I have attended three live networking events in the last week. In two days time I am attending a day conference and while I am interested in the “content” of that day, I actually am most interested in engaging with the group of empowered and empowering people whom I know will be there. Those people were the motivation for me registering for the conference. I have had, all my professional life, a significant commitment to face to face networking. Anyone who has been following me for any time will know why, and will have heard me say often: “Your Network is Your Net-Worth”.

In all my mentoring work with people who want to grow their careers and/or change them, one of the most important issues I discuss with them is the development and growth of their professional networks. More than 50% of new jobs are offered to you by other people in your network.

What this means is that it’s not WHAT you know that is most important to your career development and sucess. It is WHO you know.

The people in your network are extremely valuable to you. The quality of those people – their reputation and profile, their experience, their reach into the wider community and who they know to whom they can introduce you, is a measure of your net-worth.

This is why people like me invest time, energy and money into networking, in building connections and relationships with people outside their workplace, in External Networking, in other words.

Building Your Internal Networks is Also Important

It is important, however, to also spend time building your Internal Networks, building connections and relationships with the people in your organisation who can support and help your grow your career.

So A Few Questions To Start That Process.

Who are the people within your organisation who have the power to influence the development of your career?

Who are the people in your organisation whose style of working and leadership you would like to emulate?

Do you know these people?

Have you ever spoken to them?

Have you ever tried to build a relationship with them?

Have you ever asked them for help or support?

Have you ever asked for their opinion on something?

Have you shown any interest in their lives outside of work and what’s important to them, e.g, the sport’s team they follow or are engaged with, their children, the organisations they belong to, for example?

Have you ever volunteered to work with them on a project, or shadow them in something they were doing, so you could learn from them?

Have you discovered the professional organisations they belong to and joined those same organisations?

This is what Internal Networking is about.

Take Action!

So I am highly recommending that you make a commitment to build both your External and Internal Networks, to take on board my mantra that YOUR NETWORK IS YOUR NET-WORTH.

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