… do you feel with me? All of you who build up a network from scratch, who are outsiders and try to get a grip on an established community with established alliances, those who are autodidact may be with me… the biestmilch story is a story of this kind.
Networking for me is communicating with intentions, with ulterior motives, with a goal ahead… which again for me means to build up trust and reliability and this is much more than just talking or gossiping and it is much more than twitter. It may be a tiresome and risky job to do. There is nothing definite that may predict whether you succeed in connecting or not, you have to take the risk… no guarantees at all. For those who are born into an established network my words may sound strange. For them things are easy going, self-evident… but this is not at all the case for those beyond the borderlines of established networks/communities.
It is first of all continuity and a strategic approach to communication which is needed that a network may emerge at the end of the day, and this I think is not so much build into us human creatures. We prefer twitter…
Author Barbara Ehrenreich
with registration). She comes to the completely unsurprising conclusion
that for most people networking is difficult and unpleasant.
On futurlab you find a comment on this issue which might be of interest for those who feel like loosing grounds, loosing themselves by getting entangled with the nodes of the network they try to intrude…
Is networking really natural thing for us to do? Yes and no… ;-), what do you think?
networking certainly is for creatures that live in communities a natural and undisputable fact. If they are not able of networking they will not be a member of the community. To knit a perfect social network means trust eachother. In former times trust developed over years and decades, knowing people personally, meeting with them every other day and developing a good and trustful relationship. Even in those cases you might be disapointed in critical situations, good friends just drop you and dont trust you any more because there is no benefit for them any more. Are they goood friends? The problem in the global society of the www. where we develop relatioships not knowing eachother to me tends to be the same. Who can you trust and who might be cheating you… it’s juat the writen words that yo have to trust. You dont know the person beind it, you have to develop another feeling. This probably develops over time. To trust you have to experience and give it a try. If it proves to be relyable you will get a step further to trust. In my view netwoking in www only will work on a long term basis if there is no promises that do not hold true for most of the people.This relates closely to the benefits that people do expect, no benefit no relationship, why should I connect if there is no benefit for me. So back again in the vicious circle.. trust and try and have the experience or dont trust and say they try to cheat me. Again I think trust needs time, sometimes its to long to survive, but once the “trust-community” is big enough you succeeded and networking is self-running…you might be still part of the game but you dont need to be any more in the lead.
First of all, I fully agree with you too. And so I can only give a little add-on to this issue. As always in life there a some people who are naturals in connecting and networking. For those, as Susann mentioned before, it´s easygoing and part of their behaviour to meet, talk, to approach people. Moreover and quite consistent many of those »naturals« see their principal activity exactly there. And spend a lot of time during the day on networking.
For those (like me) who find it not so easy and who have a few more duties it´s … difficult. Concerning the quality of acquaintances or contacts, I´d prefer those with a »connection« (sympathy, appreciation, interest, e.g.). Even if there´s no quick return in form of jobs or business-activities, on the long run they might be more solid. Anyway, an important thing, in my opinion, is to show up in the environment, which is important for you and your business. Open up. I´ll take this as a goal for the future…
Joerg, it was great hearing from you, thank you! So long, awaiting you for coffee… à-pros-pos networking 😉
Promise! :-))