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Military Transition: Educating Yourself is the Most Important Lesson

A transitioning O-6 was on a Skill Bridge internship in March of 2020 when the COVID shutdown forced his company to go to the remote/hybrid environment. Watching his peer’s reaction to the emergency, he realized he was better equipped to handle the situation than the long-tenured executives. He went to the company leadership, told them what he thought the organization needed, how he was equipped to handle it and asked to lead the team through the crisis. Guess who succeeded?

 

He learned what the organization needed and translated his military skills into terms they understood and they hired him.

 

Three principles to help guide your transition

 

  • Educate yourself on the needs of the organizations you are pursuing
  • Educate the organizations on your capabilities to fulfill those needs
  • Educate those considering you for a position how your leadership skills differentiate you

 

Leadership is the great differentiator and you have years of experience in high tempo, stressful, environments. Understand how your military leadership expertise and experiences fit the organizations and positions you are pursuing. However, leadership is not enough. Organizations are looking for knowledge and skills relevant to their industry.

Lessons learned from coaching many transitioning veterans:

  • Most veterans do not fully understand how private-sector corporations operate
  • You have to be able to relate your leadership skills directly to the positions you are pursuing
  • Military skills and experiences are often misunderstood and undervalued in the private sector
  • You have to educate those interviewing you that your skills and experiences directly fit the positions you are pursuing

Some corporations have completely mastered hiring veterans. Amazon and General Electric are two. Ask any veteran about Amazon and they will tell you about their Military Pathways Program. General Electric has a Junior Officer Leadership Program that is a two-year development program for separating junior officers.

These are examples of companies fully embracing what veterans bring to the table and make the transition easy. Other easy transitions are companies directly supporting the military. Many veterans will take these paths, putting their well-honed skills to use.

 

What about those who want to do something completely different than their military experience?

 

Take control of the process and become a student and an educator; a student of yourself and the organizations you are pursuing, and an educator to those in the organization. As a student build your understanding of first yourself, then organizations that interest you; their culture, how success is measured, and what is needed from you. As an educator, educate decision-makers in the organization on your capabilities and what you will contribute.

 

Considerations for Your Transition

Consider when to start. The transition takes time. I have worked with veterans who began planning 24 months prior to their transition to several who waited until the end. Two years is not too early. Think of your transition as a one-to-two-year distance learning degree.

 

Consider how to translate your military skills to the private sector. If you are transitioning at less than ten years of service you have been an operator. Working directly in your specialty applying the military skills of your specialty; intelligence, flying, driving, diving, maintaining, and leading at the tactical level.

 

The more senior, the more of a generalist you become. Why, because in your leadership roles you are responsible for executing the operational mission. If you are near the twenty-year mark, it is likely you could readily fit into operations roles in the private sector.

 

Educate yourself on how your skills translate to the private sector.

 

Consider why a potential employer would be reluctant to hire you? What specific skills do they think you are missing? Often it is specific industry knowledge, skills, and experience. I have seen service members rejected because they lacked specific profit/loss reporting, financial, and supply chain experience required for positions.

 

Educate yourself on how to translate your military skills and experiences into private sector specifics.

 

Summary

Transitioning is an education. You are in a self-directed education program, learning about yourself, other organizations, and how you are the best fit. The better you translate your value and fit with private-sector corporations, the smoother the transition.

 

  • Know specifically what you bring to your next organization in their terms
  • Know specifically how your leadership differentiates you in their terms

 

Your first military to civilian transition gives you the rare opportunity to explore an entire world of options available for you. Prepare for it.

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Help for the Medical Profession A Reduction in Burnout by Over 17%

Long shifts, high patient loads, critical work, little appreciation, and feelings of being ineffective. Those are descriptors of medical professionals worldwide today. Medical professionals are burned out.

Definition by the World Health Organization:

  • Exhaustion and fatigue
  • Having negative feelings, cynicism towards their work
  • Lacking efficacy in their work

Symptoms of burnout are nearly twice as common among physicians than among US workers in other fields. A Washington Post survey reports 62% of healthcare workers to suffer from burnout.

