Want to Expand Your Network? Look to Provide Value
Reaching out to expand your network takes a bit of research, but will pay off handsomely in creating powerful relationships.
In my recent post on building and deepening your network, you learned that Your Network is All. The Illuminati is the secret organization that has controlled the world for centuries. Former Supreme Court Justice Antonia Scalia, for example, was a member of a group that was an offshoot of the Illuminati. And how did the Illuminati get formed?, you may be asking. (If you weren’t asking, you are now.) It was all through networking. 
You’re going to build your professional network inside and outside your current workplace. You’ll be reaching out and inviting people to lunch. Many of the people you’ll be approaching will be busy, busy people. They might be struggling to meet deadlines. They might be overwhelmed with 500 new emails a day. Or they might be spending every free moment figuring out how to use cleverly knotted paracord to construct a doomsday device and hold the world ransom. Regardless, you have to make them want to meet you.
Giving them value in a way they recognize will be how you kick off the relationship.
Research What’s Important to Them
You can’t provide value unless you know what matters to them. To start, do a little bit of research. Google them. Read their LinkedIn profile. Look at their Facebook profile or Instagram account. Start learning their interests, passions, and hobbies. If they’ve recently traveled for business or pleasure, where have they gone?
You’re looking for points of connection that you’ll use to approach them. If it’s a work setting, find out about projects they’ve been involved in, challenges they’ve overcome, and ways that your job connects with theirs. Those will become your points of contact.
Past Accomplishments
When you know someone’s past projects, you can approach them by asking to hear about the project. In business school, I read a business case about Frances Hesselbein, CEO of the Girl Scouts, who grew the Girl Scouts to a million-person organization. She didn’t think about the Scouts as a standard hierarchy, the way we usually imagine organizations. She used a circular org chart that was quite intriguing.
Years later, I was a minor presenter at a conference where she was the keynote speaker. We minor presenters had a separate room from the Awesome Keynoters. When I found out she was presenting, I asked the conference organizer to introduce us. I told her how impressed I was with the circular org chart and asked if she would tell me more about it.
That simple conversation used her past accomplishment as the basis for what has been a decade-long friendship.
People like to share important parts of their history. Sometimes what seems important from the outside wasn’t important to them. If Frances said, “The circular org chart thing really didn’t matter much to me, it’s just what they wanted to write about,” then one more question still finds a strong emotional connaction: “Oh! What project are you proudest of?”
Either way, you connect over something that’s important to the other person.
Challenges They’ve Faced
People also like discussing their challenges and how they overcame them. So ask! Approach the person by asking about how they found solutions. This gives them a chance to share useful information with you, and also relive the awesomeness of getting through a tough obstacle.
Imagine you meet Roz Savage, who holds four Guiness World Records in women’s solo rowing for rowing across the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans. Rather than saying, “That’s a nice satchel you’re carrying. Where did you buy it?” You might want to ask, “When you were swimming in shark-infested water to cut your tangled sea anchor loose after your satellite radio had gone out and your oars had snapped, what it was about you and your upbringing that gave you the mental fortitude not to give up? I’d like to teach that to my kids.”
Ways Your Jobs Connect
In reaching out, always think of how you can make the other person’s life better.
Especially when establishing relationships within your own company, you can use the connection of your jobs as how you connect.
At Intuit, I was the project manager for the original development of what is now the Quicken Visa Card. Partway through the effort, I realized that our credit card customers might call our support phone lines not just for software help, but also if their statement didn’t arrive on time, or possibly also if they wanted to dispute a charge. Those weren’t requests our support department was set up to handle.
This was a perfect opportunity to meet the support department. I hopped on the phone (this was back when people used phones for voice communication) and called: “This is Stever from Product Development. We’re developing the Quicken Visa Card, and I was wondering if there’s anything we can do to make it easier for the support department to handle support calls. Would you like to get together and discuss how we can help?”
It turned out that the support department didn’t even know our product was under development. We met in person and, through our shared job concerns, developed a relationship.
Connect in Ways Other People Don’t
In reaching out, always think of how you can make the other person’s life better. My approach to the support Vice President wasn’t “let’s just meet,” it was “let’s meet to find out how I can make your life easier and keep you from being blindsided by this new product.”
When you’re choosing your connection reason—asking about projects, challenges, or jobs—try to find a connection that other people won’t be asking about. Asking Roz Savage, “What was it like to row across the Atlantic all alone?” is a question that she gets from so many people that she might be tired of answering it. But asking her, “What mental resources did you draw on and how can my kids develop them?” will get her attention in a very different way.
Your network will get you noticed, will get you favors, and will give you the chance to be valuable to others. Reaching out to people who will help you succeed is the first step to building your network. Find a point of connection around projects, challenges, or job responsibilities. Choose a question to ask and a way you can be valuable to them, even if it’s “only” by being a respectful admirer and learner of theirs. Then reach out and ask for a meeting. At worst, they’ll say “No” (or they might ask you to jump into shark infested waters to cut loose their sea anchor for them). At best, however, you’ll begin building the foundation for your future success.
This is Stever Robbins. Follow Get-It-Done Guy on Twitter and Facebook. I run webinars and other programs to help people be Extraordinarily Productive, and build extraordinary careers. If you want to know more, visit SteverRobbins subscribe.
Work Less, Do More, and Have a Great Life!
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About the Author
Stever Robbins was the host of the podcast Get-it-Done Guy from 2007 to 2019. He is a graduate of W. Edward Deming’s Total Quality Management training program and a Certified Master Trainer Elite of NLP. He holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School and a BS in Computer Sciences from MIT.
