Colin Gautrey

How to Develop Your Network

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Having a strong and vibrant network brings access to resources, political intelligence, friendly support and, frankly, enjoyable and rewarding relationships. In many ways, success is likely to be short-lived if you haven’t got the support of a network around you. The actual activity of building your network is really about using your social skills to make new connections, contacts, and friends. It is about moving these new relationships from the original task-related connection into a more rewarding longer-term personal relationship. Many books have been written on the subject. These mainly focus on the interpersonal activities and how to find opportunities to build connections. What most of them miss is Read More

Exercise: Aligning Network Building with Purpose

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To build your network as quickly as possible, you need to align your activities with the purpose you have set for your networking. If you do not do this, you will probably go to a few networking meetings, wish you were back at work rather than wasting your time, and in all likelihood, fail to turn up to 90% of those opportunities you schedule. This is like making a bad thing even worse. Once you have got a clear notion of why you need to network, and are bought into it because of the huge benefits you can gain, you will relish Read More

Building Your Network with Real Purpose

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The first step is to consider the question – why are you networking? You’ll need to move beyond the reason that you’ve been told to do it or it came up on your performance appraisal. Try to get a clear notion of the purpose for all this work. This way, you can use it as a means of deciding which events to attend, which to avoid and whom you need to try to get into your network. It will also help you set goals and targets for your networking and, ultimately, it will help you realise your ambitions more quickly. It is usually difficult to arrive at succinct SMART goals for your networking, although that would be ideal. Instead, you may wish to settle for Read More

Building Your Network Potential

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The map we described in Mapping Your Network shows the big picture of the sort of people you need to network with. The second approach is to consider the people you already know and look deeper into these relationships and the potential they have to help you advance your purpose. It helps to unlock the most useful actions to take to move rapidly towards your objectives and save time by avoiding unhelpful networking meetings. The general idea is that you fix your mind on a particular purpose (e.g. get a specific job role, or to become a conference speaker); then, for each person in your network, place them Read More

Mapping Your Network

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There are two ways to start analysing your networking. The first is to consider all the different groups of people who could play a part in achieving your purpose. It is important not to name people at this stage so that you can keep an open mind to new connections. Take a step forward in time and imagine you have arrived. What sort of people would have been helpful in your journey? The diagram below is an illustration of how you could draw this out. In this example, becoming recognised within the industry could be helped by media editors. Editors like writing about movers and shakers in their industry. They also like to receive free Read More

Developing More Advocates

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Having a good relationship with someone in our network is fine, but what is even better is if they become real fans of our work. Fans and advocates are the people around your network who will take every opportunity to shout positively about you. They will proactively stand up for you, promote your talents and your potential. They will take the initiative and spread the good word and help build your reputation. Supporters are useful too. They will also have good things to say about you — however, this tends to be only when asked. Advocates will look for opportunities to speak loudly on your Read More

Exercise: Developing Your Personal Power

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In this exercise, you will be combining the previous exercises on what power you already have with the work you did to identify the power you need in order to influence the group or groups you have decided to focus on. These are simple ideas which can help you to develop steady. There are few quick fixes when it comes to building personal power. Below you will see some fairly straightforward questions together with a list of the different sources of power. Behind each link you will find a comprehensive set of indicators and also lots of tips and ideas on the simple things you can do to develop more of that source of power. Read More

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