Effective Networking - Reviewing Your Performance

Know thyself. The key to becoming an effective networker is self-awareness. Constantly reviewing and reflecting on our performance is a great way to develop self-awareness. So creating a review process that works for you is a vital skill for your networking toolkit.

Today's episode is part 4 of our Effective Networking Series. This episode discusses a framework for reviewing your networking activities. The framework is as follows:

1. Seek Feedback,
2. Make Observations,
3. Record, and
4. Reflect.

The topics we cover in this episode are: 

• Topic overview, Reviewing Your Performance
• Seek Feedback
• Make Observations
• Record yourObservations
• Reflect on your Data
• Recap and Wrap Up

Adapt_CO
Helping businesses find their new shape.

SA Business Builders
Business leaders social group based in South Australia

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Transcript

Brenton Gowland: 0:01

Today on The Business Builders podcast, we're continuing our series about effective networking and exploring how to go about reviewing your performance. So in this episode, we discuss a four stage networking review process that includes seeking feedback, making observations, recording your insights, and reflecting on your findings. Well, welcome to the Business Builders podcast. We are your hosts, I am Brenton Gowland.

Ron Tomlian: 0:26

And I'm Ron Tomlian.

Brenton Gowland: 0:28

And a bit of a surprise this week, Ron, one of our listeners reached out to us and crashed our coffee this morning, when we were getting ready for the podcast.

Ron Tomlian: 0:35

Very nice that he did that and gave us some nice feedback as well.

Brenton Gowland: 0:39

Yeah, I thought so. This gentleman that we spoke to today said that he listens to a number of podcasts and really enjoyed the fact that the business builders podcast is incredibly practical, and gives useful tips right from the get go. Where a lot of other podcasts are much more bigger picture bigger thinking. And there's nothing wrong with that. But sometimes getting the useful information is really, really important early on. So I was pretty chuffed with that feedback.

Ron Tomlian: 1:03

Yeah it means we're hitting our mark, which is good.

Brenton Gowland: 1:05

Yes. So we aim with everything we do to make sure that we're giving you practical, useful tips, advice, tools, mechanisms to improve at what you do and right now, you've come on board, if you're listening for the first time, we're doing a series on effective networking. And so far, we've done a few episodes, three of them. The first episode was about defining your purpose. The second episode was about planning. Last episode was about actually doing the networking. And today's episode is about reviewing your performance. And just so you know, the next episode after this, we're going to be looking at how we then improve.

Ron Tomlian: 1:46

Yeah, well, we can't do that without our sponsors, who are...

Brenton Gowland: 1:53

SA Business Builders, a network of like minded individuals from different business professions who really get together to make sure that they do networking the right way. And that's getting to know each other with no sales agenda. And seeing where those connections will lead in the future.

Ron Tomlian: 2:09

Putting all this networking stuff into practice. And there's also Adapt_CO, which is you.

Brenton Gowland: 2:15

Yes. So I come into people's businesses, and I help them with their marketing. And particularly I help them get unstuck if they've reached a ceiling to be able to push through that ceiling by the application of marketing and business strategy. So that's Adapt_CO. Very good. And that's our sponsors.

Ron Tomlian: 2:34

And now we're on to reviewing our networking,

Brenton Gowland: 2:37

Which is massively important. If you want to improve at anything. We were talking about a quality framework that's got...

Ron Tomlian: 2:45

Plan, Do, Check Act.

Brenton Gowland: 2:46

Yeah, all that sort of thing.

Ron Tomlian: 2:48

So it's a common methodology. But it's fortunately a methodology that doesn't get used often enough. And and the bit that doesn't get used often enough is the review.

Brenton Gowland: 2:59

Yeah, absolutely. And we were talking about this morning that sometimes networking can be seen as a, I guess, a second right kind of thing to do. And networking. That's not what we see as being important.

Ron Tomlian: 3:12

The thing that I remember, the person that used to tell me that networking wasn't important, reminded me that don't forget, Ron, there's only one letter between networking and not working. Yeah. You've said that before. Remember that. And it's so untrue. Because if you're doing networking, right, it is a lot of work. But it's worthwhile.