 

If you are in a position to significantly reduce burnout in the medical community, would you do it? Let me help you with some data.

 

A randomized study published in 2019 in JAMA, documented the success of individualized coaching as one method to reduce burnout in the physician community.

 

The numbers are in brief. The physicians receiving coaching at the fifth-month mark showed a decrease in emotional exhaustion by 19.5% while the control group showed an increase by 9.8%. That is a difference of 28.3%. The absolute burnout rate decreased by 17.1% in the intervention group and increased by 4.9% in the control group. That is a difference of 22%.

 

What was the intervention? Six individual coaching sessions, one 1-hour session followed by five 30-minute sessions at intervals of 2-3 weeks. A total of 3.5 hours of coaching costing approximately $1400.

 

This study was conducted prior to the COVID pandemic. How do you think the burnout rates have changed over the past 2-years?

 

What are the costs of burnout? I will start with a list you can add or subtract from based on your personal experience. I recommend you estimate a price tag of burnout for your organization. You could do this for a small team or an entire health care facility.

 

Effects of Burnout                   Cost

  • Turnover                         5-1.2x annual salary of individual being replaced
  • Medical errors
  • Absenteeism
  • Patient satisfaction
  • Family conflict
  • Workforce wellness

 

There are a number of interventions to address burnout starting at system-wide interventions and ranging to individual facilities, small teams, individual leaders, and individuals affected. Coaching is one intervention that has been proven effective and worthy of consideration.

 

Coaching Considerations

There are several coaching interventions worth consideration. They are individuals which is one-on-one coaching. One coach per individual to work one-on-one with that individual. Group coaching is coaching individuals in a cohort format. Each individual is working on their individual goals. The last is team coaching, coaching the team towards its goals.

 

Individual coaching one-on-one with the individual affected has been proven to be effective. The top consideration for individual coaching should be with direct supervisors. Why? Because supervisors set the culture and work conditions of health care workers and directly control many drivers of burnout:

  • Workload
  • Control
  • Rewards
  • Community
  • Fairness
  • Values

Intervention at this level has the greatest potential for direct impact

 

Group coaching could allow an organization to save significant expenses by bringing a cohort of six to twelve individuals together for coaching. This could be for direct supervisors, executives, team leaders, or individuals on the line most affected by burnout. A positive secondary effect of group coaching is the bonding and cohort mentality that is formed. It has the potential to break down barriers and build cohesion within the organization.

 

Team Coaching is an intervention with the team as the client and team performance as the metric. The coaching focuses on team objectives, structure, support, and team norms. Working with the team on the before mentioned areas can directly reduce the negative effects of the seven drivers within the team.

 

Recommendation

Create a pilot program to implement the coaching intervention with the potential for the greatest impact in your area of responsibility. That may be individual coaching for yourself, team members, or the whole team. Group coaching for a selected cohort or team coaching for the team.

 

Gather some data and set metrics to measure. Gauge the level of burnout you and your team are dealing with as one of your starting metrics. Determine other metrics to measure your return on investment. Think, workforce wellness, medical errors, job satisfaction, patient outcome, absenteeism. Put the intervention to the test with a small contingent that makes sense for 4-6 months and measures your results.

 

Cost considerations

Think of your professional development budget for courses, continuing education, conferences, and travel. Bring into your calculation hours away from the workplace and travel. Coaching is a low-impact intervention. In-person events can be arranged at your site. With current technology, virtual coaching has become the norm. It is even possible to make time for members of your workforce to be coached during a workday while on a shift. As an intervention, it is highly flexible and customizable to the needs of every organization and individual.

 

What would be the impact on you and your organization if you were able to reduce burnout by 20 percent?

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Burnout and Coaching

What if you could prevent workplace burnout in yourself and in your team? Would you do it?

