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How to Become Well-Connected

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Re: How to Become Well-Connected

#71

Post by [deleted] »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #62
drvdevd wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is also of course the distinction of the known VS unknown person doing something worth connecting to. Lots of people who are doing things that probably are not worth much consideration are simply good at selling themselves as something greater and vice versa. So if you believe you are doing something worth connecting to, you better be ready to sell yourself as well. Or risk drowning in the noise. FULL D…

That's the point here. There are a lot of people out there applying these principals who don't really do shit, but by god they are "well connected." You see them at all these entrepreneur events and all they do is waste everyone's time with their bullshit. In the end it doesn't matter how well connected they are because they have no vector and no capabilities. These are the guys who consistently tell you how they are…

[deleted]

Re: How to Become Well-Connected

#72

Post by socmag »

mindcrime wrote: post #46
socmag wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup totally agreed. Knowledge of NLP helps. Not practicing it consciously but understanding the theory behind it. Is important to make a connection and pay attention to others. Too many people make it a one way conversation and walk away wondering why things didn't go better, meanwhile they were talking 80% of the time. Any time you can make others feel included, and their opinion matters during a meeting the better…

I studied a little bit of NLP, and definitely think it has the potential to be useful. But in reality, I rarely, if ever, use the stuff (at least not consciously).

Right, NLP as a "Science" is kind of crackpot, but there are some things in the texts that are truisms and worthy of note just because they are laid out concisely.

It can be very dangerous and malicious to use that basic knowledge of how to conduct a conversation to do what? .. "make people feel special and you care when you absolutely don't give a damn about them", and the conversation is purely a means to an end.

That said, it's nice to be nice, and much better to be inclusive, even if you needed to learn that from a pretty fringe bunch of theory.

[Edit] As a side note, I was first introduced to NLP when someone used it on me in person as a means to try to get me to work for an organized online credit card phishing operation and wanted me to move to Costa Rica.

It was a very strange experience and was effective up until the point I noticed what they were doing

Took me a few days figure out what had happened. I didn't know anything about NLP at the time and was kind of shocked that this was an actual thing.

Ended up calling the FBI.

Re: How to Become Well-Connected

#73

Post by [deleted] »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #62
drvdevd wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is also of course the distinction of the known VS unknown person doing something worth connecting to. Lots of people who are doing things that probably are not worth much consideration are simply good at selling themselves as something greater and vice versa. So if you believe you are doing something worth connecting to, you better be ready to sell yourself as well. Or risk drowning in the noise. FULL D…

That's the point here. There are a lot of people out there applying these principals who don't really do shit, but by god they are "well connected." You see them at all these entrepreneur events and all they do is waste everyone's time with their bullshit. In the end it doesn't matter how well connected they are because they have no vector and no capabilities. These are the guys who consistently tell you how they are…

[deleted]

Re: How to Become Well-Connected

#74

Post by lohengramm »

cookiecaper wrote: post #68
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't have to be in a "the person who does X" way. I'd disagree with this. Otherwise what good are you if you aren't "the person who does X?" Is there someone out there who thousands of people explicitly only want to take a coffee break with? I mean I want to have a coffee break with a lot of people, but not cause they are good coffee drinkers, but because they have made significant progress in some thing I care…

You don't need to become famous. People strongly value personal affectations over professional skill. Failure to acknowledge this is simply wishful thinking. Consider that most of your indirect colleagues are not well-versed enough to know whether you're doing your job well or not in the first place. Why are so many clowns in positions with high rank, and so many better-qualified people are further down the totem pol…

This is very true in my experience. I can recognize the "People don't respond naturally to qualifications. They respond to getting their personal interests and desires satisfied." everywhere.

Of course a very bright engineer will naturally achieve some success, but there will always be a bar limiting his growth to how much people who can open new doors want him around and trust (in a very personal sense) him.

Re: How to Become Well-Connected

#75

Post by obastani »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #34

This whole thing has a huge assumption behind it: That you're someone worth being connected to. His distinction between the Hunted and the Hunters is great, but 99% of people don't fall into the "Hunted" category unless they are doing something exceptional - and even those doing something exceptional aren't typically hunted. So while I think this is a good list, and it's pretty bog standard Carnegie/How to read peopl…

I interpreted much of the article as being advice for the "hunter", who is not necessarily worth connecting to. For example, do your research beforehand, keep your requests short and reasonable, don't make false pretenses, don't oversell yourself, etc.

Re: How to Become Well-Connected

#77

Post by justinbaker84 »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #34

This whole thing has a huge assumption behind it: That you're someone worth being connected to. His distinction between the Hunted and the Hunters is great, but 99% of people don't fall into the "Hunted" category unless they are doing something exceptional - and even those doing something exceptional aren't typically hunted. So while I think this is a good list, and it's pretty bog standard Carnegie/How to read peopl…

Amen

Re: How to Become Well-Connected

#78

Post by SomeStupidPoint »

coldtea wrote: post #69
SomeStupidPoint wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...Why? I'm actually genuinely curious why you feel that way, assuming the person is sincere.

For one, because where you go to college and whether the school has some student level "activism" about climate change has zero (or even negative) impact on actual climate change.

Please see my reply to the sibling comment, which addresses what you say here.

Re: How to Become Well-Connected

#79

Post by mncharity »

ryandrake wrote: post #37

I consider myself reasonably outgoing, but I've always viewed "networking" as kind of slimy and insincere. At a fundamental level, population A has little to offer / little power and population B has a lot, and networking is the set of personal interactions that population A employs in order to have a shot at interacting/transacting with population B. The "hunter/hunted" relationship mentioned in this article is a ke…

Here's an approach you might like.

Let's say you go to a tech meetup. Because of the abysmal state of social augmentation tech, there are likely many people there who could have a good conversation, but won't. Either because they never run into each other, or they talk without knowing they have some common interest. You're in a position to help them.

Assuming you're interested in people anyway, it's little extra work to explore what they're interested in, what difficulties they're encountering, and what they're looking for. And given that the population of such meetups are already filtered for common interests, my experience is you quickly hit "You know, I was talking with someone earlier who . Maybe you'd like to chat with them? Let's see, where... ah, over there, black shirt."

No long-term state. No wrestling with wretched CRM systems. Just interesting conversations, and knowing people likely had better outcomes because you were there.

And if you wish to, you also get lots of opportunity to help people towards greater clarity about what they want. "As I talk with people, sometimes I notice they're interested in the same thing, and I try to point them at each other. But I'm a little unclear on ."

I don't always do it. But for me, I find it makes many meetups more interesting.

Re: How to Become Well-Connected

#80

Post by bluker »

There are two things that I've always found that will immediately engage people and make a lasting impression.

1. How did you become who you are? People work hard to where they're at and they rarely get to tell their story - so I found that engaging them on this level allows them to reminisce a little bit about where they came from and most people will light right up.

2. Write hand-written notes. This is a lost art and Brian Chesky talks about how he learned from George Tenet the value of writing hand-written notes.

http://fortune.com/brian-chesky-airbnb/

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