Brenton Gowland: 3:34

When we were talking with this gentleman this morning, we were talking about getting your next job through your network. And that is often the case, it's someone who will tap you on the shoulder. And it's happened to me, well, more times than I care to count with getting new clients. Getting tapped on the shoulder and saying, Would you work with this person? Because people through your network know you. So that's where most of your work generally comes from?

Ron Tomlian: 3:52

Yeah.

Brenton Gowland: 3:53

Anyway. So on that, as you were saying, review sometimes can be missed. We want to bring a bit of science, everybody, to this whole process. And I think that's really important. And as we learned from Avatar, we were talking about the movie today, there was a line in there that good science is good observation. And I know that comes from somewhere else. But the actual review process is all about creating a framework to really drill down into what you do and to almost as a detached third party have a really good look at the process. So the stages we're going to look at today are.

Ron Tomlian: 4:28

Number one.

Brenton Gowland: 4:29

Yes.

Ron Tomlian: 4:29

Seek feedback.

Brenton Gowland: 4:30

Correct.

Ron Tomlian: 4:31

Number two, make observations.

Brenton Gowland: 4:33

Yes.

Ron Tomlian: 4:34

Number three, record. And number four, reflect.

Brenton Gowland: 4:37

Exactly.

Ron Tomlian: 4:38

So as per usual, let's go through those in detail.

Brenton Gowland: 4:42

Yep. 100%. So the seek feedback one seems the most obvious and I guess when we were having our conversation is we were when we were talking. We were talking about the fact that do you actually go in when you're doing networking, that's not necessarily part of your day to day job. Should you go and seek feedback, where do you go and take feedback, what do you ask?

Ron Tomlian: 5:01

And and it's it is I think it's incredibly important that you improve your awareness. And the only way to do this your self awareness, the only way to do it is to ask other people what, because it's difficult for us to effectively look in the mirror, it's easier for other people to show us what we're doing right and what we're doing wrong. So ask them a question.

Brenton Gowland: 5:21

And there's so many examples of people giving this as a framework in so many different scenarios. And I come back to Seven Habits of Highly Successful People. And there was a, I believe there was a chapter in there, where he talked about going and speaking with trusted friends and getting them to assess you on different areas of your personality, so that you could see from their point of view, what you were like, and I think that's great. In the same vein, I believe, and I've done this for a period of time, I have about five or six people who are very close to me. Understand what I'm doing, understand what I'm trying to achieve, because I talk with them about it. And I ask them, what they think there was one person in particular tells me, I've got to stop being salesy. This was a while back, I think I've got better at that now. I found other ways of being able to listen to people and press the right button at the right time. And often pressing the right button is letting the other person press that button, meaning, let's talk about work. Let's get involved in something where there's a professional outcome to this as well, in the personal networking space, you can do exactly the same thing. I've got that group of people, and I ask them, you know, what do you think? How do I improve? How do I build my network? What do I do? I even went to the point of interviewing certain people about how they built their networks, and so forth to see how I could align with that. So very important to seek feedback about how you're actually perceived by other people.

Ron Tomlian: 6:44

Yeah. And that's in the process of networking, but also in terms of being part of people's network. What's my usefulness to you? Have I been useful? What value? And how can I improve that value? In terms of being a part of your network, don't forget, I think we often forget that every person who are part of our network have a network of their own. And being able to be useful to other people is the first step to cementing that relationship of being part of their network.

Brenton Gowland: 7:13

I could not agree more, I also think, so the review thing you do, where you go out and ask five, six people who are close to you or in your network might, you might do that once every six months. So it might be it might be a time period thing. Or you might ask one person a month, which might be a good practice, you got to build your own framework. And we'll talk about that a bit later. Because you need to create something that makes sense to you. And we're saying that feedback should be the first rung of this, with what you've just said, you can do that almost in every conversation. It's one of those questions where if you're just getting to know someone, you can say, well, how can I help you and can put it in that context, people will tell you how you can help them sometimes they might be stumped. What can I do to help you on your journey? How can I actually provide some value, that feedback can come from almost every new relationship you build.

Ron Tomlian: 8:04

And it sets up the potential for reciprocity, which is incredibly important in networks, if I'm going to do something for you, I'd like you to do something for me, but not necessarily at the moment. I think demonstrating usefulness to other people is the first step in building solid links in your network.

