This course provides insight into the key professional skills needed by managers at all levels of an organisation. You’ll learn key skills such as how to make a positive first impression; how to become a role model at work; effective time and resource management; and networking. This course forms part of a specialisation from the University of London designed to help you develop and build the essential business, academic, and cultural skills necessary to succeed in international business, or in further study. If completed successfully, your certificate from this specialisation can also be used as part of the application process for the University of London Global MBA programme, particularly for early career applicants. If you would like more information about the Global MBA, please visit https://mba.london.ac.uk/. This course is endorsed by CMI
Interview with Claire Taylor | Networking | Part 2
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Professional Skills for International Business
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University of London
355 ratings
Course 1 of 6 in the Specialization International Business Essentials
From the lesson
Networking
Week four will explore networking where you will have the opportunity to reflect on your
personal brand, and how social networks can help in professional networking.
Meet the Instructors
David JamesFounder and Director, DJ Learning Ltd
University of London
[MUSIC]
In the first part of this interview, Claire and
I were talking about different scenarios in which we might need to network.
And we'd begun to explore how the need to network will continue to change.
So the need to network in a corporate environment or
in an organization environment, rather, or when you're working as
part of a consultancy or when you're running your own organization.
And we looked at some examples where network can be formal, it can be informal.
And we soon discovered that there are different types of formal and
informal networking.
We also began to discover how things have changed in terms of networking
with the onset of social media, and how, perhaps,
the skills that we need to use when we're networking successfully have changed.
And, yet, throughout all of these changes, there's
no doubt that networking is a really important part of what we need to do.
There's also a different dynamic, as well, and
that is planned and unplanned networking.
Sometimes, and perhaps all of you have been in this situation yourselves,
people come into your lives that weren't there ten seconds before.
And all of a sudden, you have a contract that you've never heard about,
that you never dreamed about.
And all of a sudden they're there, either in a formal or informal,
face to face or via social media context.
And in this interview, we're going chat with Claire about a particular situation.
And we'll call it a networking adventure because I think,as we will discover,
that there wasn't an initial script that went with this networking scenario.
So Claire, over to you.
>> Thanks, David.
So, yes, this was definitely serendipity.
So what happened was back in 2013, after I had setup The Story Mill,
I set up a LinkedIn group called The Business of Storytelling.
And I was really interested in having people who were interested in business
storytelling get involved with this group.
>> Common ground.
>> Common ground, common ground.
And I also reached out to people who seemed to be interested in that
sort of area.
And one person that I came across, a lady called Jean who lives in Minnesota,
who also has a storytelling business in the US, was networking on LinkedIn.
She would blog every so often, and I liked reading her stuff.
And I thought, she seems really interesting.
Sent her a LinkedIn connection.
Was thinking even when I sent that connection,
she might think who on earth are you?
>> [LAUGH] >> Because it was connecting with somebody
who you know didn't know her.
>> So you could have always been refused couldn't you?
>> That's right, you can always have people refuse.
And I also signed up for her blog so
that I would get her newsletters every month when she put them out there.
And I thought nothing more of it, and carried on doing what I was doing,
and networked with lots of other people in the meantime.
So this was one of kind of many people that I found interesting.
>> And so Jean accepted my LinkedIn connection.
And then, well, a little bit of time later, she would post things
in the Business of Storytelling group and I would post things.
And we would comment on each other's articles and
things like that, all very nice and friendly.
And then when I published my book in November 2013, I was really surprised,
must have been maybe six weeks later, I got an email from Jean.
>> Right. >> And Jean's email, it was lovely.
I mean that was just a total surprise, just completely out of the blue.
She had read my book and my book is a book of stories.
And she had related to a lot of the stories in my book, even though we'd grown
up in different parts of the world, we'd both been one of five siblings.
[LAUGH] I had a story in my book about, as
a very small child, sucking my thumb and actually being punished for doing that.
And she had an exact same story.
>> [LAUGH] >> I mean really.
And this is the sort of power of when we tell people things about ourselves,
of being able to sort of connect with them, people go, yeah, me, too.
I know exactly what that's like.
So she sent me this message, which was absolutely lovely, and
I wrote back to her.
And we were both very into storytelling.
We also had very similar kind of backgrounds in some ways.
She had started her career as a dietitian and gone into business, into healthcare.
