To be a leader is to understand that you must transcend being good at just functional and analytical (or problem solving) tasks.
You must be able to build relationships that enable you to create a fabric of personal contacts that will provide you support, feedback, insight, resources, and information. That’s called networking!
Leaders are great networkers and can work effectively with a diverse array of people. We all must become leaders. To that end we must simultaneously learn three types of networking:
- Operational Networking -The group of people we can depend on to make things happen. It’’s the quality of relationships — the rapport and mutual trust — that gives an operational network its power.
- Personal Networking – Links with people with whom we have something common. This is done through professional associations, alumni groups, clubs and personal interests communities. These contacts provide important referrals, information and often-developmental support such as coaching and mentoring.
- Strategic Networking – The key to a good strategic network is leverage: the ability to marshal information, support and resources from one sector of a network to achieve results in another. Strategic networkers don”t just influence their relational environment; they shape it in their own image by moving and hiring subordinates, changing suppliers and source financing, lobbying to place allies in peer positions, and even restructuring their boards to create networks favorable to their business goals.
Bottom Line: Leaders understand the alternative to effective networking is to fail. You simply will not reach a leadership position or you will not succeed at leadership without effective networking skills.
*Harvard Business Review, January 2007, “How Leaders Create Networks”, Hermina Ibarra and Mark Hunter.
