To begin with, it’s a race for the numbers. If you have no network, how can you have any friends? This is true on Social Media and offline. Unless you have people to talk to you are not going to be able to develop quality relationships.
Unfortunately, the rise of social networks makes the numbers a little more tempting. Their visibility and apparent social-proof has a noticeable effect on behaviour. For a while at least, it becomes a number chasing exercise. This is great to begin with, but at some stage it is vital to return the focus to building quality relationships, either on or offline.
So, what does quality mean in network relationships? In workshops when I ask this question I usually get a rather subjective response. Only with persistence do people start to break it down and find clarity. If you can make an objective assessment of your current relationships you can make decisions about where you need to focus on building more quality. It also gives you some simple ideas on how to develop them too.
For example, you might objectify the quality by considering these factors…
- Responsiveness. How quickly does your connection respond to your calls or messages?
- Reliability/Trust. If they say they are going to do something, do they do it and do they do it on time? Do you believe they tell you the truth? And the whole truth?
- Helpfulness. Are they actually adding value to your agenda, life or at least have a good potential to do so?
- Openness. To what extent are they sharing sensitive information about themselves?
- Frequency. How often do you interact with them? You might also want to consider how many exchanges you have had with them, especially with online connections.
- Direction. In any exchange, who usually makes the first contact?
- Friendliness. The best of relationships go beyond the work in hand. This often extends into authentic friendships.
- Warmth. How much genuine interest and care is evident in the other party?
- Humour. The use of humour is a good indicator of warmth and friendliness – unless it is abusive and intended to intimidate.
Use the list above as a starting point when you want to quantify the relationship you have with a connection. Add more factors if you believe other things are important too. A good way to doing an individual assessment is to attempt to score each factor out of 10. Then you can consider the gaps and areas for improvement, along with what action you can take to do begin to develop the relationship.
It is also worth considering all of these factors in the opposite direction because networking is all about reciprocity. Run through and score each again based on how you may be regarded by the other person.
If you have scaled the dizzy heights of 500+ on LinkedIn you may find it difficult to score many above the minimum. This is why offline relationships are viewed as so important. However, if you have the quantity, you can potentially develop the quality, even in your online world – where there’s a will, there’s a way.
In fact, I can personally vouch for it. My second book (Political Dilemmas at Work) was written with Dr. Gary Ranker who I didn’t meet face-to-face until after the book was published. This is just one of many examples of where I have developed an online relationship into something really useful for both sides.
Most people have far too many people in their lists to assess everyone, so focus first on those where you believe there is the most potential. Do the assessment, come up with the actions and see what happens.
The Gautrey Influence Blog
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