No going back: The future of networking | with Kingsley Aikins

Foreign.

Hello and welcome to the Shortlist. My name is Johnny Campbell. I'm your host of the Shortlist podcast and live show and also CEO and co founder of Social Talent. So welcome to show. I think 52 is today and we're going to be talking about a topic I think absolutely every one of you can hopefully get involved in and that is the future of networking. There's no going back. The last year has been remarkable year. We've changed so many things. We talk about it regularly on the show, have done so for pretty much all of our 50 something shows to date and today is no different. But it's the first time we're talking about the topic of networking and I'm really excited with our guest today. But a quick reminder for those of you who are listening to our podcast and recording of this, it's actually a live show that broadcasts every Wednesday afternoon. That's UK Ireland time at 4pm if you're listening live, welcome. We'd love to have your comments. You can listen live Every Wednesday on YouTube or on my LinkedIn profile. So social talent on YouTube or you can look up Johnny Campbell on LinkedIn and find it on my live profile. We'd love to hear your comments and questions throughout the show. So please join in if you're listening live and you think you might want to drop off after 20 minutes. Forget our podcast is usually up and running on a Wednesday evening, Thursday morning every single week. And you can subscribe on itunes, Apple or Spotify. You want to find out more about the show and check out our previous episodes, watch the live videos or check out those links. You can do so@socialtalent.com the shortlist. So onto today's topic, right? So the power networking experts out there, you know, would agree that networking is really, really important. It's a powerful tool. It's really important for all of us, whether we're a business leader, whether an employee running our own business, working for somebody else. One conversation can literally alter the course of your life. But Covid has pushed a large portion of the workforce online and it's really important now to ask how do you make sure you're still networking successfully and efficiently over zoom calls, Slack messages? And what does the future look like? I know for one, I've built a business RN networking. Okay, this isn't a business that does networking services, but I know the access I've had to the talent acquisition industry, the access I've had to find great speakers to build a platform to figure out how to start a business. Like we have in social talent all came through networking and it came through in person networking. It came through meeting people at different events, getting off and plane somewhere and going somewhere, having a chat with a bunch of folks in a conference room, in a hotel, bar afterwards, restaurant, food, keeping in touch. That network over the years has enabled us to build social talent. And so we are living in a world today where that kind of physicality of that international physicality of a network is not available even on the domestic level. For many of us, we haven't been able to go further than three or four miles or five kilometers of our homes. So it is a good question to ask, what does networking look like in 2021 and onwards? Our guest today, Kingsley Akins, has the answers. I actually do believe he does have the answers. He's the CEO of the Networking Institute and he believes that when business is down, you paint the shop and now is the time to take stock and get prepared for whatever comes next. And there's still a huge yearning to be part of a community. We all have this built into us. And whilst networking may look a little bit different right now, it is so super important to remain engaged and proactive. And whilst tech will play a role, I think Kingsley, you would probably caution against completely starching the traditional human aspects of networking out of the equation. Kingsley, welcome to the show. It's a real pleasure to have you. I first heard you 10, 12 years ago and still tell people about what I Learned in that 30 minute talk. So I'm expecting big things of you. You can start by perhaps introducing yourself to our international audience if they don't know you and maybe explain why networking, why has this become the career defining thing for you?

All right, well, thank you very much, Johnny. That introduction I think was way over the top and over egged and over exaggerated, but I have to admit it was exactly the same as the one I emailed you last week. So thank you so much. Thank you so much for getting that one right. Look, I'm a huge fan of networking and basically my experience in life, I lived and worked in six countries around the world. In most of those countries I arrived, I didn't know a sinner when I arrived. I met a lot of sinners since. But, but I knew that to survive and thrive, I had to build a strong and diverse network. There was kind of no, no option, no alternative to it, I had to do it. So I realized the kind of networking, it's not a luxury, it's a necessity. And you know, I think to survive and thrive in this world. You have to have a network not just for your professional life, but also for your personal life. So really there's no option but to do this stuff. And that's what I discovered.

I totally agree. And you know, it's something that I have found personally, and we'll talk about this again in a few minutes. I've had to make very deliberate time to network in the last year and a half. And you know, I try never to refuse the opportunity to talk to somebody new who gets introduced to me. Or I find even though you might be faced with mounting pressure, lots of deadlines, lots of other things to do, I guess when you have the benefit of many years or decades of working, when you see as I have and you have the benefits of a strong network, I see the benefit of taking a couple hours out for someone completely new where you know there is no transaction to be had. You're wondering, there's nothing there for you to get out of it. But I know that that's not the purpose. The purpose is a connection and that relationship, they might get tons out of it. And over time, having a network of folks and being able to introduce to different people from different backgrounds always works out in the end. Like always, it is a strong thing, perhaps difficult to maybe get perspective of maybe earlier in your career when you don't have that kind of benefit of hindsight and maybe it's more difficult to try and do now. So I want to get into some of those issues. I want to talk about them, but I'm going to start by framing it with, with something a bit of research that both of us read in the last couple of days that comes from our regular weekly news. Now let's go with some news. Whilst this might not have been in the first front pages of your tabloids, there was a great piece of work published in Harvard Business Review back in February, Kingsley, and it's entitled Research. We're losing touch with our networks and we'll share the link live to those of you listening on YouTube and LinkedIn by Marissa King and Balash Kovacs. And I thought this was fascinating because the researchers, whether by accident or design, they had worked with, I think 200 plus people and they'd analyze their networks and ask them a bunch of questions before the pandemic and then they asked them similar questions after the pandemic and at a high level. I'll summarize and maybe get you to share your thoughts on it. They discovered that our professional and personal networks have shrunk by about 16%. Very precise number during the pandemic. And for the most part they talk about how it's shrunk on the fringes, the kind of call in the weaker ties of your network are shrinking more. And very interestingly, it's actually shrunk for men. Not just more than women, but actually it's really only shrunk for men. So they're the two big things that I took from this and there's lots more in there. Love to hear your thoughts on this because I think it touches on a lot of stuff that you might have been well aware of or come across a long time before this article was published.

