THE POWER OF NETWORKING - PART 11

THE POWER OF NETWORKING

Part 11


In her “Networking Tips”, Dr Renate Volpe states “Successful leaders spend up to 48% of their time networking. How much of your time are you spending building your business network?”

Last year at one of the Inner Circle meetings that I host in Cresta, there was this chap that sat quietly listening to what was being said. When it was his turn to stand up and tell the audience who he was and what he did, he said something along the lines of “Only unsuccessful people network”.

Needless to say I was gob-smacked! Why then would they have all of these “old boy clubs” that we so often hear about in the movies and that we know, from personal experience to be alive and well. Why would children in Private School make the kind of contacts that they are urged to make, from junior school?

I have watched my Godson Bruce, grow up from being a little titch in Junior school at the Ridge, where he made friends with all manner and means of children, whose parents were well connected both politically and in the business field. I watched him go off to Michael House, in the midlands and heard the tales he told of which children he had befriended and who their parents were. Now as he has won for himself a scholarship in one of the most prestigious schools in the world, Wharton’s Business School in the University of Pennsylvania (which incidentally was founded by Benjamin Franklin), I again hear who he is now connected with and which professors he works with for his pocket money and/or allowance – and what I hear most of all is why he chose to work for them.

Don’t get me wrong, Bruce is not a snob, he never has been, but he understands how important it is to make the right connections now, at the beginning of his working life.

I wonder why he does that, if only ‘unsuccessful’ people need to network!

Could it be that the chap who came to my meeting has it all wrong? Perhaps what he meant to say was that “Successful people network”!

Do you network enough?


To obtain more information on Dr Renate Volpe and her cards, please visit her site on www.HIRS.co.za