Thursday, July 31, 2008

Quality or Quantity?

Last week I was interviewed for a research project on Networking.
One of the questions asked was whether I favoured a quantity or quality approach. My view is that the 2 are not incompatible although there is confusion.

If you start from the premise that networking is about building relationships then over time you will develop a number of quality relationships. You have a finite resource of time and so your capacity for these relationships is a limited number. As you build trust these 'advocates' will help spread your reputation far and wide. You will not get to like or trust everyone you meet so you need to meet a larger number of people in order to develop these 'quality' relationships. The quality is therefore an outcome of quantity. The right networking groups are an efficient way of filtering & building these 'quality' relationships.

Where I see confusion is amongst those people who seem to think that networking is about meeting lots of people once. People who attend different events with different people all of the time. That type of activity does not build relationships & misses the point of networking entirely.

Good Networking!
Dave Clarke
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