The 7 Verbs of Networking and Netweaving

by Byron Woodson II

So, we hear the word networking all the time. It could be in the world of personal branding, professional networking, dating or even dealing with your home computer. It seems as if it is almost its own religion! For the most part, you'll be interested in networking in the form of professional and business relationships. But 'networking' has a lot of gradations that many people are not aware of.

I said it, all 'networking' is not equal. The quality of your networking has a lot to do with what your attention is on when you 'network'. To help distinguish the green from the orange, I've come up with the seven verbs that help diagnose the kinds of networking you do. These are arranged from worst to best, so strive for big numbers.

Networking Verbs
1. Siphon - someone siphons a person's network when they continually ask their contacts or connections for favors. If you ask everyone to pass along your resume or business card, but don't pass others', then you're siphoning value from that network.

2. Tap - when you don't go all the way to a person's network, but you are using the skills, advice and clout of your first-level connections, then you are simply tapping into your network.

3. Exchange - giving is better than recieving, but recieving is just as good. At the very least what you want to strive for in dealing with people in your networks is an effort toward reciprocity where you pay back favors and do favors that eventually get paid back. Even so, remember that expecting repayment is bad form.

4. Provide - when you pass along business, information, advice and skills to people in your network, you are literally providing them, and your network, with whatever resources are at your disposal. The focus here is to be generous with information that you receive and have at your disposal. You know you've arrived here when you start to become a 'go-to' person for people seeking out expertise and connections.

Netweaving Verbs
5. Give - giving differs from providing in that providers give of themselves, givers give others. The difference is whether you personally have the resources (providing) or you are passing along the resource of your network (giving). When you introduce people and make connections between others, you are weaving together a network, not just making and managing connections.

6. Integrate - when you look and see opportunities for the people in your network to interact with other people in your network on a group-to-group basis, not just an individual basis, that is integration. Passing individuals into other networks we could think of as assimilating someone into another group. Integrating groups takes meshing sets of people together.

7. Weave - At this level, you look to interconnect the networks that others participate in with other networks, that is the highest level of netweaving. At this level, you are not among the people being woven. If you bring your group to integrate with another group, you're in the larger network. Weaving takes putting two groups that you are not a critical part of together. Whereas giving is the entryway into netweaving, this would be considered benevolence.


It is probably a bit obvious that nobody will say to you 'I want to siphon your network', but if you are tapped many times without some kind of exchange then what they're doing is siphoning you and your network. What you want to start to do is assess which level you are on and, again, strive for big numbers!