Creating Your Support System

What about networking? What role does networking play in your leadership success? And do you network? How did you go about building your network?

So I would say network building certainly started with sort of colleagues in the beginning or in the early days. Over time, I expanded a little bit to learning about particular technologies or industries that I was working in. You find groups or organizations that specialize in that area and I saw them again as learning opportunities.
This is an area I’m trying to learn more about, so let me meet people who are more expert in this world and I can learn from them. And over time, that then evolved into more leadership networking. Let me find other leaders who’ve been on the same path as me so that I can learn from them what some of their guidance tips, tricks, advice might be.
And then it’s actually leaders that have had very different career paths than me because I want to see what else is out there. What might I be missing? What are some challenges that leaders of other industries face that maybe I’m just not understanding in depth? And we actually also face that, or we might. And I want to be ready to address that with a more thoughtful answer or response.
So, I think over time, the groups or forums that I have participated in to build my network have changed, but they have absolutely been an integral part. The sort of mentors that I mentioned I’ve gotten from some of these networking events. The notion of, “Hey, I now have an understanding of something that a peer went through or a fellow company went through, let me reach out to someone there to find out how they tackle something that I’m now facing,” has very much come in handy.
And I think every leader needs that virtual team that they can rely on and reach out to when they need help. And a way to build that virtual team is very much through the right networking opportunities that make sense for you.

So can you give me a sense of what kinds of forums or groups have you joined that you found very beneficial?

There’s industry groups. So, I’ve worked with the Women in Tech network. I’ve worked with sort of industry associations around like engineering or IT forums that spring up every once in a while. I connect with peers who work in similar spaces or similar companies to sort of form some informal groups where I can. And many times, I just send notes. I see someone on LinkedIn that I think has an interesting journey, and I’ll send a note to say, “Hey, I would love to learn from you. Are you open to a chat?”

Just a cold call like that on LinkedIn?

Absolutely. I’ve done that before. I usually say why, this is not just sending you a message, but “I’ve really admired your career journey. Here’s something that I’m facing that I thought maybe you could give me some advice on or that I could take 15 minutes of your time to chat about.”
Yeah, I don’t know that there’s one specific formula, but all of these different ways which felt right and authentic at the time, have helped me build the network and the support system that I have today.