Open Thread: What’s Your Professional Networking Style?
April 25th, 2007 (12:00pm) Anne Zelenka 9 Comments
Web workers have different styles when it comes to maintaining our professional networks. Some people rely on a small, tight-knit group of like-minded contacts, adding new ones slowly and cautiously. Others focus on collecting additional contacts as rapidly as they can — keeping an eye on the Twitterholic rankings the entire time. Still others aim mainly at connecting with people who seem most important. They’re the ones looking over your shoulder at a conference while talking to you, hoping to find someone higher up in the primate social rankings.
Caterina Fake points at research that suggests different people have different styles in creating and maintaining friendships. Maybe these categories apply to professional relationships as well:
- Friendship Cultivators – friends mean a lot to them and they spend a significant amount of their time nurturing friendships. They’re always arranging get togethers and are in constant touch with friends online and on the phone
- Friendship Pruners – make and drop friends quickly according to how useful they are. Friendship Pruners name drop a lot – they like to be seen to be in social contact with the ‘in crowd’. They hate ‘dead wood’ so frequently prune names from their diaries, online buddy lists and mobile phones
- Friendship Harvesters – tend to have a very wide circle of friends that they get in touch with on a seasonal basis. They’re happy to leave long periods without contact and typically dedicate a set period of time every few weeks or months to a flurry of contact to keep up to date with friends’ news and gossip
- Friendship Gatherers – are quick to make friends but the least proactive at maintaining friendships. They gather friends wherever they go but are socially lazy and once friendship has been established they rely on the other party to keep it going. They often seek out Friendship Cultivators so they can ride on the back of their frequent social contact and arrangements.
What’s your style in maintaining your professional network: cultivator, pruner, harvester, or gatherer?
9 Comments Post your own comment
João Craveiro says: April 25th, 2007 12:22pm
Mea culpa: i’m a Friendship Gatherer.
Word by word. :x
Anne Zelenka says: April 25th, 2007 12:35pm
I’m trying to think of what name I should use for my own style: I’m slow to collect friends and then I don’t pay much attention to them. That doesn’t seem to be captured here.
Wendy Kinney says: April 25th, 2007 2:47pm
I too am slow to build a friendship, and definitely not a gardener. But I really do appreciate when other people stay in touch with me.
My networking and friendship skills are different, though. Friendship is more about “liking”. I “like” Chris, and I will be his friend no matter what. This does not mean I ignore his weaknesses – it means I accept them, and manage my self around them. I don’t “like” Kim. She only takes, (time, focus, attention) and is too busy to reciprocate in any way. She might think we are friends, but it’s not so.
Here’s the kick, there is no difference between the behaviours I am willing to accept from Chris, and those of Kim’s that I find intollerable!
Another irony – they are both in my network.
nomadicalloy says: April 26th, 2007 6:49am
freindship is good for networking, but you have to look beyond that.
Daily itzblogging big Links 2007-04-26 - itzblogging big - Serving the Unserved – Recruiters, Job Seekers, Quiet Working Professionals says: April 26th, 2007 7:44am
[...] Web Worker Daily:: Blog Archive Open Thread: What’s Your Professional Networking Style? “Web workers have different styles when it comes to maintaining our professional networks. Some people rely on a small, tight-knit group of like-minded contacts, adding new ones slowly and cautiously. Others…” [...]
randramble says: April 26th, 2007 9:24pm
My style is close to Harvester, but not fully captured by any of the mentioned ones. Maybe, I’m cross-breed!
Jon McKee says: April 27th, 2007 6:24am
Excellent article. I’ve shown it to my co-workers and asked them what kind of friend they are? jon
ernesto schutz says: April 30th, 2007 3:28pm
Hi,
Friendship Cultivators – friends mean a lot to them and they spend a significant amount of their time nurturing friendships. They’re always arranging get togethers and are in constant touch with friends online and on the phone
WFT?
LOL
Ernest
magia3e says: April 30th, 2007 4:57pm
As a psychologist I’m always concerned about pigeonholing. I think it’s leaked into my IA work because I tend to cringe when anyone puts a taxonomy in front of me – does it really reflect the totality of the world?
This taxonomical structure for classifying ways of networking is certainly an interesting one. I actually wonder what would happen if we just asked everyone to ‘tag’ their networking preference and observe the emergent structure that evolved.
M