Tijen Onaran: New Work Needs Networks
Tijen Onaran, founder of Global Digital Women, explains why networks are so important and how to establish networking in your own career.
About a year ago I was allowed to be part of an international delegation trip. We were 47 female entrepreneurs from 47 countries and travelled 3 weeks through the USA. The trip marked an absolute “once-in-a-lifetime moment” for me, because when I came back I founded Global Digital Women, GDW for short, an international organization that brings women from the digital industry together and makes them visible. Networking, visibility and empowerment are also central components for me when we talk about New Work. Because on the one hand we need visible role models that make companies fit for digitization and on the other hand networks that bring these trailblazers together. But how can networks be sustainably established?
Visibility and empowerment
To become aware of one’s own strengths and weaknesses and to know which topics and contents one stands for is one of the most important basic prerequisites for networking at all. Because if you know about your strengths and weaknesses, it’s much easier to empower others who are perhaps very good at something you can’t do so well yourself. Taken together, these two factors are an important driving force in building a network.
In addition, it is becoming increasingly important to build a resilient network at an early stage. Today, careers no longer run linearly, but make pans, experience a reorientation or sometimes contain breaks. However, this only becomes a problem if you only think of your own network in the moment of a crisis. Building and maintaining good relationships should, therefore, form the basis and permanent task of shaping your own professional career. From the very beginning, the key question here is: What can you do for others?
Role models and their role model function
Networks can provide help in many ways. An important aspect linked to visibility are role models, who are part of a network. They are indispensable when it comes to bringing more women into leadership positions and advancing women with their expertise, for example in the field of digitization. By telling their own success stories, they can encourage others and point out ways that inspire imitation. In networks that succeed in giving space to these infectious stories, it doesn’t matter whether you exchange ideas about nail polish or the latest project management tool.
But for the stories of your own success (or even of failure!) to become visible it sometimes takes a protected, safe space. That was one of the reasons why I initially founded “Global Digital Women” as a pure women’s network — even though today men are increasingly appearing at our events. In my experience, networks that are only open to women have a different timbre than mixed networks. Even though all other forms of networks have their own raison d’être, women speak a different language among themselves, just as men exchange information differently in the purely male community. I say this without any judgment: it is simply different, not better or worse. What’s even more important is that women networks, too, benefit from diversity.
Diversity means enduring dissonances
No matter whether communities are built by individuals or companies, it is always important to ensure that exchange, collaboration and cooperation can take place. Diversity is the key here. Differences provide new impulses and are thus the breeding ground for innovations. At one of the first “Global Digital Women” events, for example, representatives from the areas of mobility, tourism, and management met, and it was precisely because of the diversity of the industries represented that the meeting was so fruitful and the exchange extremely exciting. Bringing together people from different sectors and the exchange of experiences had a lasting effect and made one thing clear to me: diversity is a central aspect for building and maintaining networks.
For me, diversity also means encouraging women, in particular, to see digitalization as an opportunity for themselves and to use it. This certainly requires courage, but a certain amount of calculation also speaks for it. There are good reasons for companies to focus on more diversity: scientific studies show that teams with a higher degree of diversity are more innovative, and companies that fill more management positions with women have greater economic success. For me, diversity, visibility, and empowerment are the answers to the challenges of digital change.
And what is your opinion on changing the world of work and leadership?
This article is part of a series of guest contributions on female leadership. Do you also have an interesting thesis you would like to share? Feel free to contact us!
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A guest contribution by Tijen Onaran, moderator, speaker and founder of Global Digital Women. She regularly writes for Handelsblatt and Lead Digital and considers herself an activist for #womenempowerment.