Yeah, well, actually, coincidentally, Marissa King, I read her book about three weeks ago. I bought a book called. It's called Social Chemistry. She's a professor in Yale University in the US and this book of social chemistry, because I was big beginning to think, you know, I think there's a hidden cost in Covid that doesn't get talked a lot very much. And that's the fact that it's what we call network shrinkage. It's actually our networks have decreased in size. Now she pointed out something extraordinary, didn't realize that actually men's networks, she said, have decreased by 30% and women's networks haven't decreased at all. And the reason for that, she said, was that, you know, men like to do stuff with other men very often they like to go for a pint, as we say here in Ireland, or they like to go to a football game or they like to play golf or go fishing. Sort of transactional male things, because women actually quite like spending time together and conversing and chatting, etc. And you know, I have to admit, when I looked at our household here, you know, if my mate rings me up and says, do you fancy a pint? I say, yeah, I'll see you down in the boozer, you know, in 15 minutes. And that's the end of the conversation. I see him down there, but I noticed when, when one of my wife's girlfriends rings her up and says, you know, would you like a glass of chardonnay down the boozer? They have a chat for an hour and then they go down and have have that meeting in the boo. So, you know, I think that's absolutely fascinating and it is a reflection of something that's going on out there. I also think that, you know, we are paying this kind of price. You know, normally in the old days or pre Covid days, your networks didn't shrink they actually churned, you know, in other words, you know, you found new connections that replaced old ones. But that's not happening. It hasn't been happening under Covid. We haven't been replacing our traditional old connections with new connections because we kind of couldn't and can't. And we've actually, actually one of the points that Marissa makes in her book is that we've kind of shifted time and attention away from strangers and the weak connections as you indicated, which are on the outer concentric rings of our networks. And we've spent more time with our bonded close relationships, our family and our close friends. And that might be just as few as sort of five or sort of ten sort of people. But there are implications in that, you know, it has impacts on careers, it has impacts on jobs. There's less sort of serendipity and luck and chance going on. Business development is not happening the way it did pre Covid. I mean, I think people are doing a good job keeping in touch with their existing clients and customers, but actually not developing new ones. So I think there's a price to be paid for this. And although it's not being talked about very much, I'm delighted that Marissa King brought attention to it.

Yeah, I was thinking about that perspective around you mentioned business development. But growing a business or starting a company, international company in particular, like we're a we 98% export in social talent and thankfully we're 10 years old. So we did a lot of networking, built a brand over the last 10 years. I hate to be doing it from scratch right now because I just don't know how I do it because the way we did it is not available to us right now. And I think it just will be so much harder and is harder for those companies or individuals out there trying to do this, trying to reach out. You can trade off your existing network. I think for a time. Maybe we're coming to the end of that year, year and a half might be pushing it. But if you're having that shrinkage, you know, does that end? Is that like. I didn't discuss it. Maybe the book went into more detail. Kingsley, if you can share it. But is that a continuing trend? Do you keep eating 30% off every year if you're a man or was it a one time movement to online? You drop 30% and then you'll hold. What are your thoughts on that? Is that a continuing thing? We're likely to see if this goes on.

