A Fumble Trifecta

by Byron Woodson II

Nobody is perfect. Surely I'm not. But this past week I've fumbled soo much, you can call me butterfingers.

I forgot three people!

At my networking/socializing event someone called to confirm the address and I had no idea who they were. They came in and said hi, and I still didn't know! My first excuse is that i didn't recognize their number (didn't lock it in) and then she had a very colorful hat. Well, I think I smoothed it over with an apologetic email stating my 'genetic' difficulty in remembering names. But for some reason I can easily remember conversations I've had with people.

Same night, a friend/acquaintance who I've seen on a couple of occasions. I forgot her too! My excuse this time was that she was short. She's usually wearing heels, so the height thing threw me way off. I've been telling friends of mine that women are trained in the art of deception and camouflage, but I don't think i'll live this one down.

The third time was at an event where we heard entrepreneur and millionaire Arthur Wiley speak about his upcoming book. I swore I knew her name, but when I introduced her to my fiancee, who knew who she was, I said the wrong name. I actually thought she was a different person entirely.

Moral of these stories? Well, start to remember people's names. Otherwise, you'll have some crow to eat. I'll have to search for some ways and methods to prevent this from happening again, and share them with you of course!

As they say, if you want to make an omelet, you have to break some eggs.


Note: i'll be out of town until mid-week next week. Don't hold your breath for the next post. Go ahead and browse through some of my previous posts.

Exercise to assess your Personal Brand and Professional Brand

by Byron Woodson II

In the world of networking, a question we sometimes ask is who else is networking? When we introduce ourselves to one another, we size each other up. Some of the first questions we ask ourselves are: "do I like this person", "does this person like me", "what can I do for this person" and "what can this person do for me" and other questions like this. it helps if you start to think about your pitch like I did.

Though these questions may be useful to get to know other networkers, we also have to ask ourselves who we are as networkers, business people and friends. In short, we ask "what do other people think about us." Taking clues from business, we call this personal branding or professional branding.

Personal Branding
When we ask whether we like someone or they like us, that's the realm of personal branding. Are you the popular kid that talks to everyone, or are you the wall flower that charging rhinos couldn't get a sound out of? When we think about our personal brand, since we're with ourselves all the time we have a very distorted view of what other people think of us. Our professional network thinks about us in one way, our family in another, our friends in yet another. Also, each of the cliques and groups inside of these groups gets a different take on who we are.

To get to understand the commonalities and differences of what these diverse groups think of us, we have to literally ask them. Don't worry, we'll get to that soon.

Professional Branding
In professional branding, we ask ourselves a similar set of questions. When we meet someone at a networking event or through a colleague, we ask ourselves whether this person is competent in what they do. Even when we ask the people we meet what they do, we are subtly assessing whether we like and trust them. So a big portion of professional branding, at least before someone learns our business reputation, hinges on how much that person does or doesn't like us.

In the workplace, our professional branding goes a little differently. Our reputation for doing our job accurately, on-time and with pizazz is the basis of our professional branding. When we get letters of reference, or when interviewed, much of that conversation asks how well we do our jobs, and whether we can do the job we are inquiring to do. To build a professional brand, we have to convey a confidence about our competence at what we do, and sometimes about whatever we do.

Brand Research
Our personal and professional branding is not determined by us. Yes, we influence it. But our personal and professional branding actually resides in the minds of the people that know us and work with us (and those who try to avoid both). If you want to craft or change your personal and professional brand, you have to first know what your brand or reputation is already, just like if you want directions, you have to know where to get directions from.

To this end I've devised a questionnaire/survey that will help you get a more accurate assessment of your brand, i.e. what people in your networks think about you. In business they call this market research, I like to call it brand research.

Questionnaire:
I have a little script to say before you ask people what they think of you to prepare them for your questions. Of course, you don't have to say this script word-for-word. The intention of the script is to let the other person take off the internal filter we sometimes have in a conversation. A very important practice is to respond as little as possible to their comments, whether critical or praise. This includes getting actively excited by smiling, or disappointed by smiling. Our non-verbal behavior can influence them, so by literally trying to be deadpan, we help them express what they really think.

* this is an exercise to help you Sharpen Your Listening Skills

Script: "I'm doing a little self analysis and I found this survey that I want you to take. Now to do the survey properly, you have to know that I will not take any of this personal. Whatever you say I will take into consideration and try to improve myself. I want you to know that i won't take any of what you say personal either. Also, I want to say that no matter what you say, I'm not allowed to answer back or ask any further questions. This means that I won't justify what I did or do, nor will I try to argue or disagree with what you said. Me not responding hopefully will free you up to be as honest as you need to be."


