One night last year, I was attending our local Palace Theatre fund raising event. My wife’s office was just across the street from the event, so we agreed that she would join me at the fundraiser. When she arrived, it was 6:00 PM. I was having a glass of wine and having a fun conversation with some community friends. She immediately started to charm everyone, unknowingly to her what a networking event even is. She was just applying the AFFIRM principles naturally. After a big laugh about something, she turns to me and says “This is what you do at night when you’re out “networking”?”
Good networking is a night out, a chance to spend time with community friends or create new relationships. Furthermore, professionals integrate networking into their lives. Let’s be frank, professionals don’t really separate personal from business lives; they are just working more intensely or less intensely depending on the time of day. To them, it is a good way to work. Networking becomes almost their social time or time to be with an extended business family. At a leadership conference, I heard a speaker tell a story about doing business in NH. From his perspective, because of the 2 degrees of separation in New Hampshire (an exaggeration, but you get my point); it is hard not to enjoy the community friends in a more meaningful way. After a while, you can literally know everyone and that turns networking into a valuable part of your life.
Professionals also know that it is the giving that allows you to gain. Professional networkers are generous with their time and community commitment and are totally engaged as a community contributor. You invite them to a fund raiser where they will write a check and they do it with joy and thank you for inviting them. They know that it’s partially about being a good friend and that means you have to put something into that. If you’re thinking you can’t afford to donate some of your wages to help veterans or the homeless, you might be short sighted. These small gestures (and sometimes big ones) make a huge difference. Everyone loves to share in kindness together and that kindness will spill over into your relationship. And if you have the opportunity to help a community friend’s daughter get an internship, you will strengthen your bond and bonus – you will feel really good about that.
Networking for the professional is a life-long behavior that becomes part of the fabric of who they are. It’s not about keeping score, or even mining value. It’s about being someone who is having a greater impact. That translates into being in places when ideas are created, knowing what’s going on, being able to influence and being thought of as person who cares.
All that, and it’s good for business.