Last week on “If I had known,” I discussed my personal evolution through viewing networking as intimidating and contrived, to embracing it as not only a necessary part of career building, but also one I can approach in my own way. This week I take it one step further and explain the networking game-changer that I discovered during this process.
Remember this from last week’s post?
“I was afraid that I just didn’t have the right skills to build a network.”
Anyone had the same thoughts? Maybe you’re there right now, avoiding many activities because you fear that your time won’t be well-spent, that you don’t have the right personality to be in those rooms of people, handing out cards and giving your elevator pitch numerous times.
Guess what – I was there too.
So what changed? What has allowed me to build a strong network of colleagues, such that I know at least one person at every event I attend, and generally have someone I can contact with a question about almost anything (law-related, given my profession).
What did I do, or change, to make networking not only successful, but enjoyable?
My own mindset.
Now I can’t say it was completely strategic. I have only in the past year started researching mindset and the science behind positive psychology (see The Happiness Advantage, for some interesting reading). But somewhere along the line I decided that I could become a good networker. It’s not natural to me like it is for some people, but I made up my mind to develop this skill.
I found many great articles and resources while I was consciously working on improving my networking skills. There is a lot of great advice out there, but more important than any particular information or tip was my decision to not only spend time honing this skill, but to believe that it was something that I could do.
It took some trial and error to find what worked for me.
And it took practice.
But as I reflect on this process, I have learned that conquering any challenge – whether it’s developing a critical professional skill (like networking), starting a new business, running a marathon, losing weight – it always begins with the mind.
The first step is always to decide that you can.
Stay tuned for my post next week: now that you’ve (I hope) decided that great networking skills are within your reach, in my next post I’ll provide some easy action steps to get started building or expanding your network.
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