Brenton Gowland: 8:22

We also when we talked about this, seeking feedback as being the first part of the review process, we also talked about how we can find out what new skills we need, by actually, again, asking people, what they see us as being good at and what we need to improve. You got any other thoughts on how you can find out what skills you need to improve?

Ron Tomlian: 8:43

I think if you talk to people about, you know, when, when I'm talking to other people, what do you notice? And just little things like, do I say that people will often come back when you use this term a lot, maybe you need to be aware of that, just your communication style, how you present. I remember talking to one person and he just got up and bought a new suit and a new set of clothes and so on. He had never learned how to clean his shoes. And unfortunately, it's one of the things that people look at first, and he was completely unaware of it. Having clean shoes in a business sense is something that, one people notice, and two gives you an indication, or gives other people indication of your attitudes to certain things. So he, like I say he was completely unaware of this and was so thankful and I'm happy to say every time I've seen him since he's had very clean shoes.

Brenton Gowland: 9:40

You know, I went to this event a couple of weeks ago, and someone got up and was talking about, I can't remember the exact term he used, but he said to be a ninja at networking. I was like, well, there's alliteration that makes sense. If I want to be a ninja at networking, What do I do? Anyway, he said carry around Tick Tacs or fresh mints because you know often when networking if you're in a loud environment. Now COVID has made a stand a little bit further apart. And they say there's more coming. So we'll see how this all interacts, but still having good breath, smelling right. It's almost as much a detractor as the shoes can be.

Ron Tomlian: 10:14

Absolutely. And quite often, literally, we are unaware of these things. So the more you seek feedback, the more you're going to get little bits and pieces. It doesn't mean big improvements, but little improvements added up can add to some significant change.

Brenton Gowland: 10:31

And as I might just point out about the shoes that might make more of a difference in certain environments than it does in others. Because that sounds to me like something where someone's looking for someone who's got a bit of polish about them. No pun intended.

Ron Tomlian: 10:43

I was just gonna say.

Brenton Gowland: 10:44

Actually, maybe there was a pun intended. But I digress.

Ron Tomlian: 10:47

Yeah. But it's all those little bits and pieces that how can I get better at communicating with people? How can I improve the way I relate to people? It might be, as often is the case? How do I listen better? A lot of people think communication is all about, you know, talking. I think communication is a lot more about listening.

Brenton Gowland: 11:10

100%. I remember, there was someone who in our network who just recently said that they realised that they can be very hyperactive, and that they can be bouncing around the room talking to people and being all fun and giggly. But that might not be what everyone wants to hear. So has to actually learn to pull back and develop tools to be able to listen and not just jump in.

Ron Tomlian: 11:31

Yeah, I mean, what we regard ourselves as being enthusiastic and exuberant, or gregarious might be interpreted as flippant, and sort of not particularly serious, which in a lot of environments isn't appropriate.

Brenton Gowland: 11:45

And I there's a tool that I use a fair bit, and I've shared it before on the podcast, and I just call it the stoplight mechanism. I literally picture, because I was that same person, that exuberant person who would bounce around a room. So I would just picture a stoplight, you know, red, amber, green. And while someone's talking, I would be on red the whole time. So that means don't say a word. Then when they stop talking, I would move to Amber for at least one or two seconds. So I have taught myself over time, not to jump in straightaway, but to let a little bit of silence come into play. And then during that amber time I decide do I ask a question, or do I make a comment? And then I go to green. And that's helped me a bunch. And it was someone else, It was someone in my network who shared that with me.

Ron Tomlian: 12:31

Yeah, and but you don't even think that you need or probably didn't think that you needed to worry about that. Until someone pointed out maybe you're talking too much.

Brenton Gowland: 12:40

Correct.

Ron Tomlian: 12:41

Yeah. So you need to get out there and get people to give you some reflection.

Brenton Gowland: 12:47

And something about that. Just a comment. Often when people give feedback, and this is just a 101 thing, our backs can get up. If people give us you know, constructive criticism, you got to see the value of feedback. And I think I would as part of this review process, I would highly encourage you to if you see it as negative, that can be more positive in the long run, then people telling you how good you are. So I would just highly encourage whatever someone says, listen to it and take stock of it.