And I had started mine in marketing and gone into healthcare.
So very common ground, and we'd both gone on to create storytelling businesses.
And so we vowed kind of at the end is that we said we must meet up sometime,
even though you're in Minnesota and I'm in the UK.
And she had never been to the UK, and I had never been to Minnesota,
although I've been to the US a number of times.
But we left it like that, right, that was 2013.
And then we kept in touch, just responding to each other's posts.
We were on a couple of telecalls with other people together,
webinar type things that we would both be on.
And then last year, it was February last year, she sent me a message.
And she said I've been invited to give a talk at a conference in Lithuania.
The organizers said to me that they had a European speaker who's dropped out.
And I said to them, I know somebody who could do this [LAUGH] for you.
And she said, I mentioned you, I hope it's all right [LAUGH], I hope you'll do it.
She said then we could meet up in Lithuania.
And I thought, gosh, that would be so cool.
>> [LAUGH] >> [LAUGH] So I said yes, yes yes.
So the organizers contacted me and I said yes, yes, yes, of course.
So this was happening in April.
And then we had a Skype because we were both going to give talks, and
we were going to run a storytelling workshop afterwards together.
And so we did some Skype calls, and we spoke with the organizers together,
and got ourselves all ready and packed our bags.
And she flew from Minnesota to Lithuania and I flew from the UK to Lithuania.
And we met there for the first time.
And there was another international speaker, as well, who'd come from the US.
And we got on like a house on fire.
And we spent a couple of days hanging around Lithuania doing our talks,
doing our workshop, eating out and
all that kind of stuff, and just having a jolly, great time.
So since we've come back from, obviously she's back in Minnesota,
I'm back in the UK, but we actually keep in touch now.
So we have a Skype call every month or
so, and we talk about what projects we're working on.
And we're real supporters for each other so we talk about what's going on with
our kids, and what's going on with our families, and things like that, as well.
So there's a personal relationship.
And we also support each other with what, she's looking to write some books, and
I'm looking at writing another book.
And we support each other with these sorts of things, and
how we're working with groups.
And it's just great having a person like that to be able to talk to and
bounce ideas off of, and just, it's a friendship as well.
So it's completely serendipitous.
And I think when networking happens like that, often it's very powerful.
It can be very powerful because you've made a connection
on a number of different sorts of levels, so yeah.
>> With this extraordinary example that Claire has just shared with us,
if perhaps I can just reflect back on some of the key stages.
I think it would be fair to say that when you made that initial connection,
almost speculative.
So you look from a distance through technology at what is perhaps a bit of
common ground there.
Perhaps this person would like to be part of you were doing,
as well as saying networking can be formal, informal, planned or unplanned.
You can actually say perhaps speculative because if you don't speculate then you're
never going to know what the answer was.
I mean, Claire sent this message to Jean, and
then a little bit of time later got the response.
There was an immediate area of common ground which
became an important part of the reasons why that relationship developed.
And then what we've also seen and, again,
perhaps it's something that you can relate to, I can certainly relate to.
Sometimes things happen that really weren't expected so
as that relationship was developing, and Clair had never been to Minnesota,
and Jean had never been to the UK.
And then along comes Lithuania, where neither had ever been to, and
there they were, working together and meeting for the first time.
And then, as a result of that, what we have then is this initial,
speculative, networking relationship that has evolved and
developed, both in terms of the personal friendship and
family sharing that goes on with the monthly or so Skype conversations.
But also at a professional level, as well.
And what we've seen explained by Claire here is that
when we're networking, is there a formula?
Well, perhaps, because if we've got a planned networking process,
then maybe that's part of what we need to do.
Is there a formal, perhaps almost targeted, way in which we need to network?
Perhaps that's also part of what we need to do.
Is there an informal side?
So when we are out socially,
or when we are at a club that we go to, or when we play sport,
whatever it is that we do, that would almost certainly be a part of networking.
But is there also a need to speculate, so to have a little look and
say well, actually, I'm not quite sure where this is going to take me,
but unless I try, I'm never going to know what that answer is?
So by Claire sharing with us that example,
we've learned that there are several different ways in which we can network.
And thematically, we never know where that journey is going to take us.
So thank you very much, Claire.
>> Thank you, David.
[MUSIC]
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