MAKE YOUR CORPORATE CONNECTIONS WORK FOR YOUThis is the next important stage. You’ve created the database, sorted through your contacts and categorised them. You’ve also spent some time working out the links and connections that already exist.
You’ve reviewed your own personal strengths and characteristics and have checked on your appearance and your communication skills.
Now you need to think what types of people you will be dealing with. Who is included in your collection of business contacts? If you can identify them easily, you won’t waste precious time and resources dealing with them in the wrong way.
By paying attention to detail you will find that when you contact someone they will most likely be pleased to see or hear from you. This will make the process of building brilliant connections easier and more successful.
Be proactive with your connections. You’ve created a network that is vibrant and dynamic, unique to you and your business. You don’t want to be hit and miss. A thoroughly joined-up network is the most powerful asset. If you make sure it is part of your business development strategy, it will work wonders for you and your company.
It’s perhaps easier if you look inside your organisation first. No doubt in your database you have entered your colleagues, staff, team members and superiors. You could usefully spend a bit of time working out what makes them ‘tick’. Once you get into the habit of doing this when you meet people, it is amazing how easily and successfully you can connect.
Have you changed your car recently? Before you got the new make or model, were you aware how many of them existed? I expect you hardly ever noticed them. But once you’d taken delivery of yours, isn’t it amazing how many other similar models you find as you drive around? Suddenly there are lots of them all over the place.
This also applies to people. Once you’ve identified a particular type, you will find that you meet other people who remind you of them. Whether they are physically similar, temperamentally alike or just have the same attributes, you will probably know instinctively how they’ll react, what they will be like when you speak to them and how to get on their wavelength.
Internal Relationship-Building In The Workplace
Companies prosper when staff are genuinely interested in their colleagues and others.
This requires mutual respect and, in some cases, developing the confidence to build appropriate relationships within the workplace. (See Chapter 6 for information on confidence building.)
Impressions do count – particularly at work.
- How do staff members come across to one another in your organisation?
- Do your staff interact easily and with openness?
- Any anxieties or insecurities will hinder good communication. Those who feel threatened or undervalued will have the greatest difficulty in buying into the culture of rapport-building, or feeling motivated about their work.
If your perceptions are at variance with happier colleagues, you will find it difficult to adapt to change. You may feel threatened because any movement away from the ‘old order’ will be seen as yet another unwelcome alteration. If you don’t go with the flow, you will be less at ease and feel alienated.
People tend to be one of two types – extrovert or introvert, or those who are people-oriented and those who are highly task-aware.
The latter type often find it difficult to appreciate the value of personal contacts. You may have a colleague like this. They would rather sit at their desk, staring at the computer screen. They email people they sit next to rather than speak to them! They certainly avoid getting coffee from the machine so they don’t have to strike up conversations with colleagues.
People like this do exist – I’ve worked with some of them and it’s staggering what they’ll do to avoid contact with colleagues. Sometimes they try to cover it up by saying they haven’t got time to chat and there’s too much gossip anyway.
A bit of staff bonding goes a long way to enhance goodwill amongst team members and colleagues.
- How much do staff members really know about each other?
- Who are the key people within your organisation to network with?
- Which ones are the decision-makers, the movers and shakers, the influential persuaders?
- Are there some well-connected people – your former bosses or colleagues who have now moved on?
You may not think about this much, but your colleagues and your boss are just other human beings. They have hopes, fears and insecurities like you. Sometimes they need nurturing.
Try to cultivate the ability to see the world from other people’s perspectives. Find out how your colleagues or boss prefer to work. Then, fit in with the pattern so that you can become a fully inclusive member of the team.
Watch out for the stress points. Don’t make a lot of noise early in the morning if some of your colleagues prefer to start the day quietly. If your antennae are tuned in, you will be able to pick up on the clues -when interruptions are welcome and when not – and make sure you don’t add to the distractions.
Whether you are building business relationships internally or externally, it pays to spend time finding out people’s likes and dislikes.
A ‘thank you’ never comes amiss. If praise is due, then say something. If it can be done appropriately, in public, the results can be dynamic.