Every firm of solicitors needs to be able to decipher what is actually meant by ‘the party of the first part’ and ‘the party of the third part’. Every job-seeker must have the necessary qualifications to do the job. So what is the ‘order winner’ in these cases? The
answer is that it’s often the so-called ‘soft skills’ – the interpersonal skills – which are supremely important in differentiating one candidate, proposal or service from another. Networking is paramount among those soft skills. And we know that it can be taught – and learnt. Here’s what Professor Herminia Ibarra (an expert on leadership and professional development at INSEAD business school near Paris) and Mark Hunter (also at INSEAD) had to say in the prestigious business publication Harvard Business Review:
“We have seen over and over again that people who work at networking can learn not only how to do it well but also how to enjoy it. And they tend to be more successful in their careers.”
One of the other lessons I took away from my year at business school is that skills which are intuitive and second nature to one person
can be a real challenge to another by reason of personality, upbringing or culture. Even on the Sloan programme in a class full of supposed high- achievers, I was surprised at how many networking opportunities were being missed by classmates just because they failed to follow some basic, common sense and easy to apply rules. In the years since, I have been repeatedly amazed at how bad most people are at making easy connections, or indeed just ‘making the call’.
A shift of mindset
Most of us know who we want to meet and why, we may know where and when we want to meet them, and what we might gain by doing so. Where so many people fall down is on the how. And here lies the second problem. Networking is also viewed by some as being first cousin to social climbing, or a close relative of the smooth ‘worker of rooms’, intent on using and manipulating people to their own advantage. They fail to see the crucial point of networking – that it is as much about helping others as helping yourself, that you should only network if you see it as a long-term process, and that nowhere is that old (but true) cliché more applicable: What goes around, comes around. Ultimately, becoming a better networker
www.trainingjournal.com September 2015 49
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