Great Sites Blog

2 days ago, I had the privilege of attending a business workshop on the skill of networking.

Now, if you are anything like me, then you know and appreciate that this is a vital business skill to master.  However, this knowledge is balanced with a certain feeling that networking can be a bit of a chore… I am delighted to say that I came away from that business workshop feeling positively excited about the potential of networking!

The most important  – and liberating thing -  I learned was that you should seek out potential contacts with whom you GENUINELY connect, or feel an affinity with.  I found this hugely important. Before this, much of my lack of joy at the thought of keeping up with my contacts was the thought of wading through contact after contact that I did not REALLY have that much in common with, and the thought of trying to force myself to be interested…  At this workshop, I discovered that my time would be far more effectively spent if I cultivated contacts that I truly like.  Instead of dutifully filing away every new potential contact, some could and should be discarded at source…  Wow.

This instantly changed my views about the whole business of finding contacts!  Immediately it occurred to me that I could then treat “finding contacts” like going out to find friends – and that is exactly what I’m going to do!  The idea then of meeting a customer over coffee, which used to be one of my least favourite tasks – ever! – now becomes positively exciting, (everything is positively exciting today!) like meeting up with a friend for coffee, which I would happily do all the time.

I even found myself suggesting “coffee” to a new contact I had made with this new understanding, a lovely young lady very different to me with radical but workable ideas for infrastructure development in Sub-Saharan Africa – someone I can genuinely see myself being friends with, even if business was not involved.  Suddenly web design becomes the most sociable job in the world!  I suspect that I am going to be bubbling with enthusiam for a long while to come.

There were also so many other valuable points raised, which I may well cover in detail later on in this blog.  But this was the big point that I personally took away, and this was the one thing I heard/accepted which is going to most change my business practices! I guess also, that for business contacts, it is important to keep monitoring your contacts to make sure that you are still on excellent terms with them all, otherwise it may be better to end work partnerships and find other people whom you are still excited to think of as friends.  And also, while it is great to be friendly with these people, you still have to conduct your business partnerships in a professional, legally documented way, of course.

So please, as always, let me know what you think about this.

Is this blindingly obvious common sense, or like me, have you been pushing yourself where there is no real passion?  Or do you have any networking triumphs or horror stories to share?  We would all love to hear these!  Please post your comments/stories below