What do I have to give?

During my trip to Stockholm this week, I met with a 26 year old entrepreneur. Johan has just moved to Stockholm from his home in the South of Sweden and has a limited network. He is marketing a product to the Marketing Directors of major FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods) companies and is being encouraged to build his network in order to get the connections he needs.

As we sat down to chat, Johan immediately told me his biggest challenge. "I am only 26, I don't know many people. I understand the importance of being able to help other people before asking for their help, but I'm not sure I have much to give."

This was a problem I heard many times during my time with BRE, and have written about before. As far as I am concerned, Johan has already overcome his major obstacle.

As long as you are willing and prepared to help other people in your network, then people will be happy to help you. They can tell who is genuinely interested in them, even if they are not in a position to help immediately, and who is 'hunting' for what they can take.

Experienced and well-connected business people networking with a 26 year old new to the City will not expect Johan to be in a position to help them at the moment but many will be more than happy to help him. It may be that they benefited from such advice and connections when they were younger. They may see future benefits from associating with someone who is likely to develop their business, they may just hope that he will do the same for another young entrepreneur in the future.

Having the right mindset is the most important thing, even if the opportunities to help are not there yet. Besides, show a real interest in other people and you may be surprised just how much you do have to give.

The importance of a mentor

I appeared on a panel at The Minority Lawyers Conference at The Law Society in London on Saturday.

One of my fellow panelists, Amrik Kandola, a Partner in the law firm Eversheds, gave a presentation about the importance of mentoring and the impact on his career. Mentoring seems to be a forgotten benefit of networking. It is hard to underestimate the positive effect on your career or business offered by someone who has already overcome the challenges that lie ahead of you, and who has an influential network who can help you achieve your goals.

I have two mentors, one to help me with my business and the other to support my speaking career. As Amrik stressed during his talk, the emphasis is on me to keep in touch with them and share issues or discuss ideas, rather than for me to wait for the phone to ring.

One of the questions during the panel session concerned mentoring. Amrik was asked how to approach mentors and ask for their support.

The advice Amrik offered was to understand your objectives and know the profile of the person who can help you. Show enthusiasm and commitment and people will want to help you.

I'd add this thought to that. If you know who you need to approach, you'll find the links to them among your existing network.

Executive Networking

This article originally appeared in The National Networker

“None of us is as smart as all of us”. The strapline for Footdown sums up the focus of an increasing number of Chief Executive and Leadership networks in the UK.

There is a growing recognition that there is no need for business leaders to plough on alone, learning from their own mistakes and having to hide any vulnerability in order to set a strong lead. While support for CEOs may be hard to come by within their own organisations, many have discovered the benefits of working closely with others in a similar position to themselves.

Footdown is a mentoring and peer group for entrepreneurs, directors and senior executives. It was founded by British entrepreneur, Andrew Mercer, who had sold his software company to the technology giant Oracle in 1998. Rather than basking in his success, Mercer recognised his shortcomings as a businessman and opportunities he had missed. He felt that, with more support at critical stages of the company’s growth, the success of his business could have been so much greater and it could have been publicly listed.

Mercer believed that the creation of a group environment for people in a similar position to share their experiences, discuss challenges and offer solutions would help other people achieve more than he had been able to. His approach wasn’t unique, nor was it new. Such groups have been operating in the UK for a number of years and worldwide for over half a century.

Vistage International was founded as The Executive Committee (TEC) by Wisconsin businessman Robert Nourse in 1957 for similar reasons and they now have a worldwide presence. Richard Alberg was a member of TEC for five years before he sold his psychometric testing company in November 2006. He found the process invaluable.

“When I joined TEC I did not have a strategic direction for my business. My objectives were growing the business whilst avoiding going bust. TEC helped me think about strategy and exit. I sold the business in 2006 and it was guidance from my TEC group and chairman that helped me appreciate what I needed to do to make my business attractive and valuable.”

Richard joined originally because he realised that he was learning on the job and making a lot of mistakes. As the head of the organisation, there was no-one for him to bounce ideas off, or to be inspired by. In his TEC group he found that he had a sounding board for ideas and people who would hold him to account for his actions, a key need for a business leader.