Do you know the top seven drivers of workplace burnout? They are:

  • workload and job demands
  • lack of control
  • lack of rewards/recognition
  • lack of community support
  • conflicting values
  • lack of meaning in one’s work

Each driver is influenced by leadership, the leadership of the organization and the personal leadership of the individual. Coaching has a positive impact on reducing or preventing burnout in individuals, teams, and assisting leaders of organizations to prevent or deal with burnout of their subordinates.

If you are unfamiliar with professional coaching, relate it to sports. Think of your professional coach as a partner to assist you to play better and attain your professional goals.

Coaches assist individuals to better understand themselves; their strengths, weaknesses, tendencies, values, goals, and aspirations. In the process of coaching, individuals and teams change their behavior to be more effective and attain their goals. Changes in behavior and mindset are some of the results of coaching.

Coaching the Individual to Reduce Burnout

A client typically comes to a coach looking to make career progress to be proactive in their career progression or reactive to ongoing challenges.

“I am totally exhausted with my position; I need a change.”  This is what I heard from a client. As we progressed in our coaching, she came to the conclusion she was experiencing burnout.

She also identified the drivers dealt with daily. Working remotely, she made herself accessible 24/7, could not say no, and had significant conflicts she would not address with her demanding boss. High workload, lack of control, and conflicting values.

Through coaching she came to her solution; work to establish clear boundaries around her workday, learn to tactfully say no, and deal with the conflicts with her boss.

The result. She reduced the intensity of several burnout drivers. Improved consistency in her workload, gained more control of her work life, and improved her relationship with her boss.

Coaching the Leader

How does coaching the leader reduce burnout?

When I coach leaders, guess the number one topic? It is to assist them determine how effective they are and how to get better. Think of yourself as the leader I am working with in the following.

You seek out individual coaching to improve the results of your team. You are suspecting burnout may be an issue. I ask what type of performance data you have.

We start with a discussion of the unsolicited feedback. As you know, feedback comes your way whether you ask for it or not. What messages are the levels of performance and issues brought to your attention daily telling you?

If that is not enough data, you can ask for it directly with a simple survey or other methods on the seven drivers of burnout. You are looking for existence of the drivers that are creating the symptoms of burn out: exhaustion, negative feelings and cynicism, and reduced efficacy.

Usually the level of engagement, production, and individual actions will be screaming at you.

If your team or individuals are suffering from burnout, the revelation will not take long.

Coaching helps you interpret that data, build self-awareness of how you lead, and helps foster behavior changes in you to improve your effectiveness. Coaching holds a mirror up to you and reflects back your behavior and their results. It also helps you assess your situation from several perspectives with an objective source.

Coaching the Team

Teams can burn out as well. Ensuring the team has the right conditions in place is most effective. My focus with teams is to establish the six conditions of team effectiveness. The conditions directly address preventing the seven drivers of burnout.

The six conditions require a team to set a clear purpose – to provide meaning to the team’s work. Ensure the team is a real team with the right mix of skills and capabilities and have the resources to function effectively. Establishing the norms of behavior for the team can be a critical element of preventing burnout. Properly established norms, provides avenues for the team and its members to address each driver of burnout as it begins to manifest itself.

Summary

Burnout is preventable and coaching is an effective tool to assist individuals, leaders, and teams to correct and prevent it.

How could coaching combat burnout in your organization with individuals, leaders, and teams?

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How You Can Prevent Burnout

Have you experienced or know someone who has experienced the following?

 

“I am totally exhausted. I have been going incredibly hard at work for the past several months without a break and I am mentally fatigued. When I took this position, I loved it. Now I really don’t care about what gets done because the leadership doesn’t care. They are just pushing us with no concerns to meet their unrealistic goals. How hard I work does not matter, I feel like I am not progressing and am ineffective.”

 

The above fits the World Health Organization’s definition of Burn-out:

 

“Burn-out is a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. It is characterized by three dimensions:

  • feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion;
  • increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one’s job; and
  • reduced professional efficacy.

