Leadership Networking: Connect, Collaborate, Create

Grayson, Baldwin

• Publisher: Center for Creative Leadership Press
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN: 9781882197972
• eBook ISBN: 9781604917079
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Leadership
• Index: Business

Leadership networking is not about collecting business cards or schmoozing. It's about building relationships and making alliances in service of others and in service of your organization's work and goals. This book will show you how to enhance your networks and become effective at leadership networking. By seeing networking as an integral part of your role as a leader and by taking action to develop and nurture related skills, you create benefits for yourself, your group, and your organization.

Six Requirements of Leadership Networking

Improving your leadership network takes time, and it begins with assessing your current network, its strengths, and its weaknesses. It also takes your personal commitment to act in ways that strengthen the relationships in your network and cultivate the relationships you need in your network. Later in this guidebook, we offer specific strategies for developing your leadership network. But first, let’s take a look at six critical requirements of leadership networking.

1	Leadership Networking Demands Authenticity

You will be most effective in building your leadership network if you maintain a genuine objective of building relationships, providing support, and accomplishing the work for the benefit of the organization. Your authenticity will generate trust in others; people are drawn to leaders who are sincere and genuine. Networking is not a ploy for getting your way. People will see through attempts at networking that are self-serving or manipulative. If you earn a reputation as someone who takes but doesn’t give, who uses information inappropriately, or who breaks confidences, your networks will shut down. Regaining the trust and respect needed to rebuild will not be easy—if possible at all.

What Does Your Network Look Like?

Using the organizational diagram at the bottom of page 10 as a model, map your own current leadership network. This type of diagram is a visual picture of the people you interact with to accomplish your work. Having a picture of your network in mind is the first step toward developing or improving your leadership networking skills.

In the space provided on the next page, add ovals with the names of those with whom you have important work relationships (your boss, direct reports, peers, boss’s boss, customers, vendors, and so on). Draw double lines to people with whom you interact frequently, draw single lines to people with whom you interact less frequently, and draw dotted lines to people with whom you rarely interact.

Modify this activity so that it’s an accurate reflection of your network. For example, if you work in sales or purchasing, your relationships with clients or vendors may be your most important relationships—even more important that your relationship with your boss.

After you complete your diagram, answer the following questions:

Is your network larger or smaller than you would have expected?

How much do you depend upon your direct reports?

How much do you depend upon people who are outside your scope of authority? _______________________

Given that you’ve identified all of these as important work relationships, what determines how much you interact with different people? ____________________________

Network Diagram

2	Leadership Networking Trades in Resources

Having resources such as information, services, access, and power that can be contributed to organizational projects builds a leadership network through give-and-take. Reciprocity is important in creating, keeping, and using your leadership network. Leaders who are skilled at this kind of bartering know their assets and share them appropriately. For example, a manager may assign an individual with excellent presentation skills to a team that seeks visibility with top executives, routinely give a peer a preview of monthly sales reports, or offer personal time to advocate for another’s cause. Consider how each of you contributes to the overall organization’s goals, and how working together might make both of you more effective toward that end.

3	Leadership Networking Calls for Thoughtful and Deliberate Use of Power

Within an organization, a good definition of power is the ability to get things done. Some power comes from your position, such as the ability to reward and punish. But that kind of power is impossible to use effectively in most network relationships. In the context of leadership networking, there are three sources of power. Regardless of the source of your power, it’s important to use it wisely, in a way that maintains your authenticity and the trust others have in you.

Reputation. Who you are, how you lead, and what you have accomplished determine your rep...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright
• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• Networking for Leaders
• Mapping Your Network
• Six Requirements of Leadership Networking
• Barriers to Building a Leadership Network
• Assessing Your Network
• Strategies for Developing Your Leadership Network
• Setting Goals and Taking Action
• Suggested Readings
• Background
• Key Point Summary