Is Your Network Full Of Turkeys Or Eagles?

Are you an eagle or a turkey networker?  Who is in your network?

Eagles fly high are able to see a lot from a long way away. They have a keen eye and are very good at big picture thinking. They know an awful lot of people, but not that many intimately. They have independent thoughts and are fairly self reliant.



A turkey keeps close to the ground, they cover an awful lot of mileage in a day, yet all activity is within quite a confined area. They have in depth knowledge of a lot of things and know a lot of people but just within their pen or field.



In your network it’s good to have a mix of turkeys and eagles. Eagles tend to have lofty job titles and are great at giving you a different perspective, in contrast Turkeys are a real valuable source of information, they have such a huge network of contacts they always know someone who can help you even if they can’t.

How to use networking for your career...it’s a doddle

Imagine the scene, you stand in the kitchen and the boiler goes bang, it is January and minus five degrees outside with snow on the ground. What do you do? After starting to shiver, are you going to reach for the yellow pages and hastily look up P for Plumber or H for Heating Engineer or are you going to phone your mate who you know had a similar problem last winter and ask them what they did, who they used to solve their problem quickly, and generally find out their experiences?




No prizes for guessing. This simple analogy is networking at its best; you are in a difficult situation and need a bit of friendly advice to give you some information. Hey presto the same concept is absolutely true for all areas of networking.



We tend to do a lot of networking when we are booking a holiday to somewhere we have never been to, yes we check trip advisor but we are much more likely to listen and act on what someone we know has experienced.



So if we are so happy doing this networking thing for some areas of your life why not do the same for your working life?



Good networking is simply about being organised about what information you would like to have that you currently don’t have.



In my head I have an ongoing list of things I’m actively networking for. My current list is:-



Find out more about mobile phone aerials within residential areas

Get to the bottom of hash tags in twitter

Understand exactly what the different sectors and division of social services all do.

Find out what people think of Lynda Gratton’s new book, is it worth buying.



These are just a few, there are lots more, I could go on, but you get the idea.



Anyone and everyone I meet each day, from my post lady to clients, from security men to people I meet in the swimming pool I engage in conversation, have a chat, and ask them some questions around my list if they seem to know something vaguely in that area.



Easy peasey, isn’t it?

Did you want to go back to work this morning?

Someone said to me this morning that next week is going to be soooo hard because it seems so long since they worked 5 days a week.




One person said to me yesterday that they were really looking forward to today and getting back to normality, they especially wanted some structure back to their days as there had been so many holidays.



Yesterday evening I heard someone say that they had really enjoyed taking the 3 days off mid last week to join Easter, the wedding and May Day in order to make a lovely long holiday, but they were really looking forward to getting back to work on Tuesday.



I thought all three comments were illuminating, they clearly show each person’s perception and preferences of work. Which person sounds most like you…



Are you the first person who doesn’t sound as if they really enjoy their work, the second person who enjoys things happening on a certain day and time or the final person who clearly has a job they love?