For Jo Wright, a member of Footdown in Bath, the support of her Leadership group is equally as important. When she joined, Jo had moved through her organisation, Feilden Clegg Bradley, to the position of Finance Partner, despite her training as an architect rather than as an accountant.

When the Senior Partners approached Jo to become Managing Partner, the members of her Footdown group took her through an evaluation process to help her decide whether the position would be right for her and how to make it work, without losing touch with the design side that brought her into the business in the first place.

“It’s given me more of a feel for the business side of the practice”, said Jo. “I now have a much better insight into how businesses operate and are led and therefore it’s moving towards making me more effective as a potential leader for this business.”

Having founded The Academy for Chief Executives (ACE) in 1996, Brian Chernett has seen similar stories in a number of their groups. “In one group alone there have been nine members selling their businesses for more than £3m. They would tell you that this had a lot to do with the support and help of the group.”

ACE was formed as Brian felt that TEC’s approach could be improved. “At the time I was working for our major competitor – TEC (Vistage) - and felt that there was a need to focus more on the softer skills of leadership and this didn’t appear to be a belief cherished by the American operators of TEC. Therefore I left to set up the Academy. Today you will find the processes very similar to those within Vistage but the philosophy is very different.”

Like Footdown and many similar groups, ACE follows a very recognisable format, with an expert speaker working in the group before lunch and a session in the afternoon that Brian calls “the Board you could never afford and the agenda you could never have” where members share their challenges and find the solutions to overcome them. Like other groups, members will meet with the Group Chairman once a month for a 1:2:1 coaching session.

John Cremer, a business speaker who runs an improvisation company, The Maydays, finds that the ‘softer’ approach of ACE works very well for his group.

“I find with ACE there is a feeling of continuity and sharing as equals, more like a family” said John. “I think this is due to the emphasis placed on personal as well as professional development, they are seen as inseparable.

“This seems to make differences in status or income level between members largely irrelevant.”

The personal development opportunities clearly stand out for John. “To see a fellow member rapidly make a huge and difficult shift in his personal life as a direct result of robust feedback from the group is priceless. I doubt he could have made such a transformation elsewhere.”

Roger Harrop, a CEO Expert, who has spoken to over 50 such groups and is a former ACE Speaker of the Year said, “I love working with these groups – the members are generally highly motivated and totally trusting of their fellow group members. This means that objective and meaningful discussion takes place, real actions agreed and, most importantly, each is held to account by the others.”

The trust that Roger speaks of is one of the main keys to success of such groups. It is important for members to feel confident sharing core concerns and to be completely open with their colleagues.

Confidentiality, respect and trust are cornerstones for all of the Leadership groups. Jay Hale, Co-Chairman of The Midlands Leadership Group, recognises that the levels of trust between members are integral not only to encouraging openness and honesty when discussing challenges, but also to the long-term success of the group. Jay’s group actively discourages trading between members.

“Business between members introduces a reason not to be totally open and frank in the issue sessions. There are some things that you might not wish to share with a customer or supplier”, said Jay. “Such activities can weaken the group and cause a rift if things don’t go right. We have heard stories about groups in other organisations breaking up because of commercial disputes between members, although I don’t know if they are true.”

According to David Glassman, a Vistage Group Chairman, the pressures on a modern CEO mean that leadership groups play an important role in encouraging strong decision making, relieve the isolation on business leaders and act as a vital check on hasty actions.

“Groups of peers help in decision making”, said David. “Given the relentlessness of the pressures on CEOs they might not have thought of all the relevant aspects of an issue.

“Equally, CEOs usually have no one to whom they are truly accountable. Often their chairmen, NEDs and functional heads do not challenge at all, let alone constructively, and their (marriage) partners do not inhabit the same planets in terms of being able to understand their business needs.

“CEOs recognise that they are isolated because often they are not fully informed and they feel that they dare not expose their doubts and vulnerabilities even to their key lieutenants. In a group environment, they can discuss proposed changes within a trusted group of colleagues where absolute confidentiality rules. It is cheaper to make mistakes in a presentation to such colleagues who offer (and receive) peer advice from experience and with goodwill than it is to proceed with a project that later has to be aborted.”

