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CHAPTER TWO

GETTING STARTED @

Getting Beyond the Barriers
Does networking sound like the panacea for all your needs and concerns? It can be an answer to many needs but we’ve got to be realistic about some of the barriers that prevent or hinder networking.

First of all, successful networking depends as much on knowing how to ask as in knowing how to give. Yet it is difficult for many of us to ask for what we need. We’ve been taught to hope for the best, but not always to strive for it.

In dealing with other people, some of us have a difficult time admitting we are purposely seeking someone out. We might worry about exploiting or "using" other people*, or perhaps pride chokes off admission of need. Many of us deal with pride’s close cousin, fear of rejection, with devastating simplicity: if you don’t ask, you can’t be turned down, right?

A lack of confidence can stop a person from doing much of anything, let alone networking. Competitiveness, on the other hand, gets in the way just as much for many other people. Taught the values of getting ahead, we’re somehow led to believe we can do it alone. A quote on a wall in a food cooperative notes: "It’s an illusion to think of yourself as independent… we are all dependent on each other." Yet individual accomplishments are applauded and group efforts (except in sports) not always validated (or the applause goes to the person in charge).

Further impeding our progress as networkers are biases and prejudices that make it difficult to clearly see potential for helping in others. Maybe we think only the well-to-do can help anyone, or that we can’t receive help from anyone who is different from us.

Network experiences will break down these barriers as we see the extraordinary help ordinary people can give. Networks are for two-way traffic, for both giving and getting. A properly designed and maintained network is win-win, well-guarded against exploitation. And if, naturally enough, you are still reluctant to lead with your needs, our approach takes that into account. Our emphasis is to ease people into networking by providing ways in which they can lead from their strengths rather than their weaknesses. We believe most people given first the chance to give, will become more comfortable and effective in identifying their needs.

* Welch, Mary-Scott. Networking: The Great New Way For Women To Get Ahead. New York, Warner Books. 1981.

Taking the First Steps
There may be many people who would like to network, but that first step of moving from onlooker to actual involvement is too hard. Yet once that step is firmly taken, the momentum should make it easier to walk further, perhaps someday to jog.

Why not start by remembering network experiences you have already had regardless of whether you labeled them networking. The point is: networking is probably not new to you; you probably have been doing it all your life with nuclear or extended family, friends, neighbors, colleagues, church or synagogue members, etc. You just haven’t been using the word, that is all. So begin by re-identifying as networking parts of those experiences that you can now see were indeed networking. Then recollect all the good help you received, and may still be receiving from these networks and it should build your confidence that more of the same is waiting in a future of more deliberate self-conscious building of new bridges. In a way, the methodology of networking is mainly an attempt to go back again, in a rapidly moving and growing society to the best of earlier family and neighborhood times now diluted or destroyed by distance.

RE-IDENTIFYING NETWORKING EXPERIENCES

Mary went to a week-long educational workshop last summer and met many interesting, informative people. She got to know one agency director quite well and learned of a job opening which called for her skills and would provide for greater challenge. On the suggestion from her new colleague, Mary applied for the job, and got it. While she says she was "just lucky, I guess" she was really a successful networker.

Charlie remembers back to his boyhood town and recalls a community of networkers. Dr. Schmidt did his family’s dental work, while his dad helped with the Schmidts’ plumbing and outside work. Neighbors all pooled together to provide food and a place to gather when someone’s relative passed away, knowing the same would be done for each of their families when the time came. Every time a tree had to be felled due to elm disease you’d find all the strong young people joining the adults in guiding the tree to the ground. WHAT WAS "JUST NEIGHBORLY" CAN BE CONSIDERED NETWORKING. CAN YOU THINK OF EXPERIENCES IN YOUR LIFE THAT CAN BE RE-IDENTIFIED NOW AS NETWORKING?

WAYS TO BEGIN

Get your family to network on household chores: I’ll do the dishes if you’ll vacuum the living room floor, etc.

Turn staff meetings into network sessions by setting aside time for staff to share new skills and information as well as register needs (which will hopefully be met by the organization and/or other staff).

Arrange to get together for lunch with five or six colleagues with a commitment to share support and new information… also to gripe about frustrations and to dream about the future.

 From this reassuring "re-write" of history, your next step might be to think about family, friends, colleagues, people with whom you are close and comfortable. Perhaps you could discuss some of the networking methods, or simply introduce the topic to them. By starting to network with people from this comfortable group you’ll build your skills and avoid possible problems that could accompany networking with strangers.

If you get to this tryout stage with them, pick out one or two of the more enjoyable and visibly win-win networking methods described in Chapter Four. You might even throw a network party, or introduce some of the methods as a game at a social event. Further along, and somewhat more formally, get together with others for a Bridge workshop as described in Chapter 6. At this point you might be tapping into a group you already belong to: church or synagogue; common interest group; service or social clubs. Such groups are often "unconscious networkers". All you will be doing is raising their awareness and skill levels, and our experience suggests you’ll be seen as a valued contributor.

Another first step or early step is to identify networking groups in your neighborhood or community which a) focus on subjects of interest to you, and b) welcome members such as you. For example, a neighborhood recycling effort, small business owners club, etc. All the better if such a group deliberately trains and supports its members in network process.

The combination of knowing how to and understanding why, is optimistically reminiscent of what has happened in energy conservation these past few years. Previously, people didn’t caulk their windows and weatherstrip their doors because they didn’t understand its usefulness. Now, with education and awareness, our record is much better; far less energy is escaping from out homes. Now let us do the same for the conservation and channeling of human helping energy.

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Ivan Scheier
Stillpoint
607 Marr
Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, 87901
Tel (505) 894-1340
Email: ivan@zianet.com

For comments and editing suggestions please contact Mary Lou McNatt mlmcnatt@indra.com