Well, you know, it's not all bad news. I have to say. I mean, I think there's some vocabulary I struggle with. I think this notion of remote working is probably, to me, that sounds all about loneliness and isolation. Remote. I think it should be called digital working rather than remote working. I also think social distancing is not the right correct expression. I think it should be physical distancing, but social connecting. And actually, you know, out of that, the difficulties of COVID Actually something interesting has come, which is the fact that we have all developed an affiliation to using Zoom and etc. And developing networks that way. Now, you know, I totally not only miss and struggle, and I'm struggling, I must say, with the situation as it is now. But that said, credit where credit is due. The thing about Zoom is that you actually are unrestricted geographically. You can connect with anybody, anywhere in the world, and for free. And I don't know about your business, Johnny, but in my business I find free a very compelling price point. So that's an attractive thing. Also, you know, we're saving. We're not spending time and energy and money and carbon footprint and grooming time, you know, flying all over the place to have meetings and nothing ever happens. I think that's a kind of a plus. Also, everybody's available. I mean, if you think about it, I keep getting calls. I don't know if you get these calls, Johnny, but somebody. I keep getting calls, people saying, are you around next week? Of course I'm around next week. I'm not going. I can't go anywhere. And so I'm available. And also, more people are spending more time online than ever before in history. And because of one company, LinkedIn, we now can find out a huge amount about people, about their experience, about their education, about their interests and hobbies. So there's, you know, so certainly the business I have. We've developed an entirely new tribe of supporters internationally, partly because we looked at online connectivity as not a mechanism for selling. We said, let's use this to serve, not sell. And let's use it to use the cliche, now is the time to shine online, to build an online presence and identity and brand, if you like. And I think that when we go back, and that's probably the wrong expression, when we go on to whatever the next phase of work. And it's definitely, we're all going to work and learn and travel and educate ourselves differently in the future, but when we go to that period, I think we're going to have not only our existing traditional networks, which we had before, and we've made a Big effort to keep in touch with, but we're going to have a whole other new tribe of connections around the world. And it's around the world that we hadn't got before. So not all negative is the story.

I totally agree. I'll share a personal and business story that backs that up. One is again, my group of friends, maybe we're traditional males in that we're lousy at phone calls and connecting. We're not great at regularly meeting up. We don't hold it against each other either, which is probably the plus side. But during COVID we started doing zoom poker calls once a month. We used to play poker twice a year, now we're playing it every four weeks. And there's a bunch of us who live overseas who never got involved and now there is as involved because the barriers aren't there anymore. And we've actually never kept as in touch in the last year and a half as we have as a group of lads who grew up together. So that's a personal side up. I find a huge benefit from that. There's less one on one conversations because when you do go to a pub or a restaurant, you do break off and you talk to the person beside you. The challenge of a zoom call is that it's a six way conversation and not every topic lends itself to a six way conversation. You know, on the business side though, I think what I've always seen and you know, like yourself, having run a business that's very internationally focused, even when I, you know, first, I set up our first recruiting business before social talent, myself and Vince, my business partner, we had lived abroad. So we started with international and in mind and we were using Skype as our mechanism. He lived in Waterford, I lived in Dublin, which are two different counties separated in Ireland, for those of you listening from abroad. And we just kept skype on for 10 hours a day and just like it was like someone sitting beside you. But, you know, we had this sense that, you know, just because someone isn't next to you physically doesn't mean you can't do business with them, hire from them, work for them. So we got that early. But I think more people have realized that in the last year, whereas their habits might have been you go to a business meeting in person, you have to talk to a potential candidate in person, and then we can't do that. You go, well, I don't really know where this person is. And just because they coincidentally happen to be in the same city as me, because that's the way I've always worked. They don't need to be. I could provide this same service to a different part of the world. Whether that's, you know, I see in the recruiting world, for example, recruiters traditionally worked in the same buildings as the hiring managers they served. You know, and there was a feeling that we needed to have the recruiter available to pop down to my desk to have a chat with, and the candidates had to be able to come to the city and meet me. That's gone, and you don't need it, you know. So I think you're right. There's so much more opportunity that opens up when you realize that we've survived just fine and there's so much more potential out there.

And I think there's another dynamic out there. Possibly for the first time in history, it's now more important what you do than where you are. You know, that's fascinating. I've always been interested in the whole diaspora connectivity that countries have, and I've worked with about 30 countries helping them develop relations with their diaspora. Because in the old days, your geography dictated your identity. If you lived in Southern California, that's who you were, that's where you were, and that was it. But now you can live in Southern California and be totally committed back to Scotland or Poland or Portugal. That's an interesting sort of hyphenated life that people can lead. So I think that's fascinating. And we've all embraced this Zoom thing. In fact, I have to say, my mates, I've got these mates a bit like yours in the poker. They call me a baby zoomer because I'm doing so many of these. In fact, one rather nastily calls me a Zimmer Zoomer, which I think is.

A little bit.

Tough. But I actually think it's really liberated us in many ways, and it's liberated, we now say in our business, you know, geography is history. You know, it just doesn't matter where you are, what you do. The world is more a mosaic than a melting pot, which is another interesting way of looking at things. So I think that those different dynamics have been accelerated by what's happened in the last year. And a bit.

I'm going to push forward to our second news story. Kingsley, an article. This one comes from Forbes, and it's titled 14 Professional Tips for Networking During. This was kind of a best of tips from a panel of 14 council members in Forbes that was published very recently. And again, it's meant to be for the. For the world we live in today. Anything jump out at you in particular from this list that you said. Yeah, that's a really good, insightful point. Or was it all too general, too vague for your liking?

