3rd
My wife just posted a very thoughtful piece on her blog, “Becoming Doctor Jones,” which is written for graduate students pursuing their Ph.D., and explores the various challenges (and corresponding strategies) that rise up along the way. A sort of Lifehacker for academics;)
The post is about networking and “good deeds”, which to many marketers, journalists and entrepreneuers come naturally as an extension of being passionate about your work. But Liz got me thinking about what it was like back when, fresh out of college, I didn’t know the first thing about “networking.”
There is no shortage of writing on this topic (Larry and Guy are my all-time favorites). But think that for me the turning point at which I became “good at networking” was exactly the point at which I stopped thinking of networking as “networking” and just started hanging out, having fun, and being myself.
But what does “being myself” really mean?
If we’re talking personal branding here, and personal benefit, let’s go the full nine yards and talk about the archetypes too. Me? I think I am some combination of The Caregiver and The Explorer, or at least I aspire to be. And there are a two others that are reliable indicators of good networkers in my mind — The Jester and The Creator.
I’m willing to bet that most successful networkers exhibit the qualities of these 4 archetypes in some combination. What they (The Creator, The Explorer, The Jester and The Caretaker) all have in common is a certain altruism, an awareness of the collective good — qualities that are the very foundation of and impetus for “networking” in the first place — that is, the idea that we are greater than the sum of our parts, if we can somehow manage to piece it all together correctly;)
