This is an old picture of me and Jenna, the only person I have met who can make Chamber of Commerce events enjoyable.
It was Pastor Phil Wyman that first called it. “Networking is something that you do naturally. It comes so easily to you that I don’t think you even realize you are doing it.”
It’s a funny thing. I’ve been to any number and type of networking events in the past. Chamber of Commerce Mixers and Expos, Young Adult Nonprofit Networking Events, and the cultish townie groups that has a Herbalife and Amway representative for every local contractor and insurance salesman. I hated almost all of these events - Chamber events enlivened by Jenna Coccimiglio excepted. Hell, it’s even hard to get me to attend a conference unless I am presenting or otherwise obligated to be there. APSE Statewide and National Conferences excepted.
Yet, according to most accounts, my network is pretty robust. I have been doing disability focused workforce development work in Massachusetts for so long - and, I would like to think, with such single minded relentlessness - that I know many professionals and providers at all levels of the field. If I connect with someone I like and think I can trust, I do not hesitate to reach out to them if I need a connection. I also try really hard never to ignore a request for support. Heck, I haven’t been in active church ministry for well over a decade and, thanks to the incredible people who attended Lincoln Christian College beside me and the inquisitive, passionate, Jesus inspired, and God haunted friends I met in the Emergent conversation, I still have a pretty solid network among people who used to be, and a few who remain, evangelical Christians.
I’m going to let you in on a secret. The theme of our Massachusetts Association of People Supporting Employment First conference is focused on networking.
For that reason, I’m going to write a number of short posts over the upcoming months to help prepare for our conference. This will be a testing ground for some of the ideas, stories, and approaches that I hope will help animate our conference. If you’re so kind, I would love to hear your ideas and practices concerning networking as well. I may be proficient in this area, but there is always more to learn.
I hate to disappoint Pastor Phil, but there are times when I am networking consciously. Often, in these moments, I am networking in the following manner:
I am fulfilling a Five Minute Favor. This is a fantastic networking practice that I first learned about in Adam Grant’s fantastic book, Give and Take. The idea of the 5 Minute Favor (would that it was so common we could abbreviate it as 5MF) was hatched by power networker Adam Rivkind. Here’s the gist: If someone asks you for a favor and you can do it in 5 minutes or less do it. Don’t wait to do it. Just shoot that email or share that contact or throw that book in a bag to take to your friend at work tomorrow. This is a very effective way to build your network - assuming that you aren’t a billionaire mega-donor or Taylor Swift or something like that. I’ll assume that most of us aren’t. Want to learn more about the 5MF? Watch this brief clip
I am generously sharing resources with other workforce development nerds or disability focused leaders in my field. I am primarily speaking to my colleagues in the inclusion industry here, since I don’t have any CRISPR secrets or corporate financial data that could enrich me through insider trading. That being said, if you are working and walking towards social justice and people ask you for resources - training curricula, donor names, hot employment leads that you cannot use, etc. - share them freely. In the Christian scriptures it says that if you “give it will be given unto you” in exceedingly good measure. Trust your capabilities enough to work and live with open hands. If you share the job lead that recruiter contacted you about or share why you trust an employer partner with a colleague from another agency, you are very unlikely to find yourself short of resources when you need them
Everyone of us is a node in a network of opportunity. As Dr. King taught us, we are all bound in “an inescapable network of mutuality.” The good Doctor tells the truth when he says that “what affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” This good world, beaten up and overheated as it is, is still brimming with abundance. Share generously with those you trust and those in need and you will likely be caught in a network that that is beautiful, good, and true.
Love the 5MF prompt