Burn-out refers specifically to phenomena in the occupational context and should not be applied to describe experiences in other areas of life.”

 

What are you seeing in your workplace and the organizations you interact with?

 

Interestingly, burn-out is not classified as a diagnosed medical condition but a syndrome. That syndrome certainly has exacerbated or influenced a number of adverse medical conditions. Depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and insomnia come to mind immediately. All a drag on workers, leaders, and organizational productivity.

 

In the past two years, dealing with the pandemic has created a crisis in some professions, the most prominent is health care, documented in numerous studies. Those studies came up with drivers for workplace burn-out. Let’s look at the drivers and see how they translate to your workplace.

 

There are typically six or seven drivers of workplace burnout:

  • workload and job demands
  • lack of control
  • lack of rewards/recognition
  • lack of community support
  • conflicting values
  • lack of meaning in one’s work

 

I find this list striking. Why, because every item on the list is influenced by leadership; organizational and personal leadership.

The drivers are a result of workplace culture and how well individuals fit into that culture. Using the table below consider and rate the degree that organizational leadership or personal leadership influences each driver. By organizational leadership, I am referring to the overall leader. By personal leadership, I am referring to each individual’s self-leadership, how they know and lead themselves.

 

Influenced by
Drivers of Burnout Organizational Leadership Personal Leadership
Workloads and job demands Low———————–High Low———————–High
Lack of control Low———————–High Low———————–High
Lack of rewards/recognition Low———————–High Low———————–High
Lack of community support Low———————–High Low———————–High
Conflicting values Low———————–High Low———————–High
Absence of fairness Low———————–High Low———————–High
Meaning of one’s work Low———————–High Low———————–High
Summary

 

 

What were your results?

 

Organizational leadership has a high influence on every driver. Individual disposition and perspective play a part here as well.

 

Take a moment and reflect on your organization and people. How would they score you as the leader and the organization on the seven drivers?

 

What does all this mean?

 

My conclusions. The number one method to combat workplace burnout is through positive effective leadership, organizationally and personally. Typically, when burn-out occurs the approach is to “fix” the individual. I see it as three-fold. First, establish positive leadership that supports a positive culture. Second, leaders need to know those they are leading, their strengths, weaknesses, tendencies, and capabilities, and lastly, individuals need to know and lead themselves. Fix the organization and individuals through leadership development.

 

Leadership is the great differentiator. Well-led organizations focused on the leadership development of their individuals will experience less burnout. They will have less turnover, fewer sick days, greater engagement, and increased productivity.

 

Burn-out is a completely preventable syndrome that is needlessly costing organizations millions of dollars each year. Where should you be spending your professional development budget?

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Getting Out of Your Comfort Zone

Getting Out of Your Comfort Zone

It was my first time trying to surf, how hard can it be? I knew it would be challenging but I wanted to get out of my comfort zone to try and master something new.

Well, I was out of my comfort zone as soon as I hit the water. The waves were higher than I anticipated, I was not as efficient at paddling as I thought I would be, and I did not get much instruction prior to getting wet. Flailing is the word that best describes my experience.

My next outing was with someone capable of instructing me, in conditions that matched my experience. Once in the water, constant advice on what was working made a world of difference. Progress and fun.

Take your own personal story or event and substitute it for, surfing. Most of us have been there. Now replace the activity with a professional event you took on or were assigned that packed a lot more challenge than expected, lacked instruction and expectations, and you were left to your own devices with little feedback. Were you “out of your comfort zone” or “OUT OF YOUR COMFORT ZONE”?

To grow we have to get out of our comfort zone. Growth comes when we stress, stretch, and push ourselves to reach a new limit. When have you grown the most? When pushed to the limits or when pushed to a reasonable level?

How are you leading your team and how far out of their comfort zone are you pushing them? Putting them in water that is clearly at the limits of their capacity may not be the best move. They may grow but, at what expense.