Ron Tomlian: 13:17

And fact, I'd go one step further. i When somebody's giving you feedback, I would be listening to it and waiting for the opportunity to say, Thank you very much for that feedback.

Brenton Gowland: 13:28

Yep.

Ron Tomlian: 13:28

Because it is a huge privilege to be given feedback like that.

Brenton Gowland: 13:32

Okay, so stage one of the review process is seek feedback. Stage two is make observations. And I think this is really important. So I'll kick this one off. So I learned this a long time ago. And I think I was listening to a book or reading something somewhere, and I picked this up. I can't exactly remember where I picked it up. But what I would do is at the end of each week, maybe a Saturday or a Sunday, I would look at my calendar for the week. And I would look at all my meetings. So I might have eight meanings for a week. And I would rate them on a scale of like one to 10 on how well they went. 10 Obviously being fantastic, can't do any better. One being, lots of room for improvement, because that's about as bad as it can get. So I would rate each of those meetings from one to ten, then I would list what went really well as part of that conversation and what could improve. And it doesn't take long, like eight meetings might take me 15 minutes to half an hour to reflect. But that was so important because making those observations helps you in the long run to see how you're really performing. And the reason I would leave it to a Saturday or a Sunday is I personally needed some time to elapse between the meeting and when I thought about it so that I could be detached.

Ron Tomlian: 14:47

So the two points there is make a time to do it, then do it and then be detached about it. Trying to think, get some distance between the event or the networking event and when you're going to do this self assessment of the way things went during that event.

Brenton Gowland: 15:06

And if you're going to improve in any area, it's all about, like you said, self assessment, but that means self awareness. And these tools doing these things will teach you to be self aware. And then, as you get good at this right in the heat of the moment, you can actually make these determinations on a nickel like on a dime, you can turn things....

Ron Tomlian: 15:26

Your sounding like a Yank when you saying this.

Brenton Gowland: 15:28

No, I just as I was saying it I realised, Boy, I've been influenced by television haven't I.

Ron Tomlian: 15:32

Yes, but you're absolutely right, it is really important. And it's the basis of self improvement. When somebody gives you feedback, you're now aware of it, you have to do some assessment about how you're going with the feedback that you've been given. So if you, for the sake of argument, you've been given feedback, you talk too much. You can look at the meetings for the last week and say, as I getting better at keeping my mouth shut.

Brenton Gowland: 15:58

Yes.

Ron Tomlian: 15:59

Or do I really need to be aware of this.

Brenton Gowland: 16:01

And one of those things is actually starting to be aware of what other people need. So when you seek feedback, often people will want to tell you more about their situation in the early days than they want to hear from you. They just want to be able to share it, they just want to be able to, problem shared is a problem halfed. Is there some statement, something like that?

Ron Tomlian: 16:21

Yeah, that's a truism, I think,

Brenton Gowland: 16:22

A truism. We talked about that last week. Love that terminology. Where did you say it came from?

Ron Tomlian: 16:28

I'm not sure.

Brenton Gowland: 16:29

No you did. You gave me a name. It was an American president.

Ron Tomlian: 16:32

Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, it was that was all the truism that I gave you was from Theodore Roosevelt.

Brenton Gowland: 16:41

Theodore Roosevelt. See, told you.

Ron Tomlian: 16:42

Yeah, I didn't know the term came from him. I don't think the term came from him. The truism that I was talking about is, People don't care how much you know, until they know how much you care. So the next, once we've done some self assessment, the next is to record the things that happened.

Brenton Gowland: 17:02

And why is it important to record?

Ron Tomlian: 17:03

Well, because then you can do some analysis, you can do some thinking about well, what does this mean? Where do the, where do the, what are the patterns that I'm seeing? So What actions did you take? What networking did you do? What, who did I meet? It's great to put contacts in your diary, but what did we talk about? What are the results of the networking that I did?

Brenton Gowland: 17:25

Yeah.

Ron Tomlian: 17:25

It doesn't have to be a complete compendium of all the things that happen. But it does, you will start to record the things that matter. And I think you said, put them in a spreadsheet, write them down on a piece of paper, if you're a more analogue sort of person, it doesn't matter. Just have records of what happened so that you can look back, and that will help you with the next section, which is reflecting.

