Megan Dalla-Camina: Networking can be an authentic, joyful, and enriching experience
If the very idea of networking makes you want to groan, you’re not alone.
For many women, the idea of having to build a network remains challenging. Anxious that it requires us to push our own agendas, brag about our accomplishments or use people to advance our own interests, most women would rather stay home. But does networking your way to success always have to be driven purely by goals that are self-serving? What if the purpose was actually about genuinely connecting with people and discovering how you can be of service to others?
Whether you’re an introvert or an extrovert, your relationships with others have been found to impact your levels of wellbeing and performance. Each time you genuinely connect with someone else the pleasure inducing hormone oxytocin is released into your blood stream. In addition to helping you to connect with others, oxytocin has been found to help lower your levels of cortisol (your stress hormone) and improve your concentration and focus.
In addition again, extensive research shows that people with rich networks achieve higher performance ratings, get promoted faster, and earn more money. This is because your networks can give you access to invaluable knowledge, expertise, and influence that you won’t have alone. Every significant opportunity I was ever given in my corporate career – be it a new job opportunity, an overseas project, flexible hours, further study – came through my networks. So how can you make networking an authentic, joyful, and enriching experience?
Professor Adam Grant at Wharton Business School recently challenged some of the conventional stories we tell in organisations about what it takes to climb to the top of the success ladder. While many workplaces create a culture where employees are pitted against each other for limited resources and opportunities and encouraged to be takers who put their own interests first, or matchers who try to evenly exchange favours, his research suggests that neither approach predicts long-term success. Instead, he found that it’s the employees who approach their relationships as givers – who strive to be generous in sharing their time, energy, knowledge, skills, ideas, and connections with others – that consistently rise to the top of the success ladders.
How can this be? Takers, matchers, and givers all can and do achieve success. But when takers succeed it usually comes at the cost of others and as a result people tend to look for ways to knock them down. Matchers are usually so busy exchanging favours no one really benefits. What sets givers apart over time is that when they succeed it creates a ripple effect, enhancing the success of people around them and building a slow and steady upward spiral of goodwill and trust that enhances their personal brand and propels their careers forward. As a result, givers build formal and informal teams that are cohesive and coordinated and establish environments in which customers and suppliers feel that their needs are the organisation’s top priority, helping them to achieve higher levels of profitability, productivity, and customer satisfaction, along with lower costs and turnover rates. Being a giver is probably not good for the quick win, but it pays significant benefits over the long-term.
The reality is that each time you connect with someone you have a choice to make: Do you try to get as much as you can to advance your own cause, or to contribute as much as you can without worrying about what you receive in return? Grant’s research suggests that the choice you make ultimately plays as much of a role in your success as hard work, talent, and luck.
But before you rush out to start helping everyone today who crosses your path, there’s an important twist in this research you need to be aware of. Some givers wound up at the bottom of corporate success ladders because they were simply too caring, too trusting and too kind to protect their own interests, get their own work done and avoid being exploited. There is even some evidence to suggest that when compared with takers, on average, givers earn 14% less money, and are judged as 22% less powerful and dominant by their colleagues.
In contrast, givers who are successful capitalise on the strengths of giving whilst avoiding the pitfalls, so they don’t end up becoming exhausted and unproductive. They do this by coupling their concern for others, with a healthy dose of concern for themselves. They give more than they receive, but they keep their own interests in sight, and use them as a guide to choose when, where, how, and to whom they give. They do good, and they do well by giving wisely and mindfully, willfully collaborating, powerlessly communicating, advocating for others, and for themselves, and asking for help.
You can test the beliefs you’re taking into your relationships at work and see if your dominant style is to be more of a taker, matcher, or giver in your networks currently by completing the free five minute survey at http://www.giveandtake.com.
