Colin Gautrey

Attracting Sponsors and Advocates

by

You now need to begin to build a list of potential sponsors. Who are the key people who can help you to achieve your reputational impact? In effect, sponsors and advocates are the people who you need to sing your praises. You can’t do it all yourself and the more senior people you have saying hugely positive things about you (to other powerful people), the faster you will move. Ideally, your sponsors should Read More

Engaging with Powerful People

by

When it comes to networking, there is no substitute for networking — you’ve got to get out there and do it. By now, I am sure you have no doubt in your mind that it is necessary; however, actually getting out there and doing it is sometimes a little harder. The bottom line is that you are busy, have far too much to do and frankly, more important things to worry about. However, you know deep down that often these are simply excuses that help you to avoid doing things you’d rather not do. Yet, in complex organisations, you absolutely have to get Read More

Balancing Your Network Building

by

The last few articles in this series have been aiming to stretch you understanding of what is going on around you (in your Leadership Arena), and more importantly, who the key people are that could have an impact on what you are trying to achieve. To continue your learning and also to protect your career and work, it is vitally important to invest time in building up good relationships with a broad range of people. However, you are unlikely to have the time or opportunity to build relationships with all of them because of the complexity and quantity. This means you have to Read More

Identifying Powerful Stakeholders

by

In The Structure of Your Leadership Arena, you will have begun to lay out the groups within your organisational environment, with a natural emphasis on those which are more closely connected with your purpose. Understanding the Bigger Picture, will have helped you to analyse individual groups. A progression on this is to consider now the key individuals, and to do this as widely as possible. It is vitally important to go beyond the obvious when thinking of these people because often there are unseen influences at play within the wider network of connections — or certainly unseen by those who are not looking. Now is the time to look hard. Begin by putting aside the previous two exercises and think about your organisation as a whole. What you need to do is Read More

Building a Healthy Network

by

Nothing worthwhile can be influenced unless you have a network. The bigger your goal or purpose, the bigger your network needs to be, or at least, the more powerful its members need to be. And unless you have volume first, you’re not going to find and attract powerful people to be in your network. Since everyone has a network, it is more important to challenge you on the health of your network…
  • How many people are in your network? You need to build quantity before you can achieve quality.
  • How would you define a quality contact? One indicator for me is that  Read More

Build Relationships with Powerful People

by

This is not about sucking-up or brown-nosing, this involves making shrewd choices about where you invest your time and energy building relationships. Powerful people are always on the lookout for talented people who may be able to help them. Early in your career, these people may be beyond reach, or may appear too intimidating to approach. That is natural and something that you need to work on. This requires assurance, and, as you progress, your Read More

How to Develop Your Network

by

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

Building Your Network with Real Purpose

by

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

by

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

Terms and Conditions

ALL CONTENT PROVIDED ON THIS SITE IS FOR GENERAL INFORMATION ONLY. YOU REMAIN FULLY RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY ACTION YOU TAKE.

View Terms and Conditions

Footprint

We help professionals in organisations such as:

Accenture | AXA | Bank of America | Barclays | Citigroup | Clifford Chance | Credit Suisse | EDF | Ernst & Young | Fiat Chrysler | Fujitsu | GE | Goldman Sachs | GSK | IBM | Lloyds Bank | NHS | O2 | Orange | Pfizer | SAP | Shell | Tesco | UBS | Unilever | Zurich