No, no, good, good, solid stuff. And of course, you know, the tips I loved were the ones that, you know, I've always been writing about, funnily enough. I mean, I love the notion, I call it funnels of serendipity. How random chance can change your life. You know, how one introduction, one conversation, as you said in the beginning, can alter your life. But. But those things don't happen when you're lying in bed or sitting at your desk even. They happen when you're in motion. They happen when you're out and about. They happen when you put your talents on displ. They happen when you talk to strangers. Now there's an interesting one. You know, what's the thing that we. I know you've got four young boys, Johnny. What's the thing we all teach our kids? We always say, don't talk to strangers, but actually, you know, statistically our kids are more danger from friends and family than they are from strangers. But that whole notion of not talking to strangers is something that you have to get over. If you want to build a diverse network. You have to seek out what I call unlike minded people. You actually have to go and look for people who are different from you because there's that concept called homophily, which is kind of a fancy Greek word which means, you know, the tendency we have to always spend time with people just like us. You know, the old birds of a feather flock together an ocean. But, you know, you and I live in a city, Dublin, where I was giving you the stats before the show. I mean, you know, 33% of the working age population of Dublin were not born in Ireland. So this is an intensely diverse city. But the question is, does your network reflect the diversity of the city you live in, the economy you operate in, and the society you operate in? And if it doesn't, all the research by all the great houses will say, you as an organization, you as an individual, you underperform. So that's a particular challenge for us. So I grew up in this city and it was what we used to call male, pale and stale. This was not a very international, cosmopolitan city. In fact, I told a joke the other night. I said, I went into a restaurant back in those days, and I asked the waiter, what's the soup du jour? And he said, hang on, I'll go in and I'll ask the chef so he goes into the chef and he comes out and he says to me, it's soup of the day, right? So that was. Back then, we were not very cosmopolitan, but now this is an extraordinary city to be lived in, to be living in. So, you know, things change and we need to change with it, and we, our networks need to change with it.

Yeah, I totally agree. It's, it's something, you know, a couple of the tips in that article slightly irked me as they, they're easy tips, but they don't, I think, convey the proper essence of networking in that they're saying, you know, make sure you're posting on LinkedIn, you're, you know, online, your social media presence, which there's no harm in. And too often people look at how do I build better networks for my job, for my, for my, for my, my company? And they think, how do I use social media? To me, networking has always been in mindset. It hasn't been a list of tasks per se. It starts with a mindset. You know, it's being open. It's having a different relationship with, okay, what are you trying to get out of this? Networking isn't seeking out others through which you can gain more opportunity. It's kind of just being interested in people, interesting, in the richness, rich tapestry of life out there and backgrounds. And to your point, it is, it is the, it is the lack of homogeny in your network that makes it interesting. You know, I have a transition year student, Gavin, working with me today. He's sitting in the room listening to this podcast for his week of, of work placement. For those of you not in Ireland, that's a kind of, when you're 15, 16, you do a year's kind of between exams type education. And you know, yesterday we, we spoke with a bunch of folks in Germany. Then we went to calls in the US this morning we started with calls in the Czech Republic and moved on to India and then back to the US and now here we are, hopefully talking to an international audience. I love that I can go around the world from this room and that's the world we live in. Technology wise, it's just so easy and you can have fluid conversations and you're, you're actually learning around about the world because most of us start a conversation with, you know, how's Covid? How are we getting on? The person tells you what it's like in their state, their country, what's going on in their world, the politics, the weather. You just get this broader perspective of life that if you were just looking at the same group. And maybe we did this the old ways, maybe when we just relied on in person networking, we did hang around with the same people, the same look and feel, the same ideas. And if it's done anything good, I think forcing you to kind of broaden that network, which is really the important part, I think is good. But I'm gonna stop. I'm talking too much and I'm not the guest here.

Kingsley, you're doing a great job.

I'd like to. I'd love to ask you about something that was mentioned in the first article. The article mentions this concept of concentric rings that we have. If you think of six rings of a tree, the center ring is about five people. The people you go to, your nearest dearest in trouble, and then on the outside, up to 1500 people who you kind of know by face, you know, but that's about it. And you'd recognize them in a crowd. You used a concept that was very similar when I first heard you talk and you talked about the bench. And I'd lovely you could just reshare that with our audience to talk about, you know, the different levels of a network and which parts of that network are more important and the mindset way of thinking about it. I think it's a really important thing to share.