Brenton Gowland: 17:51

Let me talk a little bit more firstly, about the whole recording thing. So I think this is massively important. Right at the start, we spoke about good science is good observation. And yeah, I got that quote from Avatar, the movie. That always stuck with me, it's actually, when you look at it, it's true, because you record data, once you've got the data, you can do something with it. And so if you want to bring some real science and some rigour to improving your network, and what it can deliver for you, because it can deliver so much for you, you need to record because good science is good observation. And that can be done in so many ways. Now, we talked about earlier that making observations, and I said that I did it once a week, but you got to find your own way and your own framework. For you it might be you have to do it straight after the meeting. Or in that might be in a business sense, that makes more sense, you can just record what's happened in the meeting. And that's what we have CRMs for, or spreadsheets or quick notes, or whatever the app is, I highly recommend CRM. Anyway, moving right along, you need to be able to record in a fashion that works for you. So if it's right after the meeting, maybe rather than reviewing on a Sunday, you review every night after dinner, or just before bed or whatever, or you get up early in the morning, and you think about the day before, this is how I rate this day yesterday, now, I'm going to go into this next day, whatever works for you. But recording those things is paramount to being able to do something with it later. And that to your point. The next point is to reflect Do you want to kick us off on that?

Ron Tomlian: 19:30

Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, all of this activity is fantastic. But it needs to result in something. And the reflection is your time to be able to look at the data that you've collected, be able to look at your observations to be able to think about the feedback and ask yourself the questions of the data. What does this mean? What are the patterns that I'm seeing? Am I more active in terms of my networking activities at certain times of the year, or in certain days of the week? What does that mean? Is there, Is this about discipline? Or is this about what's most effective? Finding those patterns in the first place and being able to think about what they mean, but how can I work to this? I mean, if you think about your own activities, I find a lot more effective in the morning than the afternoon. So I schedule doing things in the morning, and I schedule meetings in the afternoon, where I don't have to be so active that where I'm actually going to be more a better listener, because I'm not as active. So understanding that only comes from looking at the data.

Brenton Gowland: 20:38

Yeah.

Ron Tomlian: 20:39

And observing it and reflecting on it. And I don't think we do enough reflection, no, I'll give ourselves time. This doesn't have to be done daily or weekly. But it does have to be done at some stage, I'd say probably four times a year, you want to think about you're reflecting on your networking.

Brenton Gowland: 20:56

Now. Part of the reason I think it might be difficult to do something with the data is putting it into a way that people can digest, right. And this is where if you want to turn this into a discipline, you need to either gamify it or put it into some sort of format where it makes good sense. And here's where we're going to give you some tips. Now. I think now, if you're listening internationally, I'm about to talk about a guy named Malcolm Blight, who was the captain of Adelaide Crows, which is our local football team.

Ron Tomlian: 21:23

He was the coach, I don't know anything about football but.

