How to network with people you don’t like 20 June, 2013 08:54:00 Karen Jackson Photo ©: © andrewgenn - Fotolia I was sitting in our vibey canteen the other day, sipping a coffee and mentally chewing over stuff when I spotted Harvey having a laugh with Lewis..... Now their real names are not Harvey and Lewis, but Harvey is the guy in the series ‘Suits’ that everybody likes and Lewis is the guy that everybody hates. I was befuddled and confused. Just last week Harvey told me that he found Lewis to be petrifyingly dull and irritating. Now they were sharing a laugh so real that their bellies shook in unison. I felt slightly nauseous and a little betrayed. I also felt jealous. I felt jealous because I seem to have been born without this much-coveted ability to network with people I don’t like. Until recently I have come up with many optimistic excuses for this inability to ‘hang with’ people with whom I’m not friends. I would tell myself, for example, that I’m honest, that I am not two-faced and that I am virtuous and incorruptible. But these beautiful words will get you nowhere in the working world. In the working world you do need to hang out with Lewis and all of his sidekicks. In the working world you need to network… I discussed this with a friend at work. Let’s call him Andrew, because everyone likes an Andrew and also because that is his real name. Andrew gave me valuable advice; he told me that, in order to network with people I don’t like, I must find some common ground with them. I must find a connection; if you look hard enough there will be some connection (you both have young children, you both like movies, you both have brown eyes, whatever). I thought about this a lot, his advice reminded me of a book I loved when I was a child. It was about a little girl who stumbled upon an abandoned house where a massive hairy dog spent his days hiding under the bed. All you could see was his beady yellow eyes peering out at you, naturally the girl was scared. She found the size of the dog intimidating, she did not like it. But long story short, after some conversation, the dog and the girl found that they had two things in common – they each had unruly black curls and they both just wanted to play outside. The last page shows a picture of the girl riding on the dog’s back, mouth open with joy, black curls flying everywhere. I have no intention of getting onto Lewis’s back and pretending that we are best mates. But… just perhaps I can be a bit more like a Plover. A Plover is a bird that calls a temporary truce with crocodiles. Crocodiles will allow these birds to sit inside their mouths and pick clean their teeth. The Plover scores a meal while the crocodile scores fresh breath. If we can find what we have in common, we can have a decent conversation, we can network and work together and we can reach our common or individual goals.
Posted on: Mon, 08 Jul 2013 12:49:44 +0000
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