Daly Affirmations
By John Daly
UT Professor of Communication and Management

Professor John Daly, on the job.

In today’s world, networking is how you become and stay successful. You’ll get your jobs through your network, you’ll perform well at your job if you have a good network, and you’ll have a happier life if you have a supportive network.

But there’s one big fallacy about networking. We’ve all heard the phrase, “It’s who you know that matters.” That is absolutely wrong. It’s who knows YOU that matters. The goal of networking isn’t to meet people, it’s to make sure the people you meet remember you. The measure of your networking success is how quickly people return your calls, answer your emails, and volunteer to help you.

If you want to be a more successful networker, here are five strategies you might try:

Continually seek out opportunities to expand your network.

Robert Metcalfe, the inventor of the Ethernet, once said that the value of a
network grows as the square of the number of its users. While Metcalfe saw this as a technology maxim, it also applies to people networking.

Constantly build your networks.

Next time you go to a conference, make a point of making some new acquaintances. Too often, we go to conferences with colleagues we work with and spend all of our time with them. You already know those people. Make some new friends.

Another way to build your network is to befriend people without friends. Next time you are at a party and you see someone standing alone, go over and introduce yourself. When someone new joins your company, be the first to help him or her out. If you make a friend of someone who has no friends, he’ll be your friend forever.

Don’t embarrass yourself when networking.

Too often, when people try to network, they end up doing really stupid things. They forget names (homework assignment: practice remembering names!). They greet someone by saying, “Nice to meet you,” and feel embarrassed when the person says, “Don’t you remember, we went to school together?” (homework assignment: always say, “Nice to see you” or “How are you doing?”).

They ask embarrassing questions like, “How is your lovely wife?” To which the other person answers sadly, “She left me for my best friend” (homework assignment: ask, instead, “What’s new in your world?”). Or, they gossip, forgetting Thumper’s rule in Bambi (“If you got nothin’ nice to say, don’t say nothin’!).

Write stuff down about people.

The single most valuable piece of office equipment you have is your Rolodex.
It’s your network. Keep it close to you, and keep it current. If it’s on an office computer, keep a copy at home as well: if you get laid off, you lose your access to that office machine.

Include on your Rolodex people’s names (don’t forget their nicknames), addresses, phone numbers, and so on. But also include a few personal tidbits: their hobbies, how you met, their children’s names and successes, their favorite brand of beer. That way, when you chat with them, you can say something that reminds them of your personal relationship.

Know that weak links matter.

Savvy networkers seek to know people who know things, and to know people they don’t already know. Chat with successful leaders, and you’ll be amazed by how many people they know outside of their professional realm. A business executive will know a college president, a chief of staff at a major medical center halfway around the world, somebody in the White House.

How do they know so many people? Because they understand the value of weak links. Look, people you know quite well—people you have strong ties with—probably know the same people and the same information you do. While they may be great friends, the network you need to build is with people you have weak links with.

A student networking with Rex Tillerson, Sr. Vice President of ExxonMobil, at McCombs Speaker Series.

Do favors to make your networks hum.

Lisa is an incredibly successful senior executive at a large multinational. She is smart, driven, and just plain nice. She can also be an embarrassment on planes. She will often start paging through airline magazines, and every so often rip an article out, jot a note on it, and seal it in an envelope, which she addresses and mails after the flight.

What’s Lisa doing? Networking by favors. For example, Lisa knows Andre enjoys collecting wooden duck decoys. Spying an article about a wooden duck decoy museum in Salisbury, Maryland, she’ll rip it out and write: “Andre: Don’t know if you saw this, but thought you might be interested…Best, Lisa.”

She is networking by doing little favors for people even before they ask. She is surprising them by remembering them. Good networkers are masters of the favor.

Just as important, successful networkers know the wisdom of asking for favors. If I do you a favor, who owes whom? Most people would say that you owe me. Counterintuitively, I also owe you. In fact, the more favors I do for you, the more I owe you. Call it the investment theory of networking. You are generally successful to the degree others want you to be successful. You want to get adopted. And, how do you get adopted? Ask for favors. Ask for advice.
Certainly, you’ll owe me as well, but the key here is that there is no harm in seeking help from others, and you’ll probably get great returns from doing so.

People used to think that networking was a shady way to succeed: if you couldn’t perform well, network instead. Now we know that networking is what allows you to succeed. The measure of someone’s competency today is not only knowing a lot but also knowing people who know things. Networking is how you are able to perform. Certainly, a large and broad network doesn’t guarantee success, but without one it is far more difficult to succeed.

Dr. Daly’s research and teaching interests include interpersonal communications, advocacy, and persuasion. Daly has worked with more than 300 public agencies and private organizations from Fortune 500s and small businesses to The White House (Executive Office of the President) and a variety of state and local agencies. His work in consulting, training, and speaking has taken him to Great Britain, Malta, the Netherlands, Finland, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Columbia, and Venezuela.

• John Daly: www.utexas.edu/coc/cms/faculty/daly.html