social networking – The Leadership Professor

A strong professional network is essential for career advancement. How deep and broad are your networks? How are your networking skills?

For some, the art of networking comes naturally. They enjoy reaching out and are comfortable developing diverse relationships across interests, cultures, industries, and countries. For others, it’s a skill to be acquired and deliberately practiced. For all, professional networks are indispensible sources of learning and career opportunities.

Here are ten tips for expanding your networking skills:

1. Be patient. Rome was not built in a day and neither will your professional networks. Relationship building is not linear, and good networkers enjoy meeting people. The more open you are to learning about someone, the better the odds that individual will remember you and your talents when opportunities arise. Let go of wondering whether someone can help you and enjoy the process of getting to know lot of interesting people.

2. Be proactive. Julie Miller Vick and Jennifer Furlong, career professionals and authors of The Academic Job Search Handbook, suggest “informational interviews” as a way to ramp-up your network building. Reach out to people who can provide information about an industry, job, or company. The benefit is a chance to broaden your understandings about the work world – and perhaps learn about new opportunities.

3. Be prepared. Take interactions, no matter how informal, seriously. Prepare, if possible. Identify, for example, contacts or experiences you share: social media sites like Linked In can help. The people you end up speaking with may be helpful down the road in ways you can’t envision now. Leave a positive impression – and burn no bridges. Have a brief “elevator speech” about yourself ready: two or three sentences that tells others who you are, your work interests, and the reason for your call or meeting (if applicable).

4. Be persistent. Good relationship builders bring courage and determination. They initiate, introduce themselves to others, make cold calls, and work the room. They don’t take rejection or unreturned phone calls personally.

5. Be an asset, not a drain. All relationships are based on reciprocity: both parties must benefit from the exchange. People will remember you if they learn something, see shared interests, and/or enjoy you. Remember, first impressions are lasting: make a good one. Ask people to suggest others who might be helpful for the information or access you seek – and if you can use their name in making the new connection.

6. Be courteous. Send an immediate thank-you note after a meeting. Invite your new contact to join your Linked In network. Let others know how things they have suggested turn out. Follow up in simple ways that seem appropriate for the relationship. Pace your follow-ups: don’t seem desperate.

7. Be invested. Care is at the heart of a good relationship. Show that you care – again in professionally appropriate ways. Computers and social networking sites facilitate keeping track of your contacts. Make notes for yourself about each individual (and your meetings) so that you remember history accurately. Periodically email an article that your contact might enjoy. Send a note of congratulations for an accomplishment. Acknowledge a birthday. Let people know about events potential interest and that you are thinking about them. They’ll reciprocate.

8. Be respectful. Here’s where emotional intelligence and the art in networking enter the picture. Be open, not pushy. Demonstrate care, not inappropriateness. If someone offers you 10 minutes of time, take no more. If someone says no to a call or meeting, so be it – and thank people for the consideration.

9. Be open. Every event or experience is a chance to network. Enjoy getting to know people better. I’ve done some of my best networking (and fund-raising) at the grocery store or school sporting events.

10. Be confident. Networking asks you to display your strengths and executive-level presence even when you may not be feeling either. Today’s strangers or information sources can be tomorrow’s co-workers or bosses.

The happenings in the Middle East say much about the power of social media technologies. They are revolutionizing the practice of leadership.

Followers need a simple cell phone to organize a groundswell in support or opposition to any leader, product, or cause. Huge crowds can be assembled with a simple text message and that powerful contemporary closer: “Pass this message on.”

Strangers with shared interests or common beliefs forge virtual communities and become cyber allies through vehicles like Facebook and Twitter. Building solidarity, commitment, and shared purpose no longer require face-to-face meetings – or even residency in the same nation or on the same continent.

A twitter revolution or a smart mob a la Howard Rheingold is no novelty. Social media technologies created the conditions to topple a controlling, military-backed, thirty year regime in a seemingly stable country like Egypt; and they continue to send aftershocks through a host of other nations. They will continue to do so.

What does all this mean for contemporary leadership? What is important to remember?

1. Leadership is vital. At its core, leading is a social process rooted in relationship, collaboration, and mutual interest. Advances in technology and the ease of electronic communications and social networking provide additional tools for building the networks of relationship and shared purpose needed for success.

At the same time, they also expand the need for leadership. We have mind-boggling capabilities at our finger-tips to forge global alliances, further causes, and foster organizational agendas – to create, in the language of super-blogger Seth Godin, tribes of ten or ten million who care passionately about the same things that we do. All these new groups need direction, cohesion, and contribution. They need leadership from people like you or me.

2. Leaders know and respect their followers. Perhaps there were times in history when leaders could ignore the needs and collective power of their followers. Those have passed. Then President Mubarak, sitting in his palace telling world leaders that the disturbances in Egypt will pass, is a symbol of a leader in denial and out of touch. Leaders know their followers well. Social technologies can help them in this.

3. Leaders listen to, learn from, use, and manage the social groundswell. Contemporary leaders need to take their heads out of the sand about social media technologies. They are powerful and here to stay. When United States senators twitter their constituencies, and the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies talk to their constituents through Facebook, something about leading has definitely changed.

Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff provide a wealth of strategies for working the groundswell,using it to inform and energize your leadership and organization, and turning the power of social media to your advantage. I’ve learned a lot from their book, appropriately titled Groundswell.