Useful Practices for Networking
After reading the book of Baker, I also look through some skills to improve networking ability. Here I found Nicolas Cole wrote a handy blog, “7 Best Practices for Networking That Actually Work”. The right skills are the mechanism at the heart of People networking. Thus, people benefits form those practices.
Today I am going to share two of his practices.
1 Make friends instead of contacts
“What I am proposing is that you genuinely open yourself up to other people and connect emotionally.” (Cole, 2018)
The first skill he mentioned is to make friends with people, not simply to get their contacts. In Chines term, we used to call this guanxi. It refers to the complex sociological network of personal relationships, and the network of guanxi benefits many parts of interpersonal relationships. For example, if you get your first internship in a company, and you have a lot of questions when doing a project. Most coworkers you know but just their name or contact, they will not be willing to spend a lot of time to help you out. However, if you make a friend here, someone you already hang out to eat dinner or drink a cup of coffee. He or she would be comfier to help you out and give you some notice.
2 Be a Good Listener
“People with knowledge tend to hold back what they know under the presumption that you aren’t interested in what they have to say. But if you listen, genuinely listen, and show not only your interest but your appreciation, they will share.” (Cole, 2018)
No one wants to make a friend who is rude. A good listener can earn one’s trust than most people who don’t have a listening habit, and the excellent listener can gain more information from the speaker. For example, an older schoolmate who graduated from your school come back to make presentations in two classes and share his experience. Students in the first classroom are sound, a lot of them were talking during the performance. In the second classroom, students not only be quiet when he is speaking but also ask questions after his talking. This presenter would share more in the second room. Additionally, if you are a student in the second room, you have an excellent chance to make friend with him and get some suggestions from him.
Next Step:
People who like those two practices can search Cole’s homepage to read more details. I will keep searching useful skills to improve networking from my classmate’s blog, and I will post my thought in the next post.
Nicolas, Cole. (2018, February 3). 7 Best Practices for Networking That Actually Work. [Blog post] Retrieved from: https://artplusmarketing.com/7-best-practices-for-networking-that-actually-work-99c72bf60b43
In text:(Cole, 2018)
