Networking can be a time consuming, confounding process for plenty of professionals who aren’t making the practice a regular routine.
Dorie Clark, a marketing strategist and speaker, writes in the Harvard Business Review today about her work coaching high-level executives and the tendency to bypass networking for “lone wolf” tendencies.
The “lone wolf” theory centers on executives who have succeeded on their own merits, and while they recognize the benefits of networking, they still struggle with the practice because they’ve achieved so much without it.
Clark offers up four tips to reframe networking and turn it into a digestible habit:
• Reframe networking as a way of making interesting, long-term friends;
• Create a wishlist of people you’d like to connect with and find ways to connect with them;
• Acknowledge how a lack of networking can hold you back;
• Find the right source for networking, including inviting them for an interview for your company’s blog or podcast.
Clark writes that these strategies are designed to remind executives why building connections is important, desirable and can be done in a way that doesn’t feel ingenuine. Read the full story.
