I facilitated a virtual fireside chat with Sally Helgesen, author of the Female Vision and spoke afterwards about my role as a community weaver at Executive Networks. I shared with Sally that the majority of the time I spend performing networking coaching with community managers and weavers around approaches and techniques they can consider using as the foundation of building relationships for the purpose of networking.
What we talk about is how individuals can within the construct of networks build relationships. I’m not talking about teaching people about selling a brand or building a personal brand. Rather, as a networking coach, how we spend time understanding individuals and their understanding of themselves, their goals and archetypes.
Do they understand their strengths and weaknesses? Do they have development areas clearly articulated? Where have they or do they plan to explore, etc?
What matters to them in the lens of this network experience? How have they networked in the past, what are they most comfortable offering and giving to the network? What do they desire in return? How much time do they have to spend on these activities? Only then can we have authentic conversations that are tailored to be high value for time around what is most important to them, their gift areas and new contacts or knowledge they would like to develop.
The role of a networking coach tends to often involve the archetype of a detective, adventurer and revolutionary.