Questions:
1. what do you think about me as a person (or insert job here)

2. what are your favorite two things about me?

3. what are two of your least favorite things about me?

4. what do you think I should improve on?

5. on a scale of 1-10, how good am I at sustaining our relationship?

6. what is the hardest thing for you to tell me, i.e. something you think I don't want to hear?

7. what is my biggest weakness in communicating?

8. on a scale of 1-10, how much do you trust that I am going to do what I say I am going to do?

9. what is a reason that you would not recommend me as a date or boy/girlfriend (professional: to be hired) *regardless of current relationships

10. what is a reason that you would recommend me as a date or boy/girlfriend (professional: to be hired) *regardless of current relationships

If you want to get an accurate assessment of who you are in your social, personal and professional networks, then this is a very helpful tool for you. Test it out with at least five different people. It would help if those five different people came from a professional network, a social network, a family network, a close friend network and an organizational network. Interviewing someone from these different networks will help you understand not only how that one person sees you, but a little of the bias of a few of the people in those networks.


Giving Back by Paying It Forward:
Of course, one of the themes of my blog is to create a network of people around you. To help your whole network get better, you could forward this blog post to a few of your friends or associates, and help each other do a self-assessment. It would help immensely if you actually went through the questionnaire (below) with them. You can also start to engage them in networking with more people. By inviting others to bring the people in their networks with them to any and other events, you will be a network weaver (netweaver) helping to make other network weavers. The more people who bring people, the larger and more connected your networks become!

Wouldn't you like to be associated with a bunch of people with crisp personal and professional brands? Well, it isn't going to happen by itself!

We will also talk about NLP

by Byron Woodson II

There are a couple of pillars of this blog: networks, networking, personal branding, communication and the like. The communication pillar is built with the bricks of a discipline called NLP. Some of the tips I give throughout this blog have been based on NLP (here) with many more to come. But for now, let me explain what NLP is all about.

A few brave folks have gone into therapy, sales, courtrooms, psych wards, business and a whole slew of contexts to figure out just what makes a spectacular communicator. They are a rare breed called NLP practitioners.

I've been studying this thing called NLP for a good while now. I read about it in one of the best-selling self-help books ever: Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Steven Covey. Apparently, Covey used techniques in NLP to help his son become a better quarterback and better at school work. I'm sure that it has helped him in other areas also. Because I was so curious, I read everything I could get my hands on about it and even earned a certification in the summer of 2001.

In layman's terms, NLP studies the connection between our experiences of the world and the language we use. It studies it both ways. It looks at how words impact our experience and the reverse, how words express our experiences.

In not-so layman's terms, NLP stands for Neuro-Linguisitc Programming. The neuro part, our experiences, covers how we use our sensory systems to percieve, store and represent information. The linguistic part covers how we use certain types of words and syntax as a way to represent and point to ideas and things. The programming aspect covers how we use the neuro and the linguistic aspects to structure our experiences and deal with the world over time.

One of the central topics of this blog will be how we can use NLP to become better people, and better communicators (not necessarily in that order). By being better communicators, and of course better people, we will be more able to build networks of people and relationships around us. So check back, you'll find some interesting tidbits and ways to increase the effectiveness of your communication.

Happy Wednesday!

Being Someone Worth Liking

by Byron Woodson II

In the book The Hidden Power of Social Networks, Rob Cross, an organizational network consultant, outlined five characteristics of people that he found who energized the people around them. You know, there are some people that are dead-weight when it comes to business, and some people that are superstars. He deftly cleaves and talks about the separation between these two kinds of people, and tells us what the superstars do to be superstars.

What's special about his five criteria are that they are 'other-centered'. There are lots of books and blogs on the market about marketing, putting your best-foot forward, self-help and the like. Some of these are mostly focused on what the reader or speaker can do, say etc. Cross, breaking from the pack instead, talks about what kind of experience the speaker leaves their audience with, whether it's a one-on-one evaluation or a meeting with 20 people.

He outlined five things that an audience experiences when talking to someone who energizes them. I'm summarizing them here so you can start to assess how well you do these things.

Full Engagement
First up, we have full engagement. What this means is that the listener/audience has the experience of the speaker being fully engaged in the conversation. This goes beyond simply just listening. Through the conversation, by asking probing questions, responding head-on to concerns and dealing with whatever the other person has to say, the speaker is fully engaged in the conversation. And . . . the audience knows it. That's full engagement.

