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FranklinCovey Blog
How Diverse Is Your “Village” (Network)?
Many studies, and my own personal experience, show that those with larger personal networks have more successful careers. We all know how important it is to network when searching for employment, but it is equally important when employed in order to obtain advice, coaching, and other points of view.
At the Chief Learning Officer symposium last week, Joe Santana from Siemens USA proposed that a broad network is richer and more robust than a deep network. He said that a strong network for career growth, problem solving, and innovation isn’t made up entirely of people just like you. I thought it was interesting to consider so I thought through my layers of friends, colleagues, advisors, and contacts—and even looking through my Outlook and LinkedIn contacts—and then realized with a start that my network is deep but not broad. While it may cross national borders, my network is primarily made up of people with whom I’ve worked or met at school (or my children’s schools). For the most part, we all have similar socioeconomic and educational backgrounds. And in large part, my network contains people who work in organizational transformation. Of course, there are some notable exceptions with people that I’ve met through social action work and church, but in large part, my network is middle-class, highly educated, and employed. The only “broad” component is the wide variety of political stances.
So, who is in your network? How do you reach out to those outside your typical affinity groups? And do you agree: Is it important to have a broad network?
Author: Jennifer Colosimo, Chief Learning Officer at FranklinCovey
Follow Jennifer on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jencolosimo
2 Comments to How Diverse Is Your “Village” (Network)?
I agree with building a broad network. I created a list of the ten different kinds of people you want in your network. The list includes connecting to a trendsetter (someone who is always on top of the latest trends/patterns in your industry), a connector (the person that always seem to have a resource or contact no matter what the need), a dreamer (someone you can brainstorm and dream with, without judgment) and the realist (the one that helps you look at your ideas objectively.) Here’s the link to the full article: http://careermakeovercoach.com/how-to-build-an-a-list-professional-network/
CHRIS in AtlantaMay 27, 2010
In the tome, The Laws of Sucess, by Napoleon Hill, he speaks of this very concept that there are some key fundamentals that a person must asses and then develop within. Your concept of building a broad netowork is a statement to the effort of surrounding yourself with people that will feed the fundamental facets that Hill makes reference to in his analysis.
Great read.
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