NETWORLDING

Real Time Actions to Broaden Your Network

Once you have identified your values, established your goals, and formed your primary circle how will you stay connected and how much time will it take.
Certainly you could fill an afternoon with activities; attending functions and connecting with people and planning. However, what if you only had an hour. How much could you accomplish in one hour? Here we have listed five effective tasks that can be completed in one hour.
The Networlding One-Hour Action Plan:
1. Search Events
2. Search Linked In.
- Thousands of potential contacts join Linked-In everyday. Get your information out there or new a new connection
3. Sort through your contact
- Establish a plan for when you can converse with them and how you will maintain your primary circle.
4. Converse with one primary circle contact
- Ask then what new projects they have been working on or what interesting people they have met. Offer then your support in their ventures.
5. Interview a college
- Discuss how they incorporate their values and interest into their job. Think about how you can do this too.
Acknowledging that there are many Networlding actions that can be accomplished in a short amount of time will allow you Networld effectively with even the most hectic schedule. There are many more one-hour action plan ideas that are available in the Networlding workbook. To get a free copy e-mail Melissa at info@networlding.com.

Melissa Giovagnoli

Melissa Giovagnoli, President
Networlding

Melissa is one of the world's leading experts on the development of individual and community leadership networks as a means of growing and accelerating brand loyalty and performance improvement inside and outside organizations. For more than a decade Melissa's organization, Networlding, has provided exceptional relationship marketing and management programs for organizations like AT&T, CNA, Motorola and Disney.

Melissa is the author and/or co-author of nine top-selling books. Her seventh book, co-authored with former CMO of Office Depot, Jocelyn Carter Miller, held the #10 spot on Amazon (in Chicago) for a year. Other books include:

- Networlding:Building Relationships and Opportunities for Success
- The Chicago Entrepreneurs Sourcebook (rated one of the top 10 small business books in Chicago)
- 75 Cage Rattling Questions that Change the Way You Work(McGraw Hill)
- The Power of Two: Rethinking and Reforming Strategic Alliances (Jossey Bass)

Four of Melissa's books have been on top business book lists, including The Power-of-Two and Networlding, recognized by Booz Allen as two of the top ten alliance management books.

Melissa has also been a guest on both radio and television including The Today Show, CNN, WGN, CNBC and FOX. One of her books was featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show. She is a frequent presenter at conferences looking for interactive sessions. Her unique program, The Extravaganza, has been highly evaluated by Meeting Professionals International (MPI).

With a BA in Sociology and a J.D. from DePaul University College of Law, Melissa went on to found Service Showcase, Inc., an innovative consulting firm started in 1986. For the past twelve years she has grown the company to include clients Price Waterhouse, AT&T, Dean Foods and Motorola as well as dozens of smaller companies and organizations. In 1998 she was chosen one of six extraordinary women of the year by The University of Chicago Women's Graduate Business Alumni Board. Networlding was recently licensed by Yale University through their graduate school of business.

Melissa resides in Chicago and has two sons. She loves to travel, especcially to Italy. Her top values are 1. Spirtuality 2. Integrity 3. Making a Diference. and 4. Adventure.

Networlding Websites

Here are some great websites to start Networlding:

For Business Development and Career Growth

1. Linked-In
Click Here
2. Six Figure Jobs
Click Here
3. Zoom Info
Click Here

For Career Transition
Marketing Ladder
Click Here

Shifting Gears
Click Here

Networlding Step Number 7

Re-Evaluate Your Network.
You're reaching for mastery and with that this step comes up again and again.

Carol knows that she is in an evolutionary stage of Networlding. Her primary circle will change as she transitions as her abilities and needs change. By re-evaluating her Networld every six months or so, Carol will make sure she is getting the support she needs as well as offering the support people in her primary circle need.

Networlding Step Number 6

Co-Create Opportunities
Your Primary Circle Partners are there for you and you for them. This step is especially relevant for business owners who want to co-present at events or co-create through alliances and other partnering venues.

Just as many opportunities have been created for Carol by her professional friends, Carol will create and assist in finding opportunities and good job matches for people in her circle. When Carol starts her own psychology practice she will require support from her circle but at the same time she will be creating opportunities for them as well.

