It’s Not What You Know, It’s Who You Know is Still True!

I’ve been on the road again these past few weeks, speaking at conferences and meeting with key clients, and I have been pleasantly surprised to see that men and women everywhere agree on at least one thing it takes to be successful today – the value of strategic relationships. If in real estate, it’s “Location, Location, Location”… in business today, it’s “Relationships, Relationships, Relationships!” Both men and women agree that it seems to be the most important tool great leaders have to tap into to produce meaningful results. Where I see men and women being different is in their assumptions and intentions about how to build and leverage these relationships.

 While speaking at a conference on the west coast, I was discussing how to develop and capitalize on your strategic network when a woman in the audience said, “I don’t have time to go out for drinks with folks after work. I have children at home waiting for me to feed them.” I knew immediately that she had hit on a key assumption that many folks have – that building strategic relationships is something we do in addition to our real job! I immediately put away my speaking notes and we continued on this line of thought for awhile.  I acknowledged that she was so right in being clear about her priorities and suggested that she consider her job in a new light – that 70% of her time in the office should be focused on doing the work at hand and that the other 30% should be strategically focused on meeting and getting to know others who might either help her in her current role or help her down the road. We brainstormed how others could help her do her job more effectively or efficiently now and then brainstormed how someone might help her in terms of reaching her overall career goals.

I asked the audience to meet in groups of all men or all women and agree on why, when and how they thought they had developed their strategic network, those folks they went to for help when they needed it. I had the women answer first and the groups were pretty consistent. Women invested a significant amount of time in getting to know other people and focused on establishing a “meaningful” and trusting relationship before they called on them for help. When the men reported out, the women were astounded to hear that they had no trouble picking up the phone and calling someone they had met only once and had virtually no relationship with, and asking them to “help me out with this.”  And they were fine when others did the same to them. Women had assumed that people would feel “put upon” or “used” if asked to do them a favor if they had not established this “high touch, high trust relationship” first when in fact men never even considered it a factor.

Someone in the audience mentioned that men hate to ask for directions when they are driving and get lost and wondered why then men could ask a stranger for help at work. A man in the audience responded that “finding your way” was different than “getting results.” In my experience with women building strategic relationships, this is a big issue. Women don’t see the difference and they hold themselves back for several reasons:

1. They think they should be able to know or do it and will be seen as less competent if they ask for help at work, while they don’t hesitate to ask directions at a gas station!
2. They fear being turned down; men just assume if the person they ask can, they will; if they can’t, they will say no.
3. Women feel that people don’t have time to meet with them and listen to them and men assume that if they stick to the point, time won’t be an issue.
4. Women are afraid that if they ask for advice and don’t take it, the other person will be offended while men assume that advice is just that – take it or leave it.

It was some time later when I got back to my notes and was able to summarize my advice for anyone who truly sees the value of building and leveraging a strategic network of relationships, both inside and outside their organization. There are many in my book, It’s Not A Glass Ceiling, It’s A Sticky Floor, but here are the ones I share most often:

• Have a goal and build relationships with intention.
• Form your own personal Board of Directors and don’t go to the org chart to do it. Choose a diverse group of advisors for your work, your career and your own personal growth.
• Remember Kevin Bacon and Six Degrees of Separation. Don’t assume someone can’t help you because it’s likely that one of their contacts can.
• Target 2-3 people to reach out to this month and jot down the names of people you’ve met recently. What do you remember about them and how might you contact them in the future?
• Remember the Law of Reciprocity. How can you bring value to someone else in return for them helping you either now or sometime in the future?

So, if it’s Not What You Know, But Who You Know that counts, who are you going to get to know tomorrow?

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