The last few articles in this series have been aiming to stretch you understanding of what is going on around you (in your Leadership Arena), and more importantly, who the key people are that could have an impact on what you are trying to achieve. To continue your learning and also to protect your career and work, it is vitally important to invest time in building up good relationships with a broad range of people.
However, you are unlikely to have the time or opportunity to build relationships with all of them because of the complexity and quantity. This means you have to get smart about the way you invest your time and energy. Some of the main things you need to consider when identifying your relationship building targets are…
- Immediate Impact. Who could provide you with an immediate result — either helping you or by withdrawing their opposition? Building relationships with these people is more difficult because you “want something” from them, and that needs to be borne in mind when making your approach.
- Strategic Importance. Developing relationships with people with a longer term potential takes a little more effort (because of the lack of immediate payback); however, this can be easier because there is no request other than to build a relationship.
- Balance Short and Long-Term. Impossible to say what the ideal balance is, however, if you are only spending time on gaining immediate benefit, you are at risk of continually having to build relationships at times of need. Conversely, only looking to the longer term risks your near-term performance.
- Organisational Spread. Another balancing factor to decide on. Only having strong relationships in one area of the organisation is another risk. Having regular casual conversations with a broad cross-section of senior people will be stimulating and give you a more rounded understanding of what is going on.
- Hierarchical Level. Having trusting relationships with people at different levels is also a good idea because it will help you to be able to tap into different currents of thinking. Being able to gain grass roots feedback and intelligence can be a career saver.
- External. It doesn’t matter how big your organisation is, you have to have a strong external network to stimulate your thinking, share best-practice and potentially help you to advance your career if you need a new opportunity!
- Occupational Spread. Don’t just network with people who do what you do. Similar to the need to spread your network around the organisation and at different levels, having coffee with people in a different profession or job will provide lots more stimulation and alternative perspectives.
In order to bear down on who you need to focus your attention on right now, and how to build an overall networking strategy, take a look at the related reading below. And remember, you may be busy, but if you don’t invest sufficient time into networking you may soon have more than enough time on your hands!
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