Professional network is overrated
Many people attribute other’s success to their professional and/or personal network. While this may be true to some degree (you can’t win alone and building a good network of people around you, especially those that want to make you be smarter/better, is an absolute necessity) but shouldn’t be taken literally.
The professional network that I am referring to here is when you hear people say ‘only if I knew Ms.XYZ… I know Mr.ABC and therefore you should hire/listen to me… he/she became successful because he/she knew Ms.EFG…etc’. Many fail to notice but, from my experience, such a statement reveals one’s insecurity and incompetency. I could dive deeper and make cynical arguments on why I believe people show such traits, I am going to stay positive and draw your attention to how to build a great network instead.
People hang out with lookalikes — so become one
Guess what would be the best way to be close to Lebron James? Become his teammate or even better, his competitor. While this may sound wild, most people know that this is true. We also don’t have to look far because the evidence is all around us. Hockey followers hang out with other hockey followers and mathematicians hangout with other mathematicians. Therefore, if you have an idol that you look up to, stop looking for a silver bullet that will get you to meet the person (i.e. send spam on Twitter or looking for a personal tie) because a) it doesn’t exist and b) even if you get to meet the person through the rare silver bullet tactic, that meeting will be very short and inconsequential because you weren’t really ready to meet the person. Just yet. Therefore, the most you will get from that ‘lucky’ meeting is probably an autograph and a photo you can put on your Instagram account. What a waste!
Instead, the best way to do this is to become like your idol on your own and let that person be drawn to you. This means working hard and improving yourself until you find yourself being acquainted with your idol with a context of building a truly meaningful, productive and lasting relationship.
In short, the ideal professional network that you are hoping for won’t be and shouldn’t be realised through a silver bullet. Rather, it should feel like a lucky gem you find on a path to achieve your goal. If you get acquainted with someone you look up to through this process, you will value it much more and should be able to draw a much larger value out from it while providing the same opportunity to the other person as well.
That is how a truly meaningful and lasting network should feel like. Not a name dropping incident in small talk to disguise your incompetency.
Realise we are spectacularly alone
Another thing that I learned about building a meaningful professional network is that you need to put yourself in a position of making the choice, including an endpoint, and not the other way around. In order to carry this out consistently and effectively, you need to build a framework of the relationship and the best way for this is to become a person in a position to define the relationship’s terms and not let it define who you are.
The biggest advantage of working with this framework of leading a relationship is that it allows you NOT to be hung up with the success achieved from the relationship and gives you the courage to move onto the next thing. This is important because if you are hung up with the success, you have created a ‘peak’ in your life and you will be walking a downhill slope from that point onward. You will have the courage necessary to move on only if you have the capacity to own the success which is equivalent to be leading a relationship that led you to the success.
Let me walk you through a real-life example that I observed at an arm's length. In 2002, the Korean national soccer team participated in the World Cup while co-hosting the event with Japan. Korean national team’s goal was to have one or maybe two winnings in the global event. Instead, a miracle happened and the team advanced to the quarter-finals and finished at 4th place, creating the biggest sports milestone in the history of Korea (who would have thought that Korea would beat Poland, Portugal, Spain, and Italy!). All the players became national heroes and the entire nation praised them. As with most things in life, time passed and there was a TV show not too long ago revisiting each player’s current affairs. Most things were as I expected but I noticed that some players were making another history while others were stuck in the past. The difference was that those who were making another history never stopped improving and challenging themselves and the courage came from being an active leader of themselves as well as of the relationships they were making. They never let their past glory, as well as their relationship, define who they are.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the best way to make a lasting and a meaningful network is to realize that you are alone in this world and keep on improving yourself while being a leader of the relationship you are making.
