Business Builders Podcast

Effective Networking - Improