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How Introverts Can Win The Networking Game! FutureIQ

6,533 views Wait, is this logic right? • Nov 22, 2024
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Slog Reference: Improving your Professional Networking

Description

Learn how an introvert who has managed to build a vast professional network over the past 15 years, shares the secrets to successful networking. We dive into how to approach networking without feeling like you're “schmoozing” or begging for favors. We explain the two main reasons why people are bad at networking: the discomfort of talking about themselves and the aversion to small talk.

The decision further dives into the dos and don'ts of networking, and how networking is a patience game, that the true power of networking lies in providing value, fostering weak ties, and being patient with the process. Watch the video till the end to master networking skills.

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Karmanyevaadhikaaraste: https://youtu.be/95Zi_4OthbY
Dunbar Numbers: https://youtu.be/ekAtODyfkyw
Power Of Compounding: https://youtu.be/KheKQbax0ME

Hope you enjoyed FutureIQ by Navin Kabra and Shrikant Joshi. Do hit us up on Twitter:
@ngkabra http://twitter.com/ngkabra
@shrikant https://twitter.com/shrikant

Listen it on the podcast provider of your choice: https://tapthe.link/FutureIQRSS
Watch other episodes of The FutureIQ podcast: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAppTB0r5_TaYueZ0adD42Wiw5X-wTE4v

Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
01:32 How Bad I was at networking
04:27 Networking Is Not a BAD Thing
09:00 Making Acquaintances Is Bad Or Good?
10:27 Dos And Don'ts Of Networking
17:42 How long does it take to build a network?
18:11 Have you been the weak tie?

#futureiq #networking

Related Slog Matches

Improving your Professional Networking

Manual

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Transcript

I always been an introvert and yet in the last 15 years I have become one of the most networked people in my area how is that possible you don't seem like an introvert man I don't seem but I am right and that's what I'm going to talk about today as to what I did or what happened because of which I don't seem like an introvert okay this is very interesting go on but before that we have done an entire episode on the importance of networking today we are going to assume that you have seen that episode the link is there and we are going to assume that you know networking is important in fact for your
career your skills and your degrees and your title matter maybe 20 to 25% 70% of your career is based on your networking and if you don't believe those numbers then you should definitely check out that episode because man will your mind be blown after watching that episode right so but this episode is about how to improve your networking what do you have to do especially if either you're an introvert like me or again like me you are one of those people who thinks networking is somehow like a sleazy bad activity yeah we've received a couple of comments on that episode about uh uh how to do uh networking so we figured this this was a
good time to talk about it but before that let me start by pointing out how bad I was at networking okay go so bad were you at networking during my undergraduate I was applying for Ms in the US and a lot of my classmates were applying and pretty much we all knew that to increase your chances of getting into a top college what you're supposed to do is look up the names of professors in those colleges figure out what they are working on and then write them a letter or write them an email saying how much you are interested in that area and give uh talk about yourself and how cool it is and all of that right we call them
suck Letters by but listen honestly uh suck letters are not always sucky letters because sometimes you actually want to work in that area man it's not like every student writes suck letters except that I hated the concept I didn't like the idea of writing a letter which sounded so fake to me in my mind right I didn't write a single suck letter and there is a good chance a good possibility that I got into a university a little ranked lower than where I could have gotten if I had done this sucklet stuff right okay and that is what I thought of as networking okay okay okay another example is that you know after I was
done with my education and then during for internships and jobs the way you get it is again by networking with people from industry right now I was lucky that my PhD adviser would pay for me to go and attend top conferences in my field wow okay and he made it very clear to me that my job when I go to the conference is to Schoo with the industry people there okay we use the word scho okay okay but basic idea was that you go up to them and you talk to them about what you are working on what they are working on just generally show an interest you know so that they know about you and
when it comes time for you to look for a job they already know you or the themselves will reach out to you right but smoing sounds so sleazy Na and that is what it was in my head all these conferences I never shooed with anybody I just hung out with my own friends and that's it ah okay okay so uh any job jobs I got were not because of my networking okay okay all right but you know people would probably say that you got the job purely on the basis of your talent and had nothing to do with sucking up to people and shmooing with them and being sley with all of that these are the people who haven't watched
our previous episode right right uh I will not go into the details of why networking is important I want to talk about how to do networking but before you learn how to improve your networking you have to first really really understand that networking is not a bad ugly thing yes I have observed that a lot of people who are bad at networking are bad because in their head like me from 20 years ago they believe that networking is an ugly thing okay and that oh it's only for extroverts and I'm an introvert I will never be good at it okay yes and in general I did agree with with both of these reasons 20 years ago
right so what changed let me talk about my story around 2006 2007 I was working for this company called Veritas I was relatively new there there were a whole bunch of people working there for a long time okay and I realized something that there are so many groups in this company doing very interesting work but one group doesn't know what the other group is doing yeah probably because all of them were working in independent silos about their own thing my job uh was in the research group so my job involved finding out what all the different groups are doing so I would go to a group and find out what they are doing and I thought you know what anywh
I'm spending time trying to find out what they're doing might as well write it down and send it out as an email to uh everybody in the company sense uh I called it Tech forum and that ended up being a surprise hit people loved finding out this is going on in the company right also makes sense yeah then a couple of years later uh for unrelated reasons I quit I went off on my own and then I had a realization that what I had noticed inside Veritas the same thing was true at the level of my city Pune right there was a whole bunch of interesting companies but most other people in the industry didn't know about
that company because there was no place where there would be information like this right yeah your birds ey view level went higher from the company to the entire city and you could see different companies doing different things I mean it didn't go up by automatically but I realized from my previous experience that if I do this it will add value people will like it so what I started doing was take the time out to go find interesting companies go ask them what they are doing write it down in a blog that I called punch right and I would just do that my primary purpose of doing that was because I did want all these people in Industry here to know about
the interesting stuff going on all these cool people doing cool things makes sense yeah five six years later I suddenly realized that as part of doing this I had suddenly become one of the most networked people right all these people knew me they knew about me and I knew these people okay yeah this actually reminds me of what you said in the previous episode on networking that we we did that networking happens as a side effect exactly right I mean if you had asked me in those days are you networking and I would say are you mad I don't like networking yeah but I was doing this I was writing this blog and notice that I wasn't doing anything for
myself or at least I thought I wasn't doing it for myself yeah and when I went to these people I didn't go and talk about myself and try to point out how cool I am and all that my meetings were all about how cool you are and you tell me about what are the cool things you are doing right this is like opposite of networking or that's what I thought except that this is networking most people think of networking as you are going around uh doing self-promotion yeah okay M the real networking is you are going around doing something useful for people and as a result they just know about you okay they don't NE
necessarily have to know all the details of how cool you are right you don't have to go and tell them all your you know your entire resume correct yeah but just by the fact that you are doing something useful over an extended period of time right is enough for people to register you as a good person to know so that that is networking so the right way to do networking is to not do networking networking yes right and also one subtle point I want to note right when you are doing something like this any person who knows about you through this activity doesn't really know details of what you do what you are really good at and so on
right and they don't know you very closely they don't become friends right they're sort of acquaintances who have run into you a few times corre now A lot of people think that's not very useful but that is one of the most useful things you can do for your career it is called the power of weak ties I was just about to say this seems like the weak tie effect that you're absolutely right the power of weak ties is research which shows that when you are looking for a job the best job offers are not going to come from your close friends or your close colleagues they are going to come from people further out in your network who are just
vaguely aware of you right yeah resarch shows that yeah and we have spoken about this in the previous episode we've given a reason as well for us you should definitely check that out so networking this new definition of networking is that do something which is useful for other people as a result of which as a side effect a lot of people know about you and they have a positive impression of you that's all you need to worry about that's absolutely that makes sense that totally makes sense so let's go through some dos and don'ts of networking okay okay great let's start with the don'ts okay do not Network for the sake of networking okay there exist
