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Digital networks: how to stay in contact

2020-10-29T11:29:59.514Z


No more industry meeting, no more business dinner: How do you keep in touch with customers and contacts? Don't worry: the network can also be expanded virtually. Some things even work better on video.


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Even in times of video conferences it is possible to maintain and socialize - if you pay attention to a few things

Photo: Grant Hindsley / The New York Times / Redux / laif

Industry events, business dinners and conferences have not taken place in the past few months, and trips abroad are only possible to a limited extent.

How can you now make professional contacts and, despite working from home, strengthen relationships with colleagues in the company?

Here are three ideas.

Authors

Alisa Cohn


is an executive coach and has specialized in working with "Fortune" 500 companies and prominent start-ups.

Her clients include Google, Microsoft, Foursquare, Venmo and Etsy.

Dorie Clark


is a strategic marketing expert and professional speaker.

She is a lecturer in Executive Education at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University in North Carolina, USA, and the author of the books "Entrepreneurial You", "Reinventing You" and "Stand Out Networking".

In the "Thinkers50" ranking of the world's best management thinkers, she has been in 48th place since 2019.

Do your own thing

Many conferences and other major events have been canceled since the pandemic began.

But you can still try to use them to get in touch with other people.

To do this, look at the conferences that have been planned since March and also those that should take place in the near future.

Find out who was registered as a participant or speaker or who was there in previous years.

Most of the programs are online.

If you don't have the information, you can simply email the organizers and ask for the list of participants.

Pick five to ten people you want to get in touch with.

Find something that connects you and the other person and that could be interesting enough that the other person will be happy to connect with you.

For example, this could be a shared interest in robotics or that you are alumni of the same university.

Then email the other person or send them a message on LinkedIn that might go something like this: "We both wanted to go to the conference this year. I was hoping to meet you there because I saw you were also at Robotics. I would have liked to talk to you on site. But since the event has been canceled and we all have to stay in the country at the moment, I would like to contact you virtually. Perhaps you would like to have a coffee via Zoom? "

The CEO of a media company adopted this strategy: he wanted to go to a large conference, but it was canceled.

So he contacted some people he actually wanted to meet on site and organized a virtual cocktail party.

At this event he made contacts with interesting people and was then invited to speak at a future conference.

Overcome geographical boundaries

Suddenly we can invite people from all over the world, with whom contact was previously difficult.

Before the world switched to remote mode, most P&MS networked focused primarily on people around them.

We experienced this ourselves as hosts of regular dinner events in New York City: When we put our guest lists together, it was mostly colleagues on site.

If you lived anywhere else, we asked: "Let me know when you should be in New York again."

Now these borders are gone.

We host virtual cocktail parties and can invite people from all over the world to whom contact was previously difficult.

For example, we recently brought together colleagues from Boston, New York, Minneapolis and Austin for a Zoom meeting.

Our corporate clients apply the same principles and have also significantly broadened their perspective.

In the past, it was not common for many to invite colleagues from other regions to a meeting when everyone else was in the same office.

Would the journey be worth it for the guest?

Participants were often confused with digital possibilities.

Now that many are already working from home, it is easier for them to invite other people to a video conference regardless of their location.

Invite top-class guests

Because of the current crisis, executives are currently facing many new questions: the future of their industry, how their company deals with specific problems - from the supply chain to marketing to employee engagement - or the future of work.

For you as a manager, this is a unique opportunity to convene an informal discussion round of your own accord in which you can talk about such topics.

In some corporate cultures, you can just invite a few people and get started with the virtual meeting.

In others it is important that you inform your manager first.

When you have exchanged views with your group of like-minded people a few times and together you have determined that these meetings are valuable, you can go a step further (if it seems appropriate in your corporate culture): Contact top managers of your company and invite them to be there - either as a participant or as a guest speaker.

Under normal circumstances, it would be much more difficult, if not impossible, to attract a high-profile executive as a guest.

But because everyone is working virtually anyway (and because the invitee cannot travel at the moment), 15-minute participation can often be made surprisingly easy.

more on the subject

  • Communication: How to Learn to NetworkBy Tiziana Casciaro, Francesca Gino and Maryam Kouchaki

  • Working after the corona crisis: Corporations want to reduce business trips in the future too

  • Working from a distance: How to come across well in video conferencesBy Maren Hoffmann

  • Survey among top women: What the crisis means for the careers of women managersBy Eva Buchhorn

  • Effective networking: "It takes a healthy dose of overconfidence" An interview by Maren Hoffmann

One of Alisa Cohn's clients is HR director for the US division of a Fortune 500 company.

At the very beginning of the pandemic, she took the initiative and called a regular video conference with colleagues from other regions of the world.

Over the past few months, she has been able to convince numerous executives from her company - including the global CEO - to participate.

This made her visible to him, and he now calls her personally to talk about how things are going in the various regions of the world.

As you can see: There are many ways to make professional contacts.

The three strategies described will help you to grow in a crisis and to appear with newfound strength as soon as face-to-face meetings are possible again.

© HBP 2020

This article appeared in the November 2020 issue of Harvard Business manager.

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Source: spiegel

All business articles on 2020-10-29

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