Lesson Overview

NetWeaving is more than just a nice warm, fuzzy, touchy-feely philosophy that inspires people to help others.  NetWeaving incorporates specific skill sets, strategies, and action steps that can help anyone incorporate more NetWeaving into their daily life.

The three skill sets of NetWeaving include: First, learning how to become a better Connector of others with their needs in mind rather than just your own.

Secondly, learning how to position yourself as a gratuitous Resource for others. And in line with the first two Skill Sets, how to build and maintain a Trusted Resource Network made up of individuals who are exceptional at what they do.

Some people are just naturally gregarious and outgoing, and they love meeting new people. As part of growing their own network, they naturally find that they are consistently introducing people to each other within their ever-expanding network of contacts.

On the other hand, there are many people, especially in these days when many people are rarely communicating face-to-face and instead are using social media, and thus are very uncomfortable in a traditional networking environment.

NetWeaving has designed a series of how to strategies and action steps that can help almost anyone improve upon this skill set. This is because it becomes easier when your efforts are aimed at helping someone else rather than yourself.  And some of those who are less outgoing, discover that since the emphasis in NetWeaving shifts to helping others by introducing them to someone that person would benefit knowing, they find they really can enjoy doing this.

Some people – especially more analytical types - are less gregarious and outgoing.  They are much more comfortable with serving as a gratuitous resource provider for others, rather than being the outgoing connector of others.  They also love being recognized as a helpful, creative, problem solver.

For this reason, we recommend focusing on this skill set for this group and what tends to happen is that as they begin to get more appreciation and recognition for this role, it tends to raise their own self-confidence and self-image, and often they begin becoming more outgoing, and some even become excellent connectors of others.

Some people pride themselves on accumulating a network of people who are active in a variety of fields without qualifying them as being exceptionally talented at what they do. Building a Trusted Resource Network is the equivalent of pretending you are in the Executive Search business, and you have been given the assignment of identifying prospects across an infinite variety of fields, professions, and industries who are best of breed at what they do.

In some cases, this involves working with them over a long enough period of time so that you get to see them in action and hear the glowing reports and testimonials from clients.  In other cases, you may be referred to the person by someone whose opinion and judgment you absolutely trust.   Their ravings about the person – the quality of his/her work; their reliability, sense of urgency, and customer-centric-focus, make you want to add them to your Trusted Resource Network.  Recruiting them though, almost always comes by first, finding a way to help them; then following up on a regular basis to maintain the relationship.

One of the biggest fallacies of traditional networking is that people are going to go to networking events or meetings, meet someone new for the first time, and then are going to start being referred to some of their best clients.