168 Improve your Communication Skills
It’s through the relationships we build
that we reap the benefits
of networking. We can find new resources and new information;
we can find help in moving forward in our career. We can find
new ways to make a contribution.
Networking can be strategic or spontaneous. Strategic
networking
is planned; spontaneous networking happens by
chance. At its best, strategic networking prepares us for the
spontaneous moments of discovery.
To network or not to network?
Networking is both a very old idea and a very new one. john
Donne wrote ‘No man is an island’ in 1624;
but the language of
social networking has only begun to appear in the last 60 years or
so. According to the
Oxford English Dictionary
, the word ‘network’
– meaning an interconnected group of people –
first appeared in
1946. The words ‘networker’ and ‘networking’, referring to the
activities of such groups, don’t appear in print until 1976.
In 1980, Mary-Scott Welch published
Networking:
The Great
New Way for Women to Get Ahead
. Written, according to her
obituary in
The New York Times
, ‘in
an era when more women
were competing for jobs traditionally dominated by men’,
Networking
also included the first recorded use of the word
‘network’ as a verb: ‘this book’, wrote Ms Welch, ‘will show you
how to network’.
Networking as a business activity was thus associated from
the start with feminism. Perhaps its
development is associated
with a less masculine, less individualist, approach to business, in
which co-operation takes precedence over competition.
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