Authored Article by Piyush Arora, Senior Director-Business Strategy, UPES CCE
Diversification is key to building connections, leveraging networks, and attaining desired success in the business world. Having access to professional networks is the defining characteristic of successful professionals, and therefore, the key question that follows next is this: “How engaging with professionals from diverse backgrounds can help you establish a vibrant network?” To get the answer, let’s dive straight into the details and find out how your engagement with professionals can help you to build active networks across industrial domains:
1) Diversity is Key: Connecting with outsiders is a credible way to enhance your network connection beyond your existing work domain. In this truly global world, limiting your interactions within the industry can severely restrict your creativity and understanding of the target audiences. Hence, you should strive to build connections with professionals from other sectors who come from different backgrounds, qualifications, and skill sets. Further, engagement with peer groups from different cultures will enrich your contact list, allow for better collaborations, and helps build long-term relationships across business verticals.
2) Curiosity is Boon: The inquisitiveness of the mind precedes the diversity-seeking attitude in action. Professionals with the “Explorer Mindset” take a deep interest and exhibit curiosity to learn outside their knowledge domain. They also engage in sharing their own knowledge and actively pursue ways to collaborate and synergize beyond their existing circles. All these characteristics help in establishing vibrant and dynamic networks that offer enormous opportunities for growth and success.
3) Approaching is Skill: If you continue to remain in your comfort zone, you will lose out on opportunities to make your network strong and vibrant. One of the ways to widen your reach is to ditch the “I Know All” attitude and identify issues that you are uncomfortable dealing with. Make a list of all such things, search for the experts in those areas, reach out to them, and don’t hesitate to seek help. Such initiatives are a wonderful way to expand your network and leverage connections to enrich your personal and professional lives.
4) Consistency is Enabler: Like other fields, consistent efforts can greatly help enrich your connections across professional networks. Make it a habit to expand your network, and it’s better to fix schedules for networking opportunities. Decide a particular day and time in a week to engage with new professionals and explore potential areas of cooperation and collaboration amongst the group. When done consistently, such exercises help expand your relations and equip you with a very active network of professionals.
5) Inclusive Approach Helps: By adopting a holistic perspective, professionals can easily expand their reach and include professionals belonging to varied product categories and service domains. Such exposure not only helps in expanding the connections but also creates a conducive environment for innovation. Adopting a multidisciplinary approach also fosters the ability to listen and respect the viewpoints of others, thereby making you more inclusive in your professional outlook. These qualities, in turn, help in expanding your list of connections and create a strong bond between you and your professional networks.
6) Respect the Differences: While crisscrossing varied groups of professionals across industrial domains, you’ll come across personalities who are at total variance with your thoughts, values, and working style. At first, It might not be easy for you to strike up conversations, but remember taking the first step and respecting the difference is key to having a vibrant and dynamic professional network. Listening to totally different perspectives also expands your horizons and allows you to apply novel ideas in your field of expertise.
Networking is a crucial skill, and its importance in today’s global environment couldn’t be overemphasized. As a professional, you need to hone it continuously, and the only way to do that is to keep interacting with a range of experts from various product categories and service domains. Further, it’s important to focus on expanding your list of contacts both within and outside your field of expertise, as it will yield rich dividends both in terms of personal and professional development.