Yeah, look, I think it's. I mean, I've always been a great fan of a guy called Robin Dunbar and Dunbar, he was a professor in Oxford of anthropology, and he came up with a concept called Dunbar's number. And, you know, the Facebooks and these companies all around the world have all kind of, you know, worshiped at the shrine of Dunbar's number. And Dunbar's number basically says that, you know, technology is changing at a ferocious pace. But up here, up here, this ability, this cognitive ability you have here has not changed in a billion years. So, you know, and he says the maximum number of relationships you can have at any one time is 150, including friends and family. So you can't have thousands of people up. You just don't have the bandwidth and the ability to be able to do that. So park that concept. And then the other concept kind of meshes with that is that, you know, your weak connections can be much more helpful to you than your strong connections. For some of the points we said earlier. You know, the strong connections are just like you. Not only do you know them, you know what they think, you know who they know, you know their views and know their opinions, etc. So your weak connections. There's some great research in America by a guy called Granovetter that said your next job will come from your weak connections because they bridge you into different sorts of people in different sorts of places. And that was. That was the kind of. The origin of that kind of bench concept in that. And also this notion that, you know, you have to audit your network, you know, to be able to answer the following question, is my network good enough for where I want to be in the next few years? You actually have to do a physical exercise of auditing your network, which means printing it off and looking at it. And you'll see straight away three things. The first thing you'll see when you audit your network is that, you know, you have a load of redundant entries in there. I mean, I takeaways in Sydney or dry cleaners in Boston, where I lived. I don't need them. So you can clean up your network. That's a good exercise. The second thing is you realize you've got some real major gaps in your network. You know, nobody in aircraft leasing or tourism or whatever it is, or lives in Brisbane, you know, so you can begin the exercise of filling them. And then the other thing, and this has been so interesting. During COVID you can discover you had some dormant connections. You have some great people in your network from the past, and you've let. You've just lost touch with them. You, nothing happens. You never row or a fight, but, you know, you went this way, they went that way. You know, life gets in the way. Four boys, very busy, you know, so how are you going to, you know, you lose touch. So. So what I did during COVID was every week I connected just with one dormant connection that I had. So now it's nearly 60, 70 people I've had great conversations with. I've picked up where I left off, and that's been fascinating. Not only have I moved on and hopefully up to so have they. So there are certain things that you can do if you like to develop that kind of bench strength of your network. And they're practical things. And you also have to segment your network because, you see, not everybody in your network is the same. And I have this theory of categorizing it into four different categories. It's like a pyramid. And at the bottom of the pyramid is a contact. And a contact is a name on your network. And for the life of you, you can't remember who they were. You must have met them at a reception, on a flight, at a football game, something like that. You swapped a card and you've put them on your network, but you can't remember who they are. So that's pretty damn weak. And then moving up, you have a connection, and a connection is you know them, they know you. There's an element of familiarity. If they called you, they'd know who you were and vice versa. But you're not doing anything, so that's a bit better. And then moving up again is a relationship. You know them, they know you. You're doing stuff together, you're doing business together, you like each other. And then the key one, you trust each other. You know, we live in a world where trust is pretty much at its lowest level in recorded history. Edelman, the great communications company, do an annual trust survey and they found that trust in four institutions, government, media, nonprofit, and business is at its lowest level in recorded history. So that's a. If you got that kind of trust and like, and that's. That's really great in your network. And then at the very top, I call it a friend. And I have people I work with are friends. I have friends who are friends. And I don't have many in this category. It's a small category for me because my definition of this category is somebody you could call on their cell phone on a Sunday afternoon. And you wouldn't do that to many people. In fact, you'd probably only call these sorts of people if you had a problem or a bit of a personal or family crisis. And so now you've got some shape on your network. So this is quite. Not a bad exercise to do during lockdown is to actually put shape on. And then you begin to see where you need to take some action. Because in networking you have to take action. Because if you don't take action, then quick as a flash, nothing happens, you know, and that's the challenge. You know, you can talk a lot about this stuff, but you actually have to take action.

Yeah, I'd love to maybe hear from some of our live audience listening what they have done to try and maintain their networking during COVID Love to hear any ideas that any of you have do jump into the comments and share them out here. I love that active approach. And just the one a week. It's simple, right? But it makes sense. And even your comment around it's not your closest network will probably help you get your next job. You know, it's not your brother, it's not your cousin, not your best friend. It's highly unlikely they'll get you your next job. It's the person you met three years ago and you, you know, happened to bump into again, or they come across a notification to say you're looking for a job and they go, I think I can help you. You're 100% right. It is those weaker ties that often give you those opportunities. You know, how did you go about selecting from the 60? Like, how did you. Was it just, I'll pick any name and I'll eventually get to everybody? Or what was your methodology for getting to kind of selecting each week, who should I make the next person I reach out to?

Yeah, I did it partly geographically. I lived for eight years in Australia. I lived 15 years in the United States. I lived in London. So I looked at each of those and I kind of segmented a little bit and split between them. Then I thought about people I knew from, from school and college. And then I talked about people I knew from different companies I worked. And then I thought about, as I said, people geographically. So I kind of spread the whole thing. And I've just found it to be a very refreshing and interesting exercise. And I didn't really realize, you know, the strength my network until I got stuck into this and I realized, you know, I had some really great connections in the past. I think everybody has these connections and we've tended to let them die. And they're. The hidden value in your network is dormant connections.

What. What does bad networking look like, Kingsley? So, you know, what are the attributes of, you know, you've seen, when you have heard of where you go, that's not networking. You're doing it wrong, or that's not the best way to do it. What would be the top things that come to mind?

