CAB 4. Exposing yourself to the right people at work

Hello everyone. You are here because you want to accelerate your career on the career autobahn.

In the last edition, we talked about the concept of P.I.E (Performance, Image, Exposure) when determining career progression.

Exposure at the workplace is about how good your internal network is and is the most important component of PIE. If you think about it, the decisions about your career progression are made without you in the room!

So you need the people who are in that meeting room discussing your future, to know about you and your achievements. You can watch this TED talk by Carla Harris to understand this more better

We know that networking is important so why are we so bad at it? The usual reason why people do not put the effort in is because they say ‘I am not good at networking’. They don’t know what to do.

Have you used this excuse before?

The main reason why people are not good at networking is because they don’t have a plan when it comes to networking.

The first thing you need to do when you are making a plan for networking is to understand your medium/long term career goals.

Start by thinking where do you want to be in 5 years time? (I covered this in the very first edition of this newsletter).

Then you have to figure out who are the decision makers for your career progression towards that goal. Your boss is definitely one of them. The others could be your boss’ boss, could be the HR Director or if you want to move to the Regional office, it could be the boss at the Regional office.

Next you have to find out, who are influencing the people that you have listed as decision-makers. People normally don’t make decision based solely on their own judgement. They will ask for advice or recommendation from friends and people that they trust.

Take yourself, how often do you ask your friends for good recommendations for hotels and restaurants and then you also check the google or tripadvisors review?

Now that you have a list of people of decision-makers and their circle of influence, you can start executing your plan for networking.

You have 2 objectives. First is for them to know who you are and then second is for them to know the good work that you have been doing (your achievements).

This is where a good ‘Elevator Pitch’ is needed and I will write about it next week.

When you have a plan for networking, networking becomes easier and more purposeful.

List down all the potential decision makers in your career path and their circle of influence.

I will be conducting a workshop on “How to Network Like A Pro’ on Saturday 22nd July at 930am. It is a practical session where you will learn about how to make a networking plan and executing it. Please click on the link below for more details and to take you to the registration page