The art of relationships

Whilst others have spent the summer sunning themselves on a beach in Bali, cocktail in hand (or is that just how my instagram has made me feel?!); I have been diligently working and managing a major house renovation project.

Granted, I have not been pedal to the metal (which as I reflect, is not the way I do my best work anyway), and have taken breaks for sea swims and early finishes - lush!

August is a funny time to be working. With my kids still in nursery - nothing really changes for me. It’s easy to believe that the world and his wife have taken off the summer, given the amount of rescheduled meetings and extended deadlines.

So at the start of summer I gave myself a mini project.

To meet and chat to like minded people within the L&D/people space.

Because whilst I feel I have a strong global network across the private and public sector and employed and self-employed people - I realised I don’t have a strong connection of people in the L&D and people space. Which is important given a large focus for my business is the training, coaching and consultancy I do through companies.

It also dawned on me over the last few months, about how big a jump it was, not only becoming self-employed but also moving into a completely different sector (for those that don’t know my back story I wrote about it on my blog)

How tech and change management programmes are run in global companies - I know inside and out. But how L&D and people departments are run on the inside - I know less about.

So I put myself out there.

I joined networks and re-connected with people in existing networks and asked people if they’d like to have a coffee chat to find out more about each other. I joined online co-working groups and chatted to a variety of different people.?

I followed my curiosity.

And it was SO INSIGHTFUL. And so enjoyable!

As we come to the end of August I have chatted to over 17 people from all over the world and had messaging conversations with so many more.

Some of those have led to work opportunities. Others have led to further connections. And others were just great conversations where we put the world to rights.

This little ‘project’ has further reinforced the value of continually growing a network because as they say ‘your network is your net worth’. It has broadened my connections and expanded my understanding of the L&D and people space.

Here are some insights and tips from the last month:

1. Do your research

Whilst you don’t need to know everything about the person you are talking to. It helps that you have searched them on LinkedIn and looked at their website so you can ask some specific questions.

1. Continually refine your elevator speech

For those that don’t know - an elevator speech is basically a summary of what you do, your background and what you need help with/the next step for you. Sometimes this can be quite formal (if you were doing it in an interview setting) but often it’s helpful to have variations of these that you can share with people. The most compelling elevator speeches tend to have an element of humour or wow in them so practise refining yours and share with someone you are comfortable with who can give feedback and help you improve. Practise definitely makes perfect here and it doesn’t need to be perfect, as the best tend to feel unrehearsed.

1. Putting yourself out there can feel scary

It can feel uncomfortable being the one to suggest a chat - our mind tends to go into overdrive and resort to the worst case scenarios. What if they say no? What if I look like an idiot??

In my experience I found that people were flattered that they had been asked and were always keen to chat (remember people love talking about themselves!) and if they weren’t interested they just don’t reply.

1. Offer to help

I like to think I am a helpful person anyway and go out of my way to support others - so I always make sure in conversations that I help the other person where I can. That might be looking out for work opportunities for them, or providing my advice on how I dealt with a situation that may be similar.?

1. Continue the conversation

I am always open to having follow up conversations with people that I have connected to so I leave the door open for that at the end of our conversation. You may find it useful to keep a note of who you met, what they do and what you spoke about in order to jog your memory!

Hopefully that has inspired you to reflect on your network and my task for you over the next few weeks is to book in a coffee chat with a new contact or an existing one that you haven’t connected with and to see where that conversation leads you.

I’d love to know how you get on and how I can hold you accountable so feel free to comment with your commitment!