Houston New Media

To be a leader is to understand that you must transcend being good at just functional and analytical (or problem solving) tasks.

You must be able to build relationships that enable you to create a fabric of personal contacts that will provide you support, feedback, insight, resources, and information. That’s called networking!

Leaders are great networkers and can work effectively with a diverse array of people. We all must become leaders. To that end we must simultaneously learn three types of networking:

1. Operational Networking -The group of people we can depend on to make things happen. It”s the quality of relationships — the rapport and mutual trust — that gives an operational network its power.
2. Personal Networking – Links with people with whom we have something common. This is done through professional associations, alumni groups, clubs and personal interests communities. These contacts provide important referrals, information and often-developmental support such as coaching and mentoring.
3. Strategic Networking – The key to a good strategic network is leverage: the ability to marshal information, support and resources from one sector of a network to achieve results in another. Strategic networkers don”t just influence their relational environment; they shape it in their own image by moving and hiring subordinates, changing suppliers and source financing, lobbying to place allies in peer positions, and even restructuring their boards to create networks favorable to their business goals.

Bottom Line: Leaders understand the alternative to effective networking is to fail. You simply will not reach a leadership position or you will not succeed at leadership without effective networking skills.

*Harvard Business Review, January 2007, “How Leaders Create Networks”, Hermina Ibarra and Mark Hunter.

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When groups accomplish things it is a result of these three factors having been in place:

Purpose, Direction and Motivation. These are the basic tenets of Leadership.

It is taught by the boy scouts, taught by the military. It is the difference between Obama and Hilary.
In intellectual warfare, groups and even whole armies are sabotaged by merely introducing uncertainty around the group’s purpose, direction, or motivation. It is that simple, and that powerful.

Purpose, Direction and Motivation happen on the personal level as well as on the group level, and at any level of task within a project.

Whenever a group does not mesh and things do not happen as planned you can bet it is because one of these factors is missing. This is why many projects are started and yet abandoned.

At the same rate, to ensure any team or organization’s success it is as simple as making sure the team has purpose, direction and motivation and that its members have a common goal, work interdependently and act accordingly.

Even in teams or organizations with weak leads, if the team understands these things it can still succeed because the goal is greater than the individual, and the passions which motivate the team are stronger than the weakest or even most stubborn of leaders.

For example, if a team is low on direction but high on purpose and motivation, it can find a direction and succeed. If the team is low on motivation but high on purpose and direction, it can find motivation and have success. Although this does not come without its challenges,  understanding the basics of leadership and teamwork is a tremendous benefit to anyone who finds them self in any type of leadership role.

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