Sep 5, 2013
Dale Carnegie Training Japan: http://japan.dalecarnegie.com/
How big is your database of contacts? How many business cards
have you collected and filed? How many people do you know? Turns
out these are all rather pointless questions!
The best questions are: how many people know you and how many
care?
Networking throws up images of attending events, exchanging contact
details and handing over meishi.
This is basically a push model, where you push your details out to
others in the hope that it will lead to business. But what is
missing?
The care factor. Yes, they have your beautifully designed and
carefully crafted message-laden card, but do they care?
What happened during your initial interaction that would create or
increase the care factor?
I go to the occasional event here in Tokyo and, like many others,
belong to chambers of commerce and study groups. Sometimes I look
at my diary and wonder whether I should remove the word “president”
from my business card and replace it with “professional event
attendee”.
I am always fascinated by watching the way people interact—or
don’t—at these events. If I am correct in my presumption that
people are attending the events in the hope of learning something
valuable from the proceedings, meeting someone who can add value to
their business, or both, then the methodologies being applied are
in need of some work.
Incredibly, there are numerous unfriendly, brusque, unresponsive
people attending these events who are just killing their
brands—their personal brand and that of their organisation. Some
radiate “I don’t like people” like a bad case of sunburn.
I wonder why their firms allow them to wander around alone, given
what a force of negativity they represent. They are there for the
content of the proceedings, and meeting others is a byproduct of
the process that they clearly detest. It simply never occurs to
them that they are the brand!
We are social beings, however, and today we are interconnected to a
greater extent than in all human history. The six degrees of
separation theory is already well proved.
The saying, “No man is an island” wasn’t created yesterday; the
idea has been around for a very long time. Yet some of the people
representing their firms don’t want to connect.
Dismal interactions are doing damage to the brand. We come away
thinking poorly of the person and the organisation’s culture.
We are not going to think how we can help them, nor will we bring
solutions to their problems. We will never dream of connecting them
to others in our trusted network, nor ever give them any
business.
Others are more open to the possibility of expanding business
through expanding their circle of friends. I use the word “friends”
on purpose, since we all prefer to do business with people we
like.
We will do business with people we don’t like, but only if there
isn’t a choice. Fine. Question: what makes you likeable?
There are two networking aspects to this: the sheer number of
people we can meet and influence, who will like us; and the quality
of that influence.
You might be thinking, “well, I am not trying to influence people”.
Oh, but you are! It is a truism that we are all in sales, whether
we realise it or not.
At the minimum, we are selling an image of ourselves—trustworthy,
professional, competent, reliable, friendly, intelligent,
experienced, and creative. Being likeable is an advantage in
business that we neglect at our peril.
Drawing business to our firms and ourselves requires that we
influence others in a positive manner.
“You don’t know which one is the beautiful princess, so you need to
kiss a lot of frogs”, is an old sales idea that is still relevant.
By having a bigger circle of influence we can generate more
opportunities, so frog-kissing volume helps.
However, what puzzles me considerably is when, on meeting people
who are sitting at my table at an event, I discover that they work
together. They are usually in pairs but, shock horror, I recently
met five! I was really floored when I realised one of the five was
their section boss!
I would normally think that the firm’s management team definitely
needs some of our training, but I happened to recall their
president telling me a few months earlier what a sterling global
internal training programme they already had in place. Just to
really top it off, they were all recruiters!
Leaders, please take note: it may never occur to you that you would
have to coach your people on something as basic as never sitting
together at events. Why not generate the greatest possible
influence and build new friends for both you and your brand?
Here is a zero cost solution for you—tell the team to divide up the
room between them and get cracking on being likeable!
How about the quality part of the networking interaction that I
referred to?
Here the fundamentals of communication and people skills come into
play. My observation is that there is also a lot of work to be done
in these areas.
The questions, What do you do? and How long have you been here?
seem to be about as good as it gets. There is nothing wrong with
either of these, but we can go deeper.
Letting the other person talk is one of the key precepts taught by
Dale Carnegie. It sounds too simple, but there is a lot of
influence and power in using questions and following Principle
Number Four: “Become genuinely interested in other people”.
Reflecting on the word “genuinely”, should make instantly apparent
the reason this idea is so powerful.
Another good one is Number Eight: “Be a good listener. Encourage
others to talk about themselves”.
We could try some additional interesting questions: What do you
like most about Japan? Where is the best local holiday spot you
have found? Which is your favourite restaurant here?
These questions will tell us a lot about each other—what we think
and what we like—and are always useful in finding points of common
interest, the building blocks of being likeable.
I also recommend seeking advice from others. While we rarely ever
take our own brilliant advice, we are usually geniuses at handing
it out, and we enjoy doing it.
Ask people you meet what they believe their firm does particularly
well. Ask how they build a strong internal culture in their team,
especially if there are cross-cultural challenges. Ask about their
view on the state of play in their industry. Do they believe the
current Nikkei Abenomics-led surge is a dead cat bounce? I think
you get the idea.
Engaging people in a likeable manner builds brands, businesses and
a powerful network of people who both know you and care. Try
it!
Related article by Dr. Greg Story, President of Dale Carnegie Training Japan: "Networking That Works"
Related video
by Dr. Greg Story, President of Dale Carnegie Training Japan:
THE
Leadership Japan Series # 6 - Networking That
Works