The Connect Effect: Building Strong Personal, Professional, and Virtual Networks - Hardcover

Dulworth, Michael

 
9781576754627: The Connect Effect: Building Strong Personal, Professional, and Virtual Networks
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 1576754626 ISBN 13: 9781576754627
Verlag: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2008

Inhaltsangabe

Networking is a critically important skill, but few people are aware of its power or know how to develop, maintain, and leverage networks over their lifetime. In The Connect Effect, Michael Dulworth reveals the surprising ways personal, professional, and virtual networks can transform our lives and offers innovative tools—including a test to measure your networking quotient (NQ)—to help you identify, expand, and use your network to improve your life and the lives of those around you.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Michael Dulworth is the chairman and CEO of Executive Networks, Inc. Executive Networks is a leading provider of executive peer-to-peer networks to large organizations world- wide (http://www.executivenetworks.com). Prior to his current position, Mike was vice president of learning services at the Concours Group and was a founder and CEO of Learning Technologies Group, Inc. Mike is the author, a coauthor, or a contributor to six books on executive development, learning, and high-performance organizations. His most recent books are Corporate Learning: Proven and Practical Guidelines for Building a Sustainable Learning Strategy (Pfeiffer, 2005) and Strategic Executive Development: The Five Essential Investments (Pfeiffer, 2005). Mike has a bachelor of arts degree from the University of Michigan and a masters in public administration, with a concentration in organizational behavior, from the University of Southern California.

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The Power of Networks

The first time I saw the power of the Connect Effect was when I was trying to get into college. I didn’t study very hard in high school, and this was reflected in my B-minus average. So I asked my uncle Dick for help. He had attended the University of Michigan and still lived close to the school in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He and Aunt Anita knew many professors and administrators at the university. Because of their connections, I got an interview with an admissions officer and was able to talk my way into summer school. The admissions officer wasn’t willing to overlook my lackluster grades, but he did make a deal with me: if I proved myself in summer school, the university would admit me in the fall as a freshman. I did and it did.

The benefits of the Connect Effect can be as varied and rich as we make them. Consider some of these comments from the real-life people I talked to (through networking!) as I researched this book:


“Networking feeds my soul… It stimulates my thinking and takes me to different possibilities.”
“I can’t think of much that I’ve achieved in either life or career without networking: it’s the currency for getting things done.”
2“Networking pulls me in all kinds of unintended directions, often leading to being in the right place at the right time with the right people.”
“Networking has totally changed my life and career. Everything I do is through a network.”
“Networking is the means by which I’ve landed all of my jobs in my adult life.”
“Leadership is a collaborative effort. And it takes a network of people.”
“It takes a network of people to realize a dream.”
Think about those comments for a moment. Networking can change your life, feed your soul, and help you realize your dreams. Who wouldn’t want to network and achieve the power of the Connect Effect?

As your network of friends and associates grows and improves, this Connect Effect increases rapidly. In fact, the Connect Effect is exponential in nature, not linear, because each new connection brings his or her own network. The Connect Effect truly proves that 1 + 1 = 4 (or more)!

Throughout the book, I’ll provide personal stories, frameworks, tools, and resources to help you become a better net-worker so that you, in turn, can be happier and more successful. I draw from my experience in building, nurturing, and leveraging my personal network, as well as over twenty-five years of experience in helping people develop their own, and on the insights and wisdom of expert networkers, network researchers, and people who have professional responsibility to manage networks. I have facilitated all types of networks throughout my career. Today, I am the CEO of a professional networking company. In many ways, networking is my life, and I embrace its potential both personally and professionally. We’ll begin by 3looking at some of the many Connect Effects networks can bring.

The Uses of Networks

Let’s look more carefully at exactly how networks can be used to achieve personal and professional success—to realize our dreams. In my own life, and in discussions with others, I have identified a number of critical areas in which networks can enhance our lives:


Personal satisfaction
Career guidance
Door opening
Problem solving and feedback
Learning and expertise
Changing the world
I have firsthand experience with each of these Connect Effects of networking. What’s more, my research on networking and conversations with others show exactly how powerful networks are in each of these areas. Let’s take a look.


Personal Satisfaction

On the most basic level, networking can bring deep personal satisfaction. We are, after all, social animals. Making friends, helping others, collaborating on a worthwhile project are all very satisfying experiences that can feed your soul, as Nisha Advani, director of executive development at Genentech told me. Born and raised in India, Nisha has lived on three continents and now focuses on using science principles to enhance leadership and organizational effectiveness at Genentech. She 4sees networking as deeply satisfying: “Networking feeds my soul. It helps me to stay alert and continuously learn, and those are very deep values for me. I appreciate having a network that brings up a lot of rich ideas, both personally, in my social space and family, as well as professionally. It stimulates my thinking and takes me to different possibilities.”

The person in my life who best embodies the personal satisfaction inherent in networking is my aunt Norma. At age eighty-nine, she makes new friends every time she leaves the house, just for the sheer fun of it. My cousin Kristan describes breakfast at a local café with Aunt Norma (Kristan’s grandma):

She greeted everyone we passed, and while we waited for a table, she struck up a conversation with a mother and her twentysomething daughter who seemed somewhat distressed. Grandma talked comfortably with them as if she had known them her whole life. They shared their sadness that the daughter, who was pregnant, her husband, and their little girl were moving to Germany the following day.

Grandma listened, smiled, and in a very positive and matter-of-fact voice said to the mother, “Well, you’re just going to have to get yourself over to Germany to visit!” They all laughed and agreed. As an observer, I could see the tension in their faces melt away—the result of a random and brief encounter with a woman who, in her almost nine decades on the planet, has never left North America.

On Norma’s eighty-eighth birthday, she told me about the numerous phone calls and the sixty birthday cards she had received. “And those are only the friends that are still alive,” she said.

I encourage you to think of someone in your own life who creates networks of caring people simply through having a friendly and loving manner. You may come up with several such people.


5
Career Guidance

In 1983, I graduated from the University of Michigan with a degree in history. At that point, I dipped into my rather limited network—specifically, my dad and my uncle Jack—for help finding a job.

My uncle Jack was well connected from his work as an insurance broker in Houston, Texas, and was able to set up interviews with the offices of James Baker III, chief of staff in the Reagan White House, and Texas senator Lloyd Benson. Through his own networks, my dad arranged for an interview with the U.S. Department of Labor. I received job offers from all three places but chose the job at the Department of Labor because it paid the most ($10,300 per year!).

This was my first big lesson in the power of the Connect Effect: three great job offers for a young man straight out of college and all of them due to the robust networks developed by my father and uncle. Of course, many others have similar stories. One of the people I interviewed for this book is Jory Des Jardins, a smart, humorous, Web-savvy entrepreneur, writer, and blogger. Jory coined the phrase “networking: it’s the currency for getting things done,” which I quoted above. Jory makes the point that people starting out need advocates in today’s fast-paced, competitive job market:

After graduating from college, I sent out résumés, cold-called for jobs, did what anyone without contacts would do, and nothing ever came of it. I’d hoped that my grade point average would be all that I needed, but I learned early on that my accomplishments wouldn’t help me unless I had the right advocates....

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Verlag
Berrett-Koehler Publishers
Erscheinungsdatum
2008
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1576754626
ISBN 13 
9781576754627
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
208
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Berrett-Koehler
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