In life, a lot of your progress is made by people you know and speak to. If you are in sales, you will most likely sell more by knowing more people. If you are an engineer, you could say that you are better equipped for your job by affiliating yourself with and learning from engineers that are more knowledgeable than you.
As an extremely introverted person, I have often feared the necessary evil of networking. The Business Pundit site surprisingly explains my situation perfectly. In fact, I couldn't have come up with a better couple of sentences.
"I have a problem. I'm an introvert. I'm not shy. I'm not afraid of being in public. But I am horrible at chit-chat and gossip..."
"I would rather spend four hours with my head stapled to the carpet. I would be more comfortable that way..."
The article goes on to explain 10 lessons he's learned as an introvert:
- Networking is an investment, not a nuisance.
- At first, you have to kiss a lot of frogs.
- Don’t spend too much time on it.
- Do cool things.
- Invite people to lunch.
- Go regularly to things you like.
- Analyze your results.
- Find the key nodes in the network.
- Don’t network just for the sake of networking.
You can read up on each point at How to Network - for Introverts by Business Pundit. [via Lifehack.org]
