Know who your “critical few” are and cultivate them. Make a careful list of your critical few and build a regular staying-in-touch program for each. They should include clients, customers, prospects, colleagues, personal mentors and collaborators. Personally connect two or three times per year with each.
Build your network before you need it. Invest in others before you ask them for anything. Otherwise, you’ll be seen as a freeloader. Cultivate your relationships over time. Then, when you do need help, you’ll find them supportive.
Follow the person, not the position. Build relationships with smart, motivated, interesting and ambitious people, even if they’re not in an important job right now. Follow them throughout their careers. Before you know it, you’ll know some very important, powerful individuals.
Build relationships with people quite different from you. The most creative teams are eclectic and combine people with very different backgrounds and personalities. People who are different from you often connect you into whole new networks that will complement your own.
Make them curious. When people are curious, they reach toward you. Tell them what they need to know, not everything you know. Give brief answers to questions. Hint at things. Don’t lecture. Be seen as someone who has refreshing points of view. Say the unexpected and surprise the other person.
Know the other person’s agenda and help him or her accomplish it. The key to connecting with others is an understanding of what’s important to them. When you know what other people’s priorities, needs or goals are, you can help them.
Every act of generosity creates a ripple. A collateral benefit of selfless generosity is that it draws others to you. There’s no way of knowing how your own generosity—to a cause or an individual—creates a ripple effect. You end up touching many other lives, often without even knowing it.
Andrew Sobel and Jerold Panas are coauthors of Power Relationships: 26 Irrefutable Laws for Building Extraordinary Relationships and the accompanying workbook, Power Relationships Personal Planning Guide (available at www.andrewsobel.com).