Brenton Gowland: 21:26

Oh, sorry, Bickley was the captain at the time. And it might have been Bickley that I heard this from but they were talking about Malcolm Blight's method to help the team improve, and it was about getting them to self assess. So I think it was it was Mark Bickley, who was telling the story somewhere, but he was talking about the fact that Malcolm got him to rate, I think it was on a scale of one to ten, his performance in certain training exercises over time. And so he would put a dot, a red dot where it was, on this particular day, or for this particular exercise. So it might have been for this particular exercise, and he might have had ten different exercises or training techniques laid out and then we'll go today on a six out of ten, what do I need to do to improve in this. And over time, as you plot that it forms a line. And the idea is to make sure that the line is starting to move in an upwards direction over time. So his players were able to self assess themselves and their performance with this method, I thought far out, that's great. Now you can apply that to the data with your networking. So remember, we talked about making observations. So you can rate each meeting on a scale of one to ten. And over time, that should improve, you should be able to shift the dial if you are creating observations. And then this is just giving you an example you need to find your own groove. But find a very simple way that one to ten scale is a very simple way of writing interactions. But then just find some keywords, what was good about the interaction, and what could improve. So you just write yourself some notes. And over time, it might turn into key words. And that you'll see that over time. If you plot it in maybe a spreadsheet, you'll see that over time it's going in a certain direction, you'll be able to observe, wow, look at that, those key words that I've written down there. I'm doing that a lot. And that's resulting in a lower score for these meetings. So how do I shift that dial? That's when you go to your friends and say, or the people in your network and go look, I've noticed about myself, and there'll be like, Oh, wow, this guy's self aware? Or this woman's self aware? I've noticed this, how would you, how would you say I go about improving that. We'll get to improving next episode. But if you can plot something you can see and turn it into a graph or some sort of scale that you can see move over time. And that that could be to the point of sport, because sport and business are aligned. And we always talk about the whole business coach scenario, right. Sports people, good ones have coaches, why shouldn't business people. Do they want to improve? And you're absolutely right. And the only way to improve is to understand what the basis, you know where I am at the moment. And that comes from observation and data. And so finding the patent is all about how you present the data. So you need to make, you don't have to get it right overnight. Just start with a small thing or review process that whole one to ten. If that works for you, one to five, if you prefer or zero to five, one to ten, whatever, whatever your mechanism is, but you might do one networking meetings or like this, you might go my interactions with my close circle of friends, how do how do they rate? You can you can scale anything you want, or score anything you want. But what's important is that you're putting that data in a in a fashion that you can understand and you might need to do a bit of research to work out how that works. But start with a one to ten scale.

Ron Tomlian: 24:44

Yeah. And then doing something with the data, reflecting on it taking some time every so often to look back and say what does this mean for me.

Brenton Gowland: 24:53

And ask questions.

Ron Tomlian: 24:54

I think the other thing too in this this reflection phase that often gets left is to taking some time at some stage, and it might be once a year, you had a purpose for this whole networking activity.

Brenton Gowland: 25:08

Yes.

Ron Tomlian: 25:08

Checking in on that purpose? Is this achieving what I wanted it to achieve? And by building this network, am I getting better at getting more sales? In building this network? Am I getting better at being more useful to other people? In building this network, whatever your purpose was at the beginning for doing this, how is it going? And what do I need, or where do I need to steer this now? So that is either getting back to the purpose, be more effective in doing that? Or do I need to change the purpose? But it's worth how using that reflecting time to think about why am I doing this in the first place, and how effective I'm being at that?

Brenton Gowland: 25:45

There's one other thing, the next episode, we're going to talk about how to improve to understand how to improve, you need to actually understand yourself, right. So we've talked about reviewing what's been good and bad. But while you're doing that reflecting part, I think an important question to ask is, once you start seeing the patterns, is why am I like this? Where does this come from? So that's doing that's a little bit of a deeper dive. But if you understand where the behaviour comes from, why am I bouncing around the room like this? Why am I so hyperactive? Why am I why am I not listening? Why am I? Once you understand that question, Why? What's driving this behaviour? Then we can take that through into the improved bucket. Because once we know what we're dealing with, then we can do something about it.

Ron Tomlian: 26:31

It's called a root cause.

Brenton Gowland: 26:33

Yeah.

Ron Tomlian: 26:33

Yeah. So okay. So in in the final wash up, this is about, and my opinion, this, this whole thing of reviewing is about understanding, you're establishing a framework for using your network and more effectively.

Brenton Gowland: 26:47

Yes.

Ron Tomlian: 26:48

It's about doing things regularly and the discipline of that.

Brenton Gowland: 26:50

Yes.

Ron Tomlian: 26:51

And it's about taking action.

Brenton Gowland: 26:53

Yes.

Ron Tomlian: 26:53

So just apply those four stages.

Brenton Gowland: 26:57

And the four stages were, Seek Feedback, Make Observation, Record everything you can, and then Reflect.

Ron Tomlian: 27:06

So next time, on the basis of that, we're going to talk about how you can improve your networking by using the review as the basis for moving forward.

Brenton Gowland: 27:16

Excellent. I'm really looking forward to that. And until next week, all of you who are listening, we hope you have a good fortnight. It's not next week, I always get that wrong don't I? It feels like next week all the time.

Ron Tomlian: 27:28

Well, it will be in a fortnight and we'll we'll talk to you then.

Brenton Gowland: 27:32

See you in a fortnight, everybody.