Recollect that one challenge you were given that pushed you to your limit. Did you grow? How painful was the growth and are you willing to do it on a regular basis?

Here are three considerations I have for putting individuals and teams out of their comfort zone:

  1. Challenge at the right level
  2. Provide instruction on the expectations
  3. Create an iterative learning loop

Challenge at the Right Level

I encourage starting small to generate early wins to taste success and build confidence. Then think of a treadmill that allows you to increase the steepness of the platform as well as the speed. It can be catastrophic to start out at the presumed limit of one’s capability. Being out of breath and overwhelmed from the start is not a solid recipe for success.

Provide Instruction on the Expectations

Ever put incredible effort into a project and when you provided the finished product were met with a “that is not what I wanted”? Infuriating.

Ever do that to yourself, complete a project or task and say to yourself “that wasn’t what I really needed to accomplish”? Yes, sometimes we do that to ourselves when we do not clearly define what success looks like.

When I am not clear on expectations at the initiation of a project, the frustration for me and the individuals doing the work can be immense. Taking the time upfront to have the conversation on the desired end state is liberating. Particularly when we add the intermediate milestones into the discussion. It has us all aiming at the same outcome and frees up mental capacity to work with confidence. 

Create an Iterative Learning Loop

We started this conversation talking about growth. Feedback with time for reflection creates the conditions for growth. Agile program management is built on the concept of iterative deliveries and assessments to refine the deliverable. This allows the team to learn, adjust the path, level of challenge, and modify the end state as needed. 

Want to see personal and professional growth for you and your team? Then get out of your comfort zone and apply these three considerations.

They will help you create the right level of stress created by taking on new challenges, building new competencies, and stretching capabilities. They help you lose the stress of worrying about; surviving a task beyond you or the team’s capability, questioning the direction of your efforts, and whether everyone is focused on the same goal.

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Coaching Culture – In Practice

Pat has six direct reports who in turn manage another 40 people in the Marketing and Sales Department of a medical device company. The pandemic brought all kinds of challenges for her with employee engagement. To grow professionally she engaged an executive coach for one-on-one coaching for herself. After six months she engaged a coach for group coaching for her six direct reports.

She hatched the group coaching idea during one of her coaching sessions in which she was working on improving engagement and communication for her department. It took her about three months to put it in place and still considers it a work in progress. Here are the elements of the program.

Purpose: To create a culture where she would use coaching practices to inspire, motivate, and develop members at every level.

Specific Goals:

Improve employee engagement scores on the biannual survey by 15%

  • Increase the percentage of retained customers by 5%
  • Increase new accounts by 5%
  • Improve communication within the team
  • Improve retention

Key parts of the program

The first key to the program is setting the example. Pat is engaging in one-on-one coaching with an executive coach. She then engaged a coach to conduct a 6-month group coaching program for her six direct reports. She also has a once-a-month coaching session with her direct reports, who in turn have a once-a-month coaching session with their direct reports.

Group coaching

The six leaders meet biweekly for 60 minutes as a group facilitated by a coach. The purpose is for each individual to put in place a professional development plan for themselves. Some of the topics are planned, others are based on what the cohort brings to the session. One area of emphasis is developing coaching skills. This is to support the leaders in coaching their direct reports.

Pat spent a lot of time thinking about how to implement the group coaching. Her belief is by meeting regularly as a cohort they will build synergistic relationships while each individual develops their personal leadership capacity.

Monthly Coaching Sessions

The coaching sessions with direct reports have some parameters:

  • They must be scheduled for a minimum of 30 minutes once a month
  • The direct reports are responsible for scheduling the sessions with their supervisor
  • The topic is always the choice of a direct report.
  • The general focus is required to be on professional career development. This is to keep the coaching session from morphing into status updates on current issues.

Measuring Success

The team has developed some metrics as shown with the goals above. One area still being considered is a survey specifically directed at the coaching.

The Challenges

What challenges do you think they have or will encounter? Keeping the coaching as a priority and letting the daily fray override the coaching is the first.  A metric tied to meetings scheduled and conducted may be required.

