Closing Thoughts on Social Networks

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From the course by University of Pennsylvania

Influence

121 ratings

University of Pennsylvania

Influence

121 ratings

Course 4 of 4 in the Specialization Achieving Personal and Professional Success

What does it mean to be influential? How does one persuade others to pursue a unified goal? How does one leverage power? In this course, you’ll learn how to develop influence and to become more effective in achieving your organizational goals. Professor Cade Massey of the Wharton School has designed this course to help you understand the framework of power and influence and the dynamics of effective networks, and shows you how to develop your skills of persuasion and leverage. By the end of this course, you’ll know your own strengths and how to use them to get what you need, how to gain power and influence, and how to leverage relationships and alliances to achieve your goals in both business and in life.

From the lesson

Module 2

In this module, you’ll examine social networks and relationships, and learn how they can help you accomplish your organizational goals. You’ll be able to differentiate between dense and disconnected networks, and weigh the benefits and costs of diversification within your networks. Then you’ll learn about both successful strategies and common pitfalls in cultivating a network, and see how authentic generosity will build reciprocity in your networks and vice versa. You’ll also explore coalitions and how alliances between parties with different perspectives can be very effective and efficient in achieving mutual goals. By the end of this module, you’ll learn effective strategies for networking, coalition-building, and leveraging, and will be able to form strong alliances and relationships both inside and outside your organization.

Module Introduction- Relationships1:10

Seating Chart Exercise3:56

Resource Dependence and Social Capital3:29

Network Structure15:06

Applications9:15

Cultivating Networks11:27

Organizational Perspective5:15

Common Mistakes3:07

Closing Thoughts on Social Networks2:52

Introduction to Coalitions4:08

Types of Coalitions11:58

Coalition Examples3:14

Prescriptions for Coalitions8:52

Case: Washington Square6:28

Meet the Instructors

Cade Massey
Practice Professor
The Wharton School

So a few key takeaways from our discussion of informal networks.

The first is that networks are social capital.

They're the analog to your human capital,

they're part of the portfolio that you bring to any situation, any organization.

The effectiveness of the network depends heavily on structural holes.

This is the new idea,

kind of unusual counterintuitive.

Somewhat provocative idea we're pushing today is one of

the most important ideas in network theory

that the efficiency and effectiveness of a network,

the power of that social capital depends

on structural holes- how disconnected the network is.

And finally, that networks are earned, not built.

You can't do this stuff quite as ready made as intentional as we'd like.

This is something you need as a way of life.

You create energy by thinking about it in terms of reciprocity,

going beyond the norm of reciprocity.

Very much thinking about social networks as something you're doing on a daily,

weekly basis not because you have an objective that has to be met by it right away.

So, the ideas we've been talking about on this topic connect to the rest of the course.

Understanding the other party for example,

is an idea that we've been talking about throughout the course.

It's critical for creating valuable resources, generating reciprocity,

strategically managing your network, recognizing trade-offs.

This is something we talk about pretty much every step of the way.

It would be nice if these were tactics that you could use

without worrying about using them too much or if you could use them all circumstances.

But life is a little more complicated that influences a lot more complicated than that.

There's going to be trade-offs associated with every choice that you make.

And finally, intentionality, building networks in a way that maximizes

their effectiveness requires a little more strategy and it might be

a little more strategy than you're comfortable bringing to your relationships.

One way to think about it,

we would urge you to be intentional about

your network and to be unintentional about your relationships.

We understand the squeamishness,

In fact we advocate having squeamishness about bringing

too much intentionality to relationships and individuals.

But I think we can sit comfortably about being strategically,

about the broader network,

and the decisions we make about jobs,

about where we sit, about how we spend our time,

while still being unintentional and more

human in the individual relationships that we build.

Finally, far from being distasteful,

increasing influence to your network is one of the key ways to leverage your ability.

The development and use of power requires

accomplishing and accomplishing almost always

especially these days requires working through other people.

You can't take accomplish what others can,

If you can't work through other people.

As Jeff Pfeffer puts it,

"failures of implementation are almost

invariably failures to build successful coalitions".

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