others. We all work together to find the best solution for a particular lead, and it’s a great outcome for everyone. Of course, building those alliances is much easier said than done.
Despite what many inbound emails propose, spam is not a great way to try to build an alliance. If your first interaction with someone is amoral, that’s a rough start.
For me, I’ve seen the best results by being a connector myself. If I have two colleagues that I think should meet and chat, I’ll introduce them. They often do the same for me, and we all grow stronger networks of allies.
I’ll likely continue to attend some local networking events, simply because it can be helpful to keep your face known in the community, but my efforts will always lean more toward deeper allies whenever possible.
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