Networking Lessons from My Grandmother

My grandmother was a great networker. She accomplished some amazing things in her life, which I realize now she could never have done without being a terrific relationship-builder.

One thing she did all the time was to clip items of note out of the newspaper and send the articles to friends. Recipes or obituaries of people she knew went to her sisters. And they sent her their own clippings back. She was like the Guy Kawasaki of the pre-Twitter days. She was always looking for items of interest to her friends. Probably one of the reasons she had so many.

In retrospect, I learned a lot about networking from her without even realizing it.

My grandmother got more personal letters in the mail than anyone I knew. She also got dozens of birthday cards each year. When I asked her why she got so many, she told me, "You have to send letters to get letters." And isn't that exactly how networking is? You have to send (give) __________ to get ___________. Fill in the blanks with whatever you want.

1 comment:

  1. Anonymous6:04 AM

    My mother was the same way, in fact my parents were both networkers in their own way, and when they passed I was overwhelmed with the people who reached out to us. My father did it by asking questions of people and then remembering little tidbits about them when he met them again. You have to show interest to get interest. Thank you so much for the post.

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