How To: Activate Your Network

Yesterday I ran a Tide Risers session designed to help people activate their networks to enable them to better pursue their intentions and their goals. When I started the session, I asked everyone to type into the chat box what comes to mind when they hear the word ‘networking’.

Here’s what I got back:

• Awkward

• Fear-invoking 

• Challenging

• Stressful

With feelings like this, who would want to network? And yet we know that networking is a vital component of a healthy career, and a necessity to enable us to pursue our intentions and goals. Research shows us that women devote less time and resources to networking than men do, which hurts our ability to garner promotions, visibility, and new opportunities.

Are you looking to up your networking game?

Here are a few key take-aways from our session that may be helpful to you:

• Networking is about community-building.

  Having a strong network requires a consistent and long-term effort to steward relationships. A strong network isn’t something you fall into, it’s something that you have to work at, consistently, and over a long time period.

• There is never a wrong time to start networking.

  In fact, if you’re not doing it, start right now. You should be devoting a certain percentage of your professional time to networking. You may want to set an easy goal to start with. For example, once every week, reach out to one person you haven’t connected with in a while. This could be as easy as sending them an article that made you think of them, or as involved as scheduling time for lunch or a coffee. You don’t necessarily have to have an agenda in mind; just find a way to keep that spark of relationship alive.

• Givers garner more from their networks than takers.

  Givers are invested in creating environments that are psychologically safe and nurturing connections based on the sharing of resources, knowledge, time, and energy. Takers are more transactional in their approach to networking, often keeping score and trading favors rather than approaching relationships with an abundance mindset. Adam Grant’s book, Give and Take, has informed a lot of how we approach networking within Tide Risers. This is all thanks to Jamie Renwick and Mel Shahbazian, two of our coaches, who have been instrumental in helping us reframe our thinking about networking. 

Ready to network better?

Here are some quick tips to help you activate your network:

• Set an easy goal to make a connection with one person once a week. 

• Be a giver, not a taker.

• Practice asking for advice. This can be challenging for those of us who are naturally inclined to do it all ourselves. To stretch your asking muscle, find a community like Tide Risers within which you can practice the art of asking for advice.

• Lean into our Tide Risers Leadership Principles, which help us orient ourselves to the highest standards of relating to one another as people and as professionals. They enable us to create and sustain a culture that is supportive of the Tide Risers mission and our vision for the spirit of collaboration we want to model, and they are an ideal set of standards for maintaining a healthy, robust network.

If you’d like to learn more about networking, read this blog on Networking Pro Tips co-authored by myself and Tide Risers Coach Katie Singh:

Lara Holliday is the Founder + CEO of Tide Risers.