Networlding Step Number 5

Grow and Nurture Relationships

This step helps those Networlding maintain and continuously leverage their networks. One strategy in this step is to never leave a meeting with a primary circle partner without setting up another one. This step is one you should revisit again and again to achieve transformational opportunities.

Weekly phone calls and occasional meetings ensure that Carol is staying connected with her primary circle. Depending on her network and making a commitment to keeping current with friends strengthen her bond with her network. In fact the level of support Carol feels has morphed business relationships into professional friendships. The primary circle has made the world of business more intimate.

Networlding Step Number 4

Create Exchanging Relationships

Here, you'll find seven different types or levels of support you can offer and request. Your optimum goal is to create vibrant exchanges where both parties involved exchange in ways that are powerful, directive, accelerative and dramatically more effectively than traditional networking offers.

Here, Carol makes sure that her relationships are mutually beneficial. She provides support to everyone in her circle; sometimes by offering advice, providing knowledge or sometimes by simply listening. Since Carol is supported on all seven levels by the people in her primary circle she is more energized to reciprocate support. She finds herself able to create ongoing exchanges that hold more and more potential with goals achieve faster as she and her partners now know how to promote one another much more effectively.

Networlding Step Number 3

Decide Who Else Might Be Included In Your Circle of Ten

The highest number you want to get to with your Primary Circle is ten. This is because in order to leverage transformation opportunities or any level of support from your network, you need the few first, with whom you can partner to realize the many opportunities. This concept seems counter intuitive, but if you really look at traditional networking, it's only a numbers game at the front end because most people do it so unconsciously. When you make good networking or Networlding more conscious.

This means that you will focus strongly on the quality of those with whom you put in the circle that you literally take your networking and relationship building skills to the next level. At this level you have people who will give you such support (and you them) that you find yourself with opportunities that are "possibility expansive" versus limiting which is what happens with traditional networking.

In defining her larger circle of ten, Carol was better able to define her relationship within her primary circle and outside circles (secondary and tertiary) as well. To have genuinely beneficial relationships with people Carol had to focus her attention towards people in her life who were her closest support network. Unlike baseline networking, Carol was not concerned about how many connections she could develop, but instead she spent her time nurturing her connections. Since the relationships she formed were quality friendships based on mutual support, Carol’s circle provided her with the Networlding Seven Levels of Support (See Step #4).

Networlding Step Number 2

Decide Who Is Currently In Your Primary Circle.

Pick the current people you know--up to five, whom you think would have similar or complementary values. Then, set up times to meet these people. If they are unavailable for the longer term, put them into what we call your "Secondary Circle" where you can connect with them, perhaps, every three months.

Carol had an informal primary circle before she became involved with Networlding. However, when she decided to leave her job to attend graduate school she felt little support from her colleagues or her boss. Additionally, many of those she had in her professional network prior to her transition did not share her values nor did they understand why a successful woman would want to return to school later in life.

Carol decided to develop a new primary circle. To do this, she surrounded herself with friends and colleagues who shared her values. Her new primary circle included personal friends who had also experienced recent career changes and newly made friends who were her grad school peers. Carol was able to find the Networlding Seven Levels of Support (see Step #4) in her personal friends, her peers and her professors. Carol is fortunate enough to see many of these friends daily but she keeps in contact at least weekly with everyone in her primary circle.

Seven Levels of Support

LEVEL 1: Emotional Support:

The is the part of consciousness that involves feelings. Our feelings about others serve as the foundation for our relationships. The focus of exchanging emotional support with another is to create rapport, a relationship of mutual trust and affinity.

Information Support: Information is a combination of messages. Once there is an initial rapport built, we then feel comfortable to share information of value.

LEVEL 2: Knowledge Support:

Here, we add the element of experience. By sharing our personal experiences and those experiences of others we have heard, we add additional value to our exchanges with others.

LEVEL 3: Promotional Support: As we continue to build rapport we naturally share with others the attributes of those whom we value. We heighten the awareness of these networlding partners to others and in doing so, better position them for opportunities that arise.

There are four more very important levels to Networlding. You can obtain these by sending an email to melissa@networlding.com.