these events which are just purely networking events okay waste of time because everybody there is trying to self-promote I think of them as a way to establish weak ties as a way to make acquaintances and then probably whatever no the better way to establish weak ties is by actually doing something useful right you don't want to be known as a networker yeah right I wasn't known as a networker I was known as the ptic guy who writes about interesting companies see there's a difference good point absolutely second is that whenever you do something for the community I've been harping on do something useful to other people right do not think of it as a transaction do not think of it as okay
what do I get out of this okay that short-term thinking will cause two problems okay one is that the things you do will be low value things which don't have a long-term compounding effect and second is people instinctively realize that you are doing something shortterm for personal gain and that forms a very different impression in their head compared to when you are doing something which is for the community and it can be seen that this is for the community right see but here is the thing that most people stumble on which is that this takes time which they have to take out of their working day or out of whatever their bus is that a judicious use of their time is
what most people wonder excellent question right and I would say it is one of the most important uses of your time right okay because uh as I said earlier 70% of your Career Success is going to come out of your network okay so it obviously makes sense to put in of course you don't put 70% of your effort into that but at least put more than the 2% you are doing right there have been research there have been surveys showing two things one is that people don't put enough effort into networking and most people would like to do more but they don't know how right okay important to realize is that this is one of those things which compounds
over time if you watched our episode on compounding you should know that in the beginning it looks like there is no return you're getting right it is like flat almost flat line yeah and then later on it just goes up like this so the whole thing about compounding is that you can't see the ROI in the beginning but the return is there it is loaded all in the back so the later half of your career you will thank yourself for having done that right related to this is what is known as Gates law yeah we overestimate what can be achieved in one year and we totally underestimate what what can be done in 10 years right
yeah so if you're doing an activity like this it is completely okay for you to think it's a waste of time for the first two years but by the 10th year you are seeing results right so think of it it's a 10year plan not a two-month plan not a six-month plan yeah and uh the results of your efforts will start paying off in the second half of those 10 years or actually closer to the end of those 10 years exactly because if I had goals for pun Tech yeah right I would have given up at the end of one year or even year two right my first event was attended by like three people okay what
so but it grew over time right but wasn't three people demotivating didn't you feel like nothing is happening why am I even doing this in general I knew about the concept of compounding and that initially it takes time to build up so importantly I focused on the fact that each time was a little better as long as that is true I know it's okay once it starts stagnating then then you have to reevaluate everything but then uh one good thing out of that was you made great friends along the way that's the next don't okay the purpose of networking isn't to make friends huh okay the five close friends that you have or the 15 good friends that you
will have right tbar number right exactly first and second dbar numbers we've done an episode check out uh when you after this one yeah those are not your network and as we said in the week ties those are not the people who are going to get you the jobs right your network is the 150 acquaintances and the 500 people who sort of know you right that is the purpose of networking so do not approach networking from the point of view of every person I meet I have to make them my friend ah so don't look at it as a way to make friends let them become friends along the way exactly yeah if it happens it happens side
effect okay yeah I am a side effect it seems and most importantly focus on the activity you are doing and whether that is adding value to somebody okay do not focus too much on oh am I making acquaintances is my network growing you know don't look at numbers like that is there an argument to be made that you're kind of taking advantage of people in this process well think of it I was doing things that is adding value to them how am I taking advantage right I'm providing useful information for them true true that makes yeah in fact that is what allowed me to do this even though I have such a strong oh I don't
want to network and I don't want to do sleazy things like self-promotion yeah because in this case you are actually helping them out so it was not sleazy at all if anything you are being very generous and helpful and benevolent to all and 15 years later I realized that I was doing self-promotion I just didn't realize it and they didn't realize it either right if it works then it works exactly why not but the question is how to definitely make it work is there like a so let's go through the Dos right okay networking should happen as a side effect of something useful you are doing for others correct right focus on giving okay it shouldn't be transactional you
shouldn't focus on what is in it for me okay but if you give too much then there is nothing left for you to keep for yourself and would that hamper your chances at the workplace specifically it is shortterm thinking okay and I'm not saying spend all your time networking just a little more time than you are doing right now Fair okay also this is a long-term activity that's why doing a little bit every week is good enough because it's a 10-year plan not a 3-month plan not a onee plan it doesn't make sense to Suddenly at the end of the week try and start doing things for people you need to do bit by bit here
and there this and that and don't get discouraged if you're not making close friends right you just know a large number of people just a little bit that is fine that is networking can I ask you how long it takes to build a good solid Network 10 years Gates law right okay um but the first half of it can be frustrating so it's extremely important to keep in mind right you are doing the right thing you are adding value to people don't focus on what you're are going to get out of it if you do that then you will get things out of it h now as I'm hearing you talk about this and all of these
tricks techniques dos and don'ts I'm realizing that I have been the weak tie for a lot of people that I know as I've been connecting people here and there but nothing has come my way yet I'm trying to figure out how I can leverage it somehow so let us talk specifics right I just gave general principles of what you should do but what should you actually do right I mean starting a blog is one possibility uh right like I did and I have seen many many examples of this people who start a blog and they write consistently on a topic right they get a lot of value out of it after a few years okay but if you're not the block
kind there are a lot of people who are not that uh good at writing you could do something else I mean if you're good at speaking you could do it as a podcast right or you could just be posting things on LinkedIn okay even memes is okay I know someone who's a professor who posts memes and a lot of his following is because of the memes uh okay but they also always remember that he is a professor right so it's a combination or you could just do some Community administrator service right organizing events right there is I mean it's one of those things that seems like a thankless job so nobody wants to do it
but the person who does it consistently for 10 years is going to be one of the most networked people right you know just basically do things for the community pick a community that is related to your career and do things for the community which you see as nobody is doing that actually is a very apt summation of all of the different techniques and tricks and tips and dos and don'ts that na has given so far but here's what I just realized within an office it seems like the best way to do networking would be to just have water coola conversations and gossip a lot and get information and you know sort of build ties maybe okay yes gossiping is going
to give you a lot of those weak ties right lots of people know you but the question is what sort of impression are they carrying about you right an important part is all these acquaintances should have a positive professional impression of you very good point so don't spend time at the water don't be very gossipy about Stu well I mean do some gossip but you know take time out to talk about things related to your profession yeah wow this was an exhaustive primer on how to do networking and I'm already starting to think of ideas that I can Implement in my own life absolutely I have been looking at networking compan completely wrong all my life and although I'm about
15 years late and 15 years later than when he started I still think I have lots of time well as they say the best time to start networking was 15 years ago the second best time to start is today so start your networking Journey today and do it the right way if you don't know what the right way is go back to the beginning of this episode watch it all over again take notes and then implement it because that is what future IQ is all about making you do things the right way naen Shri Kant future IQ and if you like this episode and you haven't seen our episode on the importance of networking you have to have to watch it
take a look