Well, I'll go back to your definition of networking, which totally gels with my definition of networking. Networking is not about you at all. Networking is not about even getting anything for yourself. Networking is about giving. Networking is about giving to individuals on a consistent daily basis. That it becomes a habit, it becomes a ritual, it becomes who you are. And it's based on a really simple premise. And you reiterated it earlier. The more you give to individuals, the more it comes back to you from the network. So I think that here's an interesting thing. I mean, first of all, networking has got a lousy image. I mean, most people really hate the concept of networking. It sums up images of sleazy, slimy individuals late at night flicking out business cards in a bar. You know, you wake up in the morning, you find Johnny's business card and the turn up of Your trousers, Where did that come from? You know, and that's the kind of image of it. And interestingly enough, the word network, the noun sounds pretty positive. You know, somebody having a good network, that sounds pretty good. But the verb networking, no, that sounds inauthentic, sleazy, slimy, and kind of even, dare I say it, a little bit dirty. So there's some real problems with networking. It's not taught at school or college. It's not a KPI. You're not rewarded or compensated for it. The recruitment process, it doesn't show up in the recruitment process. So there's some fascinating things, and we intend to mix up networking and sociability. We tend to think the most sociable person is by definition, the best networker. And here's what's really fascinating. Introverts can be better at networking than extroverts. And why is that? Because they do it with decency, authenticity, integrity, honesty. They ask questions and they listen. The extrovert, pushy networker out there, who does it, to answer your question, who does it badly, who is trying to wow you all the time? Who's interrupting you all the time? Who's looking over your shoulder to find somebody more interesting, who likes to spread their social capital very thinly amongst a lot of people, that really kind of pisses people off. You know, Dale Carnegie, he wrote one of the classics in this area, how to Win friends and influence people. I mean, he said it so many, many years ago. He said, the important thing is to be interested rather than interesting. He said, a really good question beats a really good comment. He said, the smile in your face is more important than the clothes on your back. He said the sweetest sound that anybody ever heard was the sound of their own name. He said, you know, when you talk about yourself, people think you're a bore. When you let them talk about themselves, they think you're an interesting conversationalist. And lots more kind of slightly folksy kind of stuff that was written. Those things haven't changed a whole heap over the generations, which is one of the interesting things about networking, that despite all the technology, some of those altruisms remain true today.

Right. We forget that our brains don't change that fast. You know, we are who we are and it changes over the millennia. Perhaps. But you're so right, the networking scares people. I've heard some great comments on this piece of advice. One I really loved was that one of the great ways to start a conversation at a public event, because I'll be honest with you, I Don't like public events where you enter a room, you don't know somebody, and you're told to go in there and network. I, I hate that. I despise it. And that for those who know me, you might think that's crazy. I'm sure Johnny loves that. I despise it. Nothing more. I would have fear. I would want someone to come in with me. Go, come on, come with me. Come and come into the. I'm not going in by myself. I do it and people think I'm great at it, but I have to be intentional. And the technique I was taught, which you've already mentioned, was to just arm yourself with your first few questions. Your job, you think, the theory. If you go, what will I say? You don't just say anything. Trust me, people love the sound of their own voice. If you ask them questions, they'll keep talking and they'll go, he was a really interesting guy. He really, you know, I loved him. He never told me a thing about himself. But he asked some questions. And one of the best questions I've used this that I was told to start with was, where are you from? And the person who suggested this to me said, you get two answers in a business context. Either someone will hear your question as, where do I work? And they'll tell you about their job and their company, or they'll see it in a personal level, where they come from. Either way, it's great. And whatever answer you get, flip it and ask them the other side of the equation. That's brilliant. So where are you from?

The.

Where you hail from? Or they tell you where they're from.

Great.

Where do you work? And you've got two really interesting answers in one question. And you just expand so much. I think that is, you know, people starve for these tactical things. Click. Kingsley. Like, tell me what I actually need to do. I get the idea. I get I should do it, but I hate it. I don't want to do it because I fear I'm going to have to talk. You know, what are some of the things teach individuals aside from the concepts, etc. What are some of the other tips that you give folks?

