YOU'RE ONLY AS GOOD AS YOUR NETWORK
A Guide to IDENTIFYING Your STRENGTHS and STAYING CONNECTED
By FUTURE-PROOFING your life and career you will never be without a resource and not far from a friend.
In Malcolm Gladwell’s THE TIPPING POINT he talks about 3 archetype categories that people fall into.
MAVEN
CONNECTOR
SALESPEOPLE
Understanding which one your tendencies and behavior’s lean toward, can offer great insight into leveraging your human connections.
Charlie Gilkey sums up Gladwell’s thoughts nicely about each archetype:
Mavens make change happen through information and ideas. These are the people you ask whenever you want to know something about anything — they’re always the people in the know. They’re builders, engineers, process folks, and system folks. It’s all about the ideas and the information.
You might be a maven if:
You often feel overwhelmed because you have so many big ideas to unpack.
You’re often frustrated by how “thin” a lot of information seems.
You can get lost for days working on one idea, or spend months happily exploring the depths of one idea.
Your expression is largely about ideas and information, rather than about people or sizzle.
Connectors make change happen through people. They galvanize people. They’re natural hubs. That’s just the way they’re oriented to the world. These are people who, every time you ask a question, start flipping a Rolodex in the back of their mind, saying, “Who do I know who knows this? Who do I know who has done this? Who do I know that I need to connect you with?” They love connecting you with people, because they’re all about the people.
You might be a connector if:
You are constantly referring people to the right expert or service to solve their problem.
You love networking and talking with people, just for the sake of doing it.
When you’re talking to people, they say, “Wow — you know everyone!”
The stories you tell always focus on the people, not the ideas or the sizzle.
Salespeople make change happen through persuasion. They can take an idea, make it sticky and accessible, and position it to get a tribe behind it. Salespeople are your storytellers and masters of persuasion. These are the people who can borrow your watch and then sell it back to you. They just have this uncanny ability to get you to buy into whatever they’re selling, whether it’s an idea, a plan, or a product — it doesn’t matter.
You might be a salesperson/persuader if:
When you talk about your next project, people are instantly hooked.
You sell things without meaning to. (Services, products, ideas — it doesn’t matter what.)
You love the chase of getting someone to agree with you or buy into whatever you’re selling.
It’s really easy for you to get hooked on sticky, sizzle-y ideas, products, and services.
Your stories have sizzle at their basis, and the information and people support the compelling idea.
(Note: There are a lot of salespeople out there who are really persuasive [can always get people on their team and tell wonderful stories] but don’t resonate with the sales title. So sometimes you’ll hear me talk about “persuaders” rather than “salespeople” so that we open up that category, so people are open to considering, “What am I naturally good at?” and can start playing from that.)
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And like I said, we may lean toward one of these more heavily than the other two but it doesn’t suggest that you are not capable of all three. Personally, I think I’m a Maven because I really like to dig deeper and find the underlying process and construct to be able to simplify it for other people. While at the same time I love seeing people succeed. I collect people who have skills and match them up with people who need those skills. Yet, I’m not a very good Salesperson.
While this serves as a guide for archetypes, how do you maintain connectivity throughout a lifetime?
Before social media really took off and my brain was a lot sharper I had fairly good recall upon having met people, and the circumstances around that meeting. But I didn’t want to leave it to chance. I had this wacky idea that I did in my spare time. If I had their NAME and CONTACT INFO in my <cough> Palm Pilot <cough> I’d make a note of who they were to me, how we met, and when we met. As morbid as it sounds, I wanted to make it easier for my wife/family to know all the people in my life and who mattered most, if and when I died. This is especially important as I’ll point out in a later article on DEATH AND THE ARTS.
I’m well on my middle-age journey and for the last decade I’ve seen a decrease in my memory functions. It’s one of the things you might have heard about when you were a kid but it’s a real bear to have it happen to you. I’ve talked to my doctor about it and it’s the same old saw: you’re getting older and everyone has a decrease in their brain power at different rates. Some people suffer worse than others, and sometimes later or earlier in life.
So, with the roll of the dice, in some ways, I’m glad I’ve started the practice of recording my connectivity. But I wished I had started it sooner.
My very first job out of college years ago made a significant impact on me. I remember most of the people because the one friend who I’ve kept in contact with over those years who won’t let me forget. The people became characters that were easy for him to recall as it was his first and last studio job before freelancing full time. I myself went on to a half dozen jobs after that, meeting wise and talented people along the way. I wished I had remembered most of them. If nothing more than to keep in touch and perhaps help connect them to a job if something came up. I didn’t get hip to the jive until I was in my early 30s. So... there’s about a decade or so of missed connections.
I get it, not everyone is like this, but it takes minimal effort. Half the time you’re on your phone probably not being terribly productive. What’s it take to MAKE A CONTACT and tell someone who that person is to you, and why they matter...or don’t matter.
The more you work the more you network.
Freelancing is especially tough because networking does not always guarantee facetime. People are more likely to hire people they’ve met or who have been referred by people they know. Conventions, Industry Meet-ups and Mixers are all important to get out of your cave and use those rusty language skills to make nice with everyone. Over the years of tabling at comic conventions I noticed those who got out very little and those who interacted with people more. I was one of them. I have to constantly push myself to get up and actually TALK to people. I go to life drawing sessions, and I clam up. I’m in work mode...BUT...years ago, someone at a session I had met was looking through my sketchbook, liked my work, referred me to his Art Director and I ended up getting a job when I really needed it.
Soooooo...make connections, keep connections and foster those connections. Networking needs to be sincere. The term ‘authentic’ gets overused a lot but it’s just a matter of truthfulness. My goal with networking is simple: care about the person you’re talking to. To me, active listening and treating every interaction as a gift exchange is supremely important.
Here are two important questions to ask yourself after every exchange:
What insight about them, their lives or the world, are they giving you whether they realize it or not?
What did I learn from them and what did I give in return?
It’s probably something you do already...now go record it and create your own interweb of personal connectivity. It’s a goldmine that will bring you riches yet to be discovered.
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