Compelling Vision
Also important is for the speaker (I'm saying speaker, but this could be a boss, parent, child or stranger) to come to the conversation (even if it is a speech) with a compelling vision. Off-handedly mentioning a few things and talking about something that isn't organized, well, that's not compelling. What's important is not that it is compelling for the speaker, but that whatever the conversation is, that it is communicated in a way that the listener or audience understands its importance and relevance to them.

Meaningful Contribution
Next up we have a meaningful contribution. Keeping our attention on the experience of the listener, an energizing person leaves people with the experience that the conversation was a meaningful contribution for both parties. Even in a speech, having the audience experience gratitude for the opportunity to speak satisfies this. In a conversation, when the audience and co-conversationalists experiences that they contributed information, motivation or perspective to the energizer, they feel a sense of contribution. So when you talk to people, family or coworkers, you want to focus your attention on how that person experiences themselves in the conversation and in the context of your vision.

A Sense of Progress
Spinning wheels is no fun, unless you're doing doughnuts at midnight of course. In conversations, the same principles apply. You want to get somewhere. Cross found that people who energized others tended to leave the other person with the sense that progress was made in the conversation. This wasn't simply a rote summary of what was covered, but the experience throughout the conversation that the conversation was getting somewhere.

Belief in the Goal
Only last in the list, but intertwined with the rest is a belief in the goal. President Obama and the Democratic Congress had a terrible time in convincing the Republicans in Congress to get on board with the 'stimulus plan'. One thing that is critical in leadership is the ability to have the people you talk to understand the importance, relevance and attainability of what you talk about.


These five things help charaterize both what to have your attention on. They also help with stage-fright and nervousness. Stage-fright and nervousness are emotions connected to how you feel about how you do, not how other people are impacted by your communication. By slowly but surely focusing on these things, you'll be out having fantastic conversations in no time.


Questions for Action:
Who do you know does three of these for you?
Who is one person you not been practicing all of these with?
When and how would you start using these distinctions in your conversations with them?

So this blog was about what you should focus on when you're talking. Be sure to brush up on your listening skills and introducing yourself.

Happy Monday!

Sharpen Your Listening Skills

by Byron Woodson II

One of the things I try to help people with is developing their communication skills. I like doing this because communication is universal, and not everyone wants to know about industrial engineering, not that I know anything about that. So this post will be about sharpening some aspects of your communication: listening.

When you listen to someone, usually what happens is 1) they say something, 2) you make some kind of an internal image about what they say (internal representation), then you 3a) talk to yourself, 3b) feel something about or 3c) make up your own internal image about whatever internal representation you made. . . 4)Then you talk.

The art of listening attempts to short-circuit this listen-think-comment-talk cycle. Accurate listening skills replaces the 'listen-think-comment-talk' cycle with a verification system. That may include saying somthing to the effect of "let me get this right, you said . . . you mean". This verification system makes sure that your internal representation matches exactly what the other person is talking about. Let's delve into an example or two.

I'm from Philadelphia, let's say you're from a small rural town. When we talk about "local politics", you have a very different experience than I do, perhaps having known your mayor or firechief, while my notion of politics is less 'close' having to elect multiple city officials. When we talk about 'politics', much of the usefulness of our discussion relies on how well we can understand each other's version of 'politics'. To understand this, we have to clarify what eachother means by 'politics' by asking lots of questions and giving accurate responses.

The easiest method to sharpen your listening skills I've found is to make a distinction in your own mind between A) the stuff that they tell you and B) the stuff you have to make up to understand the stuff someone tells you. If you say "I'm going to the store to get some milk", I probably would expect you to walk or drive to the grocery store. If I expect this and say "could you pick up some spaghetti", and you know the convenient store doesn't sell spaghetti and reply "they don't sell that" and I think you're being smart . . . you see where this is going.

Initially, if I stuck to the distinction between A) what you told me and B) what I made up, I would have realized that I assumed what kind of store, or what particular store, you were going to and asked which store you were going to.

We replace the 'listen-think-talk' cycle with 'listen-check-ask' cycle. This helps us prevent mis-communication.

This is pretty much what your parents may have done (and boy/girlfriend or wife/husband does) when they ask you where you're going. You could interpret it as them 'prying into your life' or you could understand that it is natural for them to simply want to have an accurate picture of what you're doing. It's a subtle but important distinction.