Producing and using the professional development plan is a close second. Should this be standardized across the organization? Once complete how is the plan used? Turning the development plan into a list of Key Performance Indicators (KPI) could be counterproductive. Some thoughts on the requirements of the plan and its implementation are a must. It may be a good topic for a group coaching session.

Some training on coaching skills for leadership is also in order. The goal is not to make everyone a certified coach. However, providing every supervisor ongoing training on coaching skills is imperative. Clearly, it will be part of the group coaching sessions. Dedicated training would be beneficial and provide much-needed confidence.

This is one way to implement a coaching culture with some specifics and the thought process behind it. How could you implement a coaching culture in your organization? Contact me if you would like to bounce some ideas around.

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Career Check Up?

Why do you go to the doctor?

Either it is a regular periodic visit, to check on how you are doing or it is to address some area of acute concern. As we become more tenured, we look at certain areas more frequently or more in-depth. If you are a more tenured individual, you know what I am talking about. The goal is to stay ahead of any issues and deal with them as early as possible.

What about your career? How regularly do you officially check on your career progress? Maybe more importantly, do you have any symptoms of an acute issue that needs attention?

Reviewing your career regularly is a good practice.  Retrospectively many professionals wish they were more proactive in their career management. They did not ignore their career; they just allowed the “system” to manage it for them by following the standard career path.

Take the typical consultant path. A new hire on board as an associate consultant gets promoted to consultant in 2 years and is expecting to make partner in the next 3. For various reasons, budget, staffing or contracts, that individual is now at the 6-year mark and not promoted. She also had designs to move into a new sector but has held back because she wants to be promoted first.

What difference do you think a regular career checkup would have made on her path?

A military officer is promoted to Major at the 10-year mark, has completed grad school, and received orders to work in a staff job writing operations and training policy. An expert in this area, however, these are not the orders he wanted.

How could a career checkup make a difference in his next step?

An executive MBA program graduate joined a startup with a team from her cohort. She has been an operations manager for 5 years. The team has gotten the product to market last year and is slowly making progress. Her long-range plans were to get the experience required to be able to be the founder of her own startup.

How could a career checkup make a difference in her next steps?

In every case, a career checkup should make a difference. My thoughts are that whatever decision you make, you want it made with clarity. Be clear on the reasoning for your decision. In each of the above cases, it sounds as if a change should be made. Not necessarily true if the individuals thought through all the factors.

The question is, what factors should be considered? Here is my opinion, two big categories to consider; the lifestyle you are after professionally and personally.

And no, you cannot consider each in a vacuum, one affects the other.

What do you want your professional lifestyle to be?  (Short term and long term)

  • Professional position
  • Leadership roles and responsibilities
  • Health
  • Wealth

What do you want your personal lifestyle to be? (Short term and long term)

  • Relationships
  • Fun, leisure, and recreation
  • Giving back
  • Personal growth

I have assisted numerous individuals to think through the process of what was most important about each area. Once they came to the conclusion the path forward became clear. The above anecdotes come from those cases.

In your career journey, circumstances change your perspective. Just like your health, choices that made sense earlier in your life, do not seem that sensible now. Does running 20+ miles a week as you did when you were in college sound like a healthy practice when you are 49? For some of you it may. A bit of reflection may build clarity around the amount of running and exercise that is healthy at 49.

What about acute issues. At every phase, acute problems need to be addressed with some urgency. Do you have pangs, jolts of adrenalin, or other triggers that occur related to work or your career?  They are indicators something requires your attention. We have all had indications of illness or injury we hoped would “run its course” or disappear. When the symptoms keep coming back, we do something about it.

Same with your career. Do not ignore the symptoms. Sometimes those symptoms show themselves in our personal lives. You may be crushing it at work, but the travel time is making things miserable at home. That’s a symptom.

How are you ensuring your career path is a healthy one?

What would be the impact on your life if you treated your career the way you treat your health?

