To increase the effectiveness of your network, you need to learn how to connect with people who belong to a world other than your own. Maintaining a professional network can be a tricky task, as you never know the connections between individuals. To successfully manage your network effectively, it is imperative to maintain a certain openness.
Our natural tendency is to build relationships with people who are like us. Just check your own address book. We mostly find colleagues, old friends from school or university, people who share our interests, or relationships developed in our professional field.
Of course, having this type of contact in your network is important, but it’s not enough. These are often relationships in which people know each other. Their networks are more or less the same. How can we open to new perspectives in this situation?
In this sense, level 2 and level 3 connections provide a gateway to other relationships far beyond our circle of relationships. They offer us the opportunity to think outside the box.
The best way to encourage new contacts is to have a diverse network rather than a homogeneous one. The most productive networks are those that have significant “mixed” characteristics in their relationships. Not just origin, age, education, and career path.
To build a strong network, we need to learn how to connect with people who don’t look like us, don’t talk like us, don’t have the same background or goals.
In a nutshell, you must think outside the box, innovate and be open.
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