Well, look, picking up on what you just said, I mean, people absolutely hate going into a room where they know nobody. The guy called Andy Lapata, who wrote a book called and Death Came Third, and what he said was he did some research about greatest fears in life and death was number three. Number two was walking into a room where you know nobody. And number one was, I Guess you guessed. It's public speaking. I mean, these are the great kind of fears. And I think, I think we have to accept something early in the piece. I mean, I didn't network. In fact, I wasn't very good at networking early, early on. And I certainly didn't network at school or college. And I don't think, I think that sounds a bit naff to even expect people to do that so early in life. Your network tends to be organic. It depends on your family, your friends at school you go to, sports, hobbies, holidays, all that kind of stuff. And that's fine. But as you progress through life, you actually have to become more intentional, strategic and thoughtful about your network. And sometimes I think schools and colleges are to blame for this because in school and college you get a metric, you get a grade, you get a score, you get a mark, and that determines your progress. Then you get into the real world and there's a whole series of things that determine your progress which you can't actually count. Empathy, emotional intelligence, curiosity, personality, trustworthiness, you know, your character, all of those things. All of those things count but can't be counted. And that's one of the great sort of struggles in that. So, you know, I think that, you know, we have to take a sort of a wide lens approach at these things. And we have to realize that as our careers progress, the technical skills we needed to get our job in the first instance, critically important as they are, become less important and relationships become more important. I'm a fan of a guy called, I don't know if you ever come across this guy called Harvey Coleman, American, who wrote a book called the PI Theory about career progress. And it's just fascinating because written some time ago, but he said some outrageous things. He said how well you do in Your job depends 10% on how well you do your job. So that sounds crazy. Surely you gotta, you know, how well you do your job should be like 80, 90%. He said no. He said doing a great job is mandatory. It's the minimum, it's the price of entry. It gets you on the pitch. He said it gets you on the ladder, but doesn't get you up the ladder. Career progress is about going up the ladder. He said you get paid on performance, you get promoted on what other people think of your potential. So he said it's the I and the E of his PI theory that matter about career progress and networking. And the I stands for image. You know, what do people think of you? What are you known for? You know, what's your reputation. You know, your reputation is what somebody says about you when you're not in the room. So that's 30% of career progress. And then he says 60% of your career progress depends on E. And E stands for exposure. Who's seen you in action, who's seen you perform, who's seen you at meetings, who's seen you deliver? What are you known for? What are you a go to person for? Are you known within the company? Are you known outside the company? So they're all, you know, really interesting notions and concepts and, you know, basically it turns on its head. The piece of advice I got from my parents, leaving college and going to my first job, which was work hard, keep your head down and keep out of trouble, which actually wasn't very good advice. And this whole notion, and many people have this notion, you know what, I'm going to work really hard, I'm going to do a super job, and I'm going to let my work speak for itself. But here's the problem, Johnny. Work doesn't speak. Other people speak. And the person who I think has personified this whole approach to career progress and networking is a woman called Carla Harris. I don't know if you've ever come across her 35 years in Morgan Stanley, African American on Wall street, phenomenal individual, great TED talks, great YouTube videos. But she says a fabulous line. I've always remembered this line for her. She said, you got to remember something, something that all major decisions about your career, about your compensation, about your promotion would be taken by a group of people sitting around a table in a room and you won't be in that room. So she said, all these people have power, but if they're not going to use their power for somebody they don't know. So she said in your, in your career, you need to have performance currency, which means doing a super job. That's the minimum. And you need to have relationship currency. You need to get to know people. So she says you have to develop three different types of people in your network. You need an advisor who helps you technically with your job. That's important. You need a mentor. And that could be somebody in your company or outside your company. And they'll give you the good, the bad and the ugly, and that'll be great. But you need the third thing, which is critical. You need a sponsor. She said a mentor talks to you, a sponsor talks about you. So they're kind of brutal things that, you know, we don't get told this at school or college. You Know we got to learn this thing on our own. There's a lot of unwritten rules of business that you got to kind of have to learn the hard way. You got to be, as I said, you got to be smart. Everybody's smart, but you got to be savvy. And savvy means being street wise, having cup on and understanding the unwritten rules of business progress. Does that make sense?

Obviously a whole lot of sense. I've connected to two recent stories around things I've been involved in lately. One is we an event last week Kingsley on the importance of onboarding and how you do onboarding in a virtual world. And with several people speaking including the global head of onboarding delivery for IBM and she onboards 30,000 people a year or programs do. And she talks about how IBM moved away from an onboarding focus which was around information share to how people feel. And they use the research that suggested that the most important thing to do when you're onboarding someone is help them build relationships in the company and that they're the key person in that is their, their manager and that the manager's job. Typically the manager sees her job as I need to teach Kingsley everything I say, no, no, no, no, that's not your job. Your job is to introduce Kingsley to everybody and advocate for him and help him build the new network that he's going to have. And that correlated with high retention rates and future promotion rates and success rates in the organization. And I was saying that that's the thing you need to focus on. New employee. How do I give her the relationships she needs in the organization? How can I leverage my network to give her the network she doesn't yet have? And the second story was around work we did we're doing at the moment and we have them on the show in a few months time. An organization Arlen called the Open Doors Initiative. Not too sure if you're familiar with them Kingsley they work with individuals from disadvantaged communities in Ireland, from the immigrant populations, from populations of those with disabilities, from traveling community and they try and get them into employment and train them up. And we're going to be working with them on something that we'll talk about in a few months. But one of the key things that they shared with us around what works they said is that you need someone who's going to be a mentor and their definition of it, they said you could educate someone, give them a course, train them up, give them the skills and qualifications, but you need somebody to first of all help them, give them Advice, but advocate for them. To your point around the sponsor is that that person who gets to know them as a mentor becomes the person who champions them, who tells employers why they should hire them, who speaks to them and says, I know this person. That person may not be good at interviewing, probably isn't. They're probably not good, and they don't have the confidence at explaining themselves and their competencies. But the key thing is to have that advocate that, that sponsor, to your point, who's going to sell for you because there's so many people out there who are great, but you just don't have somebody to your point shouting about it and telling them because they just don't have that natural skill themselves. So I love that. I love that concept.

