The not-so-new, New kind of networking

by Byron Woodson II

One of the activities I consistently encourage you to engage in is networking, but not the networking you normally think of. When people think of 'networking', they mostly think business or professional networking. The rules of this game are to go to networking forums, after-work parties, join professional organizations and the like. We go to these places in hopes to find some business contacts, through business contacts that we know.

The other kind of networking, we call socializing. This is much less formal and goal-oriented. When we socialize, we go out simply to meet people. Mostly, we go to hang out with our friends, and perhaps meet some new people. Rarely do we go out to meet our friends friends.

My brand of networking, netweaving, combines these two (check out the differences here). What you do is take the intention to meet the colleagues of your colleagues and map that on to your social life. And conversely, take the relationship-building behavior of hanging out and apply that to your professional life.

What I'm advocating you do is start making your friends your network, and your network your friends. At first glance, you may think that this will amount to 'using your friends' like some kind of MLM scheme. But this isn't MLM where you call everyone you know and ask them if they know someone who can help you. Rather, netweaving is asking your social friends to come out and bring their colleagues and friends. Netweaving is creating a culture where people can help each other. By hosting small but frequent events, you will overlap many of your different social circles, and the context will be one of sharing opportunities, knowledge and energy.

What makes this different is that not many people are doing it. Most of the people who do this are creating large-scale forums for everyone to come to. Though these are good for professional networking, they tend to lack the intimacy needed to build solid long-term relationships.

By merging your business, professional and social spheres, you will actually make each of them better. When you know your co-workers friends, it helps you get a sense of who they are in total. When you know the people your friends work with, you start to know who and what they deal with at work. This is a level of intimacy that happens on occasion in life, I'm saying to cultivate it deliberately.

Questions:
When's the last time you met your co-workers' friends?
When's the last time you met your friends' co-workers?
Is there an event coming up where you can mix these circles?
Have you organized an event to meet them?
What's stopping you?

Suggestion:
Tell everyone you're having a small get-together (not a party) after work in two weeks. Better still, get one friend and one (former) co-worker to co-sponsor it.