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What are you Doing to Serve Your Network?

If you give to your network, it will give back to you.

So how is your network serving you?

To me, networking is a mindset. A mindset towards building supportive and cooperative relationships that you support and in turn supports you.

What is the image that comes to mind when I say “Networking meeting”?

A large room filled with individuals all attempting to meet other people to sell or get something from them? Everyone is in the get mode.

Not an uncommon image that is validated from experience.

Here is a typical description I hear. “I went to this meeting and everyone I talked to was pushing something on me, their card, their product, or a sales pitch. Few folks listened and I sensed everyone there was just looking to get something.”

What would be the impact if you flipped the narrative on networking. Suppose you went in with an approach of giving, listening, and contributing to the network. Sound interesting or possible? I found it is possible and is simply a matter of your mindset.

My networking now is built on three principles:

  • What can I give?
  • How to be a regular and a regular contributor?
  • Focus on the few.

Let’s break each of them down a little more.

What can I give? The most important pillar of my mindset. I have switched to seeing how I can assist anyone I meet.

When I meet someone, I take the time to understand what that person does and am in the listen mode. In that mode, I ask a lot questions and have realized, I usually have a connection or other information that is helpful to that individual.

The top goal is to provide something of value to the individual. You may surprise yourself how many times you assist an individual.

Be a regular and contribute regularly. This principle is focused on being an integral member to a supportive community and contributing to it. Frequency, engagement, and authenticity allow you to be known, not just recognized. This familiarity eases participation and builds mutual understanding between participants.

The type of group will dictate your ability to contribute. Many networking groups have guest speakers, sponsor opportunities, or openings to organize or host events. I am not recommending making your networking group a time sink. Consider how you can improve the group. For several groups, I belong to I have contributed by presenting, recommending presenters, and inviting new members to the group. All easy and appreciated.

Focus on the few. Ever attend an event where you talked to so many folks you questioned the value of attending. I have found taking the time to focus on making only several connections can be productive.

I attended a large networking event that included speed networking. A 45-minute session with individuals seated at a table of 8. Each individual had 90 seconds to make an introduction pitch and hand out their cards. After 15 minutes we switched tables and did it again for a total of three cycles.

My result was leaving with a stack of business cards and little memory of anyone I met. Not doing that again.

Putting it all together. My purpose in networking is to make meaningful long term mutually beneficial connections. For me, that correlates to regularly contributing to a community where I connect with and assist individuals and am known as a regular member. Kind of like the Cheers theme song “Where everyone knows your name.”

Does this help my business and brand? Absolutely. Interestingly, not from direct connections within the network. Most often referrals come from connections to my connections. My network knows me, my capabilities, and they trust me. Therefore, they send individuals to me that I can assist.

If you give to your network, it will give back to you.

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How is Your Network Serving You?

Take 30 seconds to think about, describe, and articulate what your network does for you.

How do you feel about what you just came up with? Based on your answers how do you want to improve your network and what it does for you?

Here are some questions to consider:

  • What type of networker are you?
  • How would you grade the quality of your network?
  • What do you want out of your network?

What type networker are you?

We all fit somewhere along a spectrum that describes how we build and plug into a network. Think about your comfort level with groups you frequent. Are they smaller groups where you know everyone well? Larger groups where you connect with people of different backgrounds and fewer deep connections? Or are you comfortable in large groups where you do not know many people very well.

I think of this as a spectrum; small groups with deep familiar relationships on the left and moves to large limited familiarity groups on the right. Place yourself on that spectrum.

network spectrum

What does this tell you about yourself?

The Quality of Your Network

Size, connectivity, and interaction are the gauges that come to mind.

Size. How big is your network? The typical response is the size of one’s LinkedIn network. Occasionally, other social media metrics will be used. Is that the actual size? I don’t think so. Think about the number of individuals you know and interact with personally and professionally on a regular basis as the starting point. Then move to those on a less regular basis. Keep moving to former colleagues and friends who would recognize, talk with you, take a call, or respond to an email. Now you are getting a feel for the size of your network.