The flip side of this 'listen-check-ask' cycle is to make sure that when you talk to someone, that you clarify things so that they don't have any questions to clarify what you were talking about, and that they don't have to make things up to understand what you're about to do.

In becoming a better communicator, the onus is on you to listen more effectively and to give more information when you speak. Don't micro-manage what other people do, do micro-clarify what other people think.

Why Avoid Netloving?

by Byron Woodson II

A day or two ago, i got this message from a friend on linkedIn, citing his reservations of reading the book about "Netliving/Netloving" . . .


On 03/10/09 9:12 AM, David Calloway wrote:
--------------------

Hi Byron,

I've been afraid to read this book, for how much I'd end up spending on lunches out. I'd like to learn how people can be creative about that, especially now, with so many people needing to network, but being on tighter budgets than ever.

That being said, want to do lunch soon?

Cheers,
David
[btw: here's his blog]

So this is the response I wrote:

Which book, mine? You can still read it, in lieu of your reservations. . .

The point about lunches and dinners is to maximize their effectiveness. If you're going to pay $50 to lunch with one person, then that's fine. But what about spending $50 to lunch with four people. You get a better return 'per-person' and you also get the chance to catch up with and/or build relationships with *multiple people* at a time. Also, they get to meet and connect with new people. Everyone wins. I think Netweaving is a drastically more efficient version of networking.

6 months ago, I had my first event, and only I was the only one that showed up. The last two have had 10+ people, and different sets of people each time! This one is on track to have about 15+. And I'm only spending about $30 for the night . . . to netweave/network with 20 people I know, and their close friends or co-workers.

Currently I plan to have an 'outing' about every five weeks. I invite everyone I know, and encourage them to invite their friends. It ends up being both intimate (people you know and trust) and fun (meet new people).

One thing I plan in the future is to have pot-lucks at my house centered around something stupid like renting a movie, watching a season finale or something like that. This requires minimal cash and cooking skills. Just a lot of dish-washing!


Plus, the book isn't all about 'networking' the way people normally think of networking. It has a lot of good information about the science of networks, how businesses network (products and services) as well as helping to create a strategy for networking, and some great information to make yourself a better communicator.

I guess from my perspective, there's soo much good information about networks (which people know little about) and networking (which people think they know a lot about) that i don't (want to:) understand why anyone wouldn't want to read my book.

Also, I need people to critique and criticize it. So read it to help me out?!

Besides, the e-book is free to download. Reading it will, however cost you time. But I'm sure you'll get more out of it than you think.

Tongue in cheek: stop being selfish, Netweaving is about helping others out, not just yourself. It's also about finding efficient ways to do it. It's like the Advanced Course for networking.

Byron

ps: this sounds like a great blog post, can I use your message and my response as a blog post? If not, i plan to just put my part on the blog. Any reservations about that?

pps: when you check my blog out, make sure you become a 'follower' at the bottom of the page please.


_____________
As it turns out, he was talking about Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi, not my book. But I thought it was a good reply (half way through I turned it into this blog post).

Liz Lynch's Goldmine of a site

by Byron Woodson II

I heard of the book Smart Networking by Liz Lynch somewhere, and recently. The other day, I also happened upon this post by Liz Lynch on one of the blogs I follow, the personal branding blog. I tend to be somewhat lukewarm about that blog because its filled with guest posts that are not always what I'm looking for. Don't get me wrong, when the info is good, it's great, like the post I'm blogging about here (hence great).

Anyway, I went to Liz Lynch's website and was surprised and delighted at it. It had a very professional feel to it. What I really liked, though, was a quick test that anyone could take to rate themselves as a professional networker.

I also liked how it addressed the two main networking sites: Facebook for social networking and LinkedIn for professional networking. What I liked in the questionnaire was that it didn't exactly preach how you should think of them. It simply asked a question. This 'what do you think?' and 'how do you use' was a refreshing break from the 'think this/do this' approach that many people try to force down your throats.

Besides that specific question, the self-rating questionnaire was a good way to assess not openly what you think about networking, and how you network in specific, but what you do as a networker.

I took the test and got a relatively good score, I was second from the top spot. The fault I had was that I'm still not as comfortable doing the direct professional networking, as in trying to extract value from my network, but I do try to contribute a lot.

I really liked the self-rating survey. I am soo going to steal it for my own personal use. It's a good tool for me, or anyone, to constantly update how effective they are at networking. When taking it, I realized that a lot of the assumptions for the survey were the me-centered networking that I think is a little over-done. I think I'll build a questionnaire that gets to the heart of not just building a network, but weaving a network around you.

