Fearless Networking

The quality of your life is inextricably linked with the quality of your relationships. Being effective at meeting people and building strong connections are therefore essential skills. Developing friendships, career contacts, and a community we can serve lead to both professional success and a meaningful life.

Keys to Success:

  • Refine the ability to be calm and confident on-demand, so we can be at our best no matter who we are approaching or speaking with.

  • Presence and listening skills that quickly and consistently build trust and rapport.

  • Constantly learning interpersonal and relationship skills that help create genuine, meaningful connections.

  • A focus on generosity and acts of service that cultivates personal, professional, and community networks.

  • Investing the time and energy needed to nurture an inner circle of trusted relationships.

Being great at this is not easy, though. Books and training on networking usually focus almost entirely on technical skills. But that’s just part of the equation. Without astute emotional intelligence and refined interpersonal skills, desired results can be elusive.

My take on networking is a combination of a wide range of personal development training and best practices validated through many years of in-field experience in all sorts of settings.

You can learn to be highly effective at connecting with people - even in the most intimidating environments, even if you’re an introvert, and even if you consider yourself a shy person.

At a high level, here are some important aspects to work on:

Personal Mastery:

  • Awareness of personal narratives

  • Letting go of fears (of rejection, of failure, of being seen)

  • Charisma (yes, it can be developed)

  • Managing mental energy

  • Freedom from attachment to outcomes

  • Getting out of your head

  • The ability to become calm in any situation

Technical Skills:

  • Best practices for approaching anyone confidently

  • Powerful first and ongoing impressions

  • Leading meaningful conversations

  • Expert listening skills (beyond active listening)

  • How to navigate any room

  • Increasing follow up response rates

  • Long-term relationship building

Authentic Confidence:

Increasing your self-confidence doesn’t mean pumping yourself up. It’s about removing the layers of self-doubt and fear that have accumulated during your lifetime. I wrote an article about revealing this type of Authentic Confidence at my artistic pursuits website. While that article was written from the perspective of interacting with strangers for my street photography hobby, the ideas also apply to networking and any other type of interaction with people where confidence and trust-building is important.

The link to that article is via the Talking with Strangers page -> here

 

Being a fearless networker isn’t just for business networking. The skills we develop on the journey are completely transferrable to all types of interpersonal effectiveness - whether that be personal relationships, collaborating with work colleagues, or an important presentation.

In the age of AI, our people skills have become even more important. I invite you to make heightened interpersonal effectiveness a key personal and leadership development priority.

Click the button below for more details and lists of suggested resources.