Connectivity to the network for me is a feeling that comes from familiarity and ease of interaction. If interactions feel forced it is not where I want it to be. Recognized as an active member has a much different feel. I believe this is the most important measure of the quality of your network.

Frequency that creates the level of engagement needed is what most of us are after. That can be different for different parts of the network.

What do You Want Out of Your Network?

Most answers are something such as, support in your current and future endeavors. Individuals in a career transition are looking for introductions and connections. Business owners; potential partners, customers, or connections to support their operations. Nonprofits organizations; partners, donors, employees. What do you want from your network?

Putting Your Network to Work

To me your network is a series of concentric circles. In the middle you have 1. your closest contacts; family, current daily associates, 2. Colleagues you interact with intermittently. 3. Dormant relationships, colleagues whose interaction has diminished over time.  4. Complete strangers.

4 different sized circles placed in each other numbered 1 through 4

Where do you believe the greatest potential for assistance and growth lies? Most believe in area 1, your most familiar connections or 4, starting to meet folks you do not know. Research by David Burkus concludes the greatest growth is in number 3, your dormant relationships. At one point they were close to the center, life happened and the connection went dormant.

Why not area 1? Because these are your people. They hang around with folks you know and are like you. Not the best group to assist you in moving into new circles.

Wake Up Your Network!

You want growth in your network, wake up those dormant connections. Make a simple but genuine connection and see what happens.

Something such as: “It’s been a while since we last connected, I am currently looking at making a transition/growing my business/increasing the reach of my nonprofit. I would welcome the opportunity to reconnect see what you have going on and how we might be able to assist each other.”

You are also in their dormant circle. They know you are now in a different circle full of potential connections. It brings networks together and overlaps them creating a series of new contacts around you.

network categories

This is a more efficient use of time rather than attempting to expand your network with entirely new unfamiliar connections.

How are you going to deliberately wake up your network so it serves you?

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Taking Care of Yourself is Taking Care of Your Team

Put yourself in this story.

You are part of a team on a 5-day backpacking trip in a wilderness area. Everyone on the team is carrying a pack of about 40 pounds. You wish you have taken more time to train and prepare for this trip. Now on your second day, your feet have blisters from your new boots and you are having trouble with the load in your backpack. On the hike, you are falling behind. You didn’t train with climbing gear for the technical part of the hike and are daily needing to be taught. You feel you are holding the team back.

In reality, you are.

A team member asks how you are doing and how they can help. They even offered to take some of your load. No, no I am good. Just not in the physical shape I thought I was, is your answer.

What is your prediction for how this is going to play out over time?

Turn this anecdote into one in your professional setting. One where you were not fully “in shape” to complete what was required to be a major contributor. Maybe you did not fully prepare for your current project or opted out of the additional training. Maybe you convinced your supervisor you were capable of a leadership role when you knew you had some significant deficits in the required skills.

Regardless of the reason, you are a negative drag on the team. Normal growth and development through career challenges are expected. Not preparing or taking care of yourself and showing up as a liability to the team is not expected.

The best way to take care of your team is to fully take care of yourself. If not, you have become a detriment and drag to the team. Regardless of skill or capability, your greatest contribution is being at your full capacity and fully engaged.

Recall a time when you experienced a team member not fully ready for the task. What was the impact? Ever experience a team leader not fully ready or capable of leading the team? What was the impact?

It is akin to being on the above hike, with someone that does not have the capacity to accomplish the task at hand. It drains the team, uses up its capacity, reduces resilience, and puts a drag on the operation.

Three questions for you:

  1. As a team member do you come fully prepared and engaged?
  2. As a team leader are you consistently fully prepared and engaged?
  3. As a team leader have you set your team up for success, staffing it with fully capable members?

The above questions say a lot about the culture you foster in your team. Taking care of yourself can be the greatest gift you give your team.

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