Kingsley Yeah, I mean, Carla Harris says you need somebody carrying your paper into that room. And it's. She's wonderful. I your listeners, if you go on YouTube or go on Ted Talk. Carla Harris, C A R L A Harris she's just a, a really inspiring individual. And everything she says, I believe is kind of really, really spot on. I mean, I think the other thing that that's happening out there is that companies want to hire and wire, you know, they want to hire people and wire into their network. So now when you're being interviewed for a job, they want to know about your qualifications, they want to know about your experience, but they want to know something else. They want to know who you know. Because, you see, we live in a world where it's not what you know, it's not even who you know, it's who knows you that becomes an asset. So your network becomes a portable asset that you own, you've built. When you move to another company, it goes with you, and that becomes attractive to companies. You know, in a world of trying to attract and retain talent, this is a real asset that you have. It's a great competitive advantage when you have something like that to carry with you. Don't you think?

Yeah, it's a big theme around. You know, a lot of corporates call it employee advocacy is a way that they try and leverage that, which is you're trying to get your employees to be your recruiters. Everyone in the business is always recruiting for your organization, but they need to have the right networks. I think it's no point in having an advocate who doesn't have a network who's not known by anybody. In that strict business sense. You want people who are well connected and they know how to leverage that network. So I think organizations are waking up to the importance of this, the power of having employees who have a network and are willing to leverage their network, are willing to mix their network up, to give them, I guess through six degrees of separation, we reach everybody. So until the costs, if you could leverage your own staff to reach folks, why not do that above spending all the amount of money you might spend at career fairs and on technology and everything else to try and do that?

I think, Johnny, there's a concept of network intelligence and that your staff, your employees, they can be your eyes and ears and scouts and spies, you know, they can find out what's going on and report back on it. And I think that that notion, and you have to accept, I think it's Reid Hoffman says, you know, founded LinkedIn. He said, realize that there's more smart people outside your company than inside your company. Just by definition, there's a huge amount of talent out there. And so that's, that's a really interesting way of looking at things. So, you know, you got to invest in your people, you got to teach them, train them, and help them become really good at that. That. I remember the old cliche from the old days, you know, that said, if Hewlett Packard knew what Hewlett Packard knows, it'd be a great company. In other words, you know, they have such talent and ability, but they had struggled to get that out of their people. So I think that's a, an interesting notion, that idea of network intelligence.

So, Kingsley, I can't believe we're at time already. We're at that point in the show where it's my job, unfortunately, to wrap up. I could continue chatting with you a couple of hours especially. So many, so much wisdom. Probably cost me a fortune on the books. I'll have to buy at the end of this, but I'll take them. Kingsley. We ask all of our guests at the end of every show to leave us with one piece of advice for our audience, for our shortlist of advice, and that is either something that you've gained experience in or knowledge yourself. So from your own knowledge, you said, this is the advice I'll give you, or perhaps it's something that somebody else gave you in your career and you. You choose to reshare on. But, but what would that one piece of advice be for our audience today?

Do you know, somebody said it to me once and it made me think a lot about it. They said, always remember something small about people, some small piece of seemingly kind of trivial piece of information that might seem trivial, but for them is really important. And when you repeat that back to them years and years later, they'll always remember that. So, Jonny, I know you've got four boys. I know you're a YouTube fanatic. I know you're a runner. You know, so straight away there's those things. And I think the last thing I'd say is in every interaction with everybody, always remember three questions when you connect with someone. The first question is what can I do for you? Not the other way around. The second question is, if you were me, what would you do? And you're paying respect and deference to wisdom, et cetera. And the third question is, who do you know who lives in Brisbane, works in aircraft leasing? And that's the goldust question because what you're really saying is are you willing to put your name and reputation on the line and make an introduction for me? And introductions are like having a passport at the border. So I'd leave my final comment would be what you're trying to do all the time is to turn cold calls into hot coffees.

I love that. Kingsley, fantastic way to end. Thanks so much for joining us and parting that wisdom. Look forward to having you back again to continue the conversation. I know we can take it, take it miles from here and I'm going to be more intentional, my networking and someone I haven't spoken to in a couple of years.

Years.

It's been a pleasure to have you back reconnected and let's not not drop that connection that we have it again. Kingsley, great.

You're one of my dormant connections, Johnny. I'll be calling.

Thanks for reminders. Well, thanks for joining us, Kingsley and thanks for joining us. For you listening live or listening to the podcast. We'll be back next week. Next week's show I'm also equally excited about we have the fantastic Dr. Mary Collins, who's a chartered psychologist and professional executive coach. I'm one of the smartest people I know. Also living and based here in Dublin, Ireland. She's going to be talking about leveraging the strengths of a multi generational workforce. Mary started telling me several years ago about her research into this and she is living at the co face of this. The research and the training she develops for individuals to try and understand what are the next challenges of different generational generations coming into the workforce. How are organizations coping with these different opportunities and challenges as well. And she's going to be coming to share some of her insights from her new book with us next week. That's on Wednesday, the 2nd of June and that's of course, at Ireland UK time 4 o', clock, which is 11am on the east coast, the US 8am on the west coast. Or you can check out the podcast, which usually goes live Wednesday evening, our first thing on the Thursday morning. If you want to find out more about our show, you can always find us@socialtalent.com the shortlist. But don't forget the advice from today's speakers. Speakers, you want to turn that cold call into a warm coffee? Try it next week. Be more intentional with your networking and we'll see you next Wednesday.