Improve Your Communication Skills, 2nd Edition

193 Networking: The New Conversation
Exploring
Effective networkers go sideways. They use every opportunity to 
practise their networking skills and seek new relationships.
Speed-networking: a proposal
Erica Munro is a writer who understands the necessity of 
networking while hating the word. In an amusing article on 
her website, she suggests a simple way to make networking 
palatable. It’s designed along the speed-dating principle 
and it would go like this:
1. The word ‘networking’ would be banned.
2. So would warm white wine.
3. Also out – any suggestion that it’s a social event. This is 
business. It would take place during the day, for a start, 
so as not to cut into precious evening time with family 
and friends.
4. The event would be split in two. First, everyone takes a 
number, a notebook, and a pen.
5. Then everyone takes their turn to stand up and say who 
they are, what they do and what information they’re 
looking to get out of the event. About 40 seconds each 
should do it.
6. The others all make notes.
7. When everyone is finished, participants head for the 
person or people who may be of use to them.
At last, it’s speed-networking time. Name, rank, serial 
number, business card – all exchanged within a five-minute 
slot, with a little bell denoting when it’s time to shake 
hands and move on.
( c) 2011 Kogan Page L imited, All Rights Reserved.

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194 Improve your Communication Skills
Don’t have a goal. Displaying a sense of purpose when 
networking usually kills it stone dead. Effective networking is 
about giving with no thought of any return. If you get nothing out 
of it, move on. But on most occasions, giving 
does
give you a 
return.
Use the ‘three-foot rule’. Everyone within a metre of you is 
potentially a conversation partner. This is because they are 
entering what Edward T Hall calls our ‘personal space’: the space 
we usually reserve for our friends. Go through a day noticing who 
comes into your personal space. Be ready to make eye contact and 
to say ‘hello’. Find the friendly remark that might trigger 
conversation. Don’t force people to talk to you, or put them under 
any obligation to you. Give, and see what happens. Notice what 
works and move on.