‘Networking’ means different things to different people. In the case of groups such as these, it’s not about new business generation, selling to each other or referrals. Instead, the focus is on collaboration, support, feedback, self-development and mentoring.

Pilar Martinez-Vidal, is the MD of Impulse International, a global courier firm located close to Heathrow Airport.

“I wanted to focus more upon the future, but I was too entrenched in the day-to-day running of Impulse. I felt overworked and isolated. When you are in such a position, you can’t share doubts with your staff because they look to you to lead.

“Mentoring makes you accountable to somebody, which pushes you harder to achieve what you’ve set out to do. I have quarterly targets I set with my one-to-one mentor, which I have to report back on. In the group mentoring sessions, my peers act as my non-executive directors.

“It has helped me focus.”

'Playing the Game' or 'Politics'. How do women approach networking in a large company?

"If you go out to build a network, people can see you coming from a mile away".

This comment came in response to a question I asked last Thursday evening at the excellent womenintechnology.co.uk event at HSBC's offices high above Canary Wharf.

The question, "is networking in a large organisation different for women to men and do women need to be more proactive or act differently in any way?", was prompted by a comment made in conversation a couple of weeks ago. A business colleague, formerly a senior woman in a male dominated industry, told me there is a strong need for networking support for women in corporates. When she was in post, she and a colleague had been told that to succeed they needed to 'play the game'. The person who said this meant that they should build a network but the way it was phrased put both women off networking for a long time.

In a recent 'Inspired Leaders Network' event, Kanya King MBE, founder and CEO of MOBO talked about how essential networking had been to her career, and how she had almost got it wrong herself in her early days at work. "One of the worst mistakes I made was to stay head down in the business in the early days and not go out to events and network with others in the industry."

During last week's presentations, we were similarly left in no doubt of the importance of network building for women in industry. The main speaker, Lois Grady, a former Executive VP of the US finance company Hartford Life, told how she would build her connections with everyone she worked with, "from the security guard to the President of the Company." Talking to Lois afterwards, she told me how she followed this ethos throughout her career, showing respect and consideration for people of all positions and engaging whereever she could.

A key thread thoughout Lois's talk, was about the importance of working in an environment and culture which fits with your own outlook and working preferences, and then immersing yourself in that culture.

"If you're there, give your best.What the heck, otherwise you're just breathing air", said Lois. ""You have to know the company's business and operations. Know your boss's agenda and your boss's boss's agenda."

Meanwhile Kirstie Galloway, Global Head of Cross Products and Cross Utilities IT at HSBC, gave her three top tips to succeed as a woman in a corporate environment. Once again, the importance of networking underpinned everything she said.

Kirstie's three tips were:

"Be brave. You need to take the opportunities that come your way and, although you won't always succeed, you will be noticed.

"Always act with respect. You don't have to like everyone you work with but it is important to find a way to get on with them. It is important to always treat others with respect. Don't burn your bridges, even if you think you will never meet them again - people talk, and your reputation can proceed you.

"Build your network of contacts. Knowledge of your industry should be as wide as it is deep."

The networking theme continued as Karin Cook, Global Head of Derivative Operations at HSBC told us of the importance of role models, whether above or below you in the organisation's hierarchy. "Look at them, learn from them, ask them."

With such an emphasis on networking throughout the evening, I expected quite a lively response to my question.

I was surprised at the response. The panel looked dumbfounded at the question and responses surrounded social events, sports and being friends with workers rather than the importance of feedback, mentors and building connections across departments.

Is this where the issue is with 'networking'? Talk about 'building networks', 'developing connections' or even 'social capital' and you are on firm ground. As soon as you speak about 'networking', it is seen as a forced, even false and manipulative activity for one's own end. Maybe this is why it's seen as a 'game' or 'playing politics'.

I discussed this with Lois Grady after the event. I explained that, to me, networking is about sharing expertise, ideas, experience and connections to raise each of our potential above that which we could achieve on our own. Lois burst to life, agreeing completely with the definition and its importance in the workplace.

How can we change the perception of networking in the workplace so that it is seen as a positive, constructive activity rather than manipulative and self-serving? Do women need to 'network' differently to men in the workplace, or should everyone simply take the common-sense advice we heard last week?