Keystones are Network Weavers

by Byron Woodson II

How is it that some people, species or businesses are more powerful or critical in an organization, club or business than others? What is it about them that sets them apart from the rest?

Biologists have identified that in many ecosystems, there are species that are 'keystones'. Like the keystones in an arch, these keystone species play a critical part in maintaining the health of an ecosystem. Authors Iansiti and Levien have identified a few aspects of a keystone species, not in terms of biology, but how businesses work in their business ecosystems. Today, we take a look at what makes a keystone species so important, and how we can learn the behaviors of a keystone in our own networking.

Iansiti and Levien say that keystones exhibit: a pattern of behavior that improves the performance of the ecosystem, and in doing so improves individual performance.

What does that mean for us workers and networkers?

Well, a keystone does things that helps out the environment in which it resides. Biologists have found that bears who eat salmon are keystones because of the tens of hundreds of species that rely on the bears throwing away the salmon onthe banks of the river. If the bears migrated or died, the ecosystem would collapse because of a lack of new nutrients (dead salmon).

Human networks are the same. Without a steady stream of money (business), new ideas or products (the economy), people (an organization), donors (charities), children (families) our networks would collapse also. So what's they key? How do we build networks that last?

Human networks last when the quality of the conversation helps the people participating in the conversation. People walk, maybe even storm, away from unproductive conversations. But we'll stay up late at night to talk excitedly to a new or old friend. We excitedly go to events and conferences when its about what we want to hear, but dread going to meetings we think are irrelevant.

What keystones do in a human network is provide both a topic of conversation, and opportunities to engage in that conversation. By providing the topics and opportunities for conversations, keystones create and increase the effectiveness of those conversations.

Keystones weave networks of people and events around topics of conversations. They organize sports teams, invite peope over for movies and they can even start organizations such as clubs, non-profits and businesess.

Want to know how much 'keystoning' you do? When was the last time you hosted a talk about something that interests multiple people?

Remember two things about keystones:
1. Keystones are not particular people, they are patterns of behavior, and therefore learnable.
2. Keystone provide opportunities, as in they play host, not just participant.

Weaving Networks is not just about professional networking, but a way of life.

What makes a network work anyway?

by Byron Woodson II

Imagine you walk into a room and the scene is bustling. People are talking excitedly to each other. If you look around for a while, you'll find some people walk by others and are almost pulled into the conversations they overhear. What is it about these conversations that draws people in? In effect, we're also asking the question, "what makes a network work?"

A network is a group of nodes, sometimes people. In network theory, and in networking, they talk about connections, centrality, density . . . well, maybe most of that stuff is only talked about in network theory. These sometimes measurable features of a network don't start to answer our question "what makes a network work?"

Well, networks transmit messages. Our cell phones are useful because they transmit our voices and text messages. Our roads are useful because they transmit drivers. Commercial rail is useful because it transmits freight across long distances. The answer to what makes a network work is two-fold.

Q: What makes a net, work?

A#1: A network works when it does or can carry or transmit messages. When a train breaks down, and other trains can't get past, is the net working?

A#2: But what makes a network exist, is the demand to exchange or transmit information. Why build a railroad in the first place? Because you want to move people and freight.

In life, the excitement of an opportunity, the challenge of a project, or the prospect of a relaxing afternoon after some cleaning, these things are what excite us. When we talk about the things that excite, relax and concern us, we participate in conversations and build networks around those conversations. Sports teams, book clubs, political meetings, industry conferences, they all are centered around conversations. What draws people into the network is the quality of the conversation they hear and participate in.

If you want to be a 'networker' (whether professional, business or social), or even just connected, you have to practice telling good stories, and talking with people about interesting things both for you and for them, mostly them. This can be about business, pleasure, politics or about relationships. How much they like the conversation will impact how much they like conversing with you. How much they like you will impact how much they like the conversation. But without something to talk about, theres' nothing to talk about. So good networkers tend to have great things to talk about. Read up and ask questions!

If you want to be a Netweaver, you want to keep an eye out on developing not only your own conversational skills, you also want to introduce people who think alike. When you introduce people want to talk about the same thing, then the conversation kind of runs itself. Their enthusiasm about what they talk about creates the liveliness and bustle at parties. I know you've had these thoughts, of introducing people, those are the thoughts of your budding inner Netweaver. Netweavers take the extra step to set up meetings, parties and events to that people can meet each other.

So what makes a network work anyway? Conversation.

But who creates networks? Netweavers.