Networking

Whether you played baseball or softball or not, you need to know how to throw a good pitch! And you have to know how to switch it up... you'll have one pitch if you're networking with a board member, another if you're networking for a new position, a different one if you're networking with a potential business partner who is not in your company or industry.

Q. What do you think about personal business cards? If you're in between jobs, personal cards can be very useful when you're doing a lot of networking. What else can you leave behind? Pulling out a resume at a business function doesn't quite work. If you get creative, you can use a personal business card as a mini-resume. There are lots of interesting layouts (including folded cards) that offer great possibilities for using a personal business card as a sales tool. Be sure that when you give a card, you receive one.

Adding to earlier post on tips for job hunters, here are 3 more that came from questions asked by participants in our free teleseminar for women in transition.

A protege of mine asked me to follow her on Twitter. After receiving 5 straight Tweets in a row about how bored she was with a project, I emailed her suggesting that she wasn't putting forward a positive professional brand.

Whether you have a preference for introversion or extraversion, you can be successful at networking, if you are interesting and are interested in others. What do I mean by this?

First, you can find a style of networking that fits you. Read my prior blog on this.

I'm loving Twitter – it's a great social and business networking resource for useful information – if you follow and are followed by the right people. (That's probably heresy in the Twitter-verse, but it's also full of silly stuff that I ignore.)

Found this interesting article from Australia's SmartCompany.

Here are 3 tips on assessing and leveraging your network from our recent free teleseminar for our Leading Women members who are in transition:

In my new book I explain why the idea of the "visionary leader" is a particular manifestation of the times in which it arose (late 70s early 80s). At that time, successful executives were responding to the external forces in the marketplace and transforming their organizations. Failing executives were not. Being able to set strategy and transform strategy into a concrete, understandable vision helps you align your team for success.

It languished in relative obscurity until the Boston Globe covered a study that identified the dollar value of networking. Studying executives who purchase and sell their company's shares, University of Michigan professors found that men and women don't benefit equally from the trades. Although all executives made money, men made more. And the finance professors who conducted the study attribute the differences to this: "men seem to have better access to inside information - a leg up on networking with the other (mostly male) executives." (e.a.)

In researching women CEOs for my new book, I have been struck repeatedly at the breadth of their networks. The message is clear, every leader (no matter the level from which you're leading – individual contributor, supervisor, manager or executive) needs a strong strategic network. And while women are seen as having exceptionally strong interpersonal skills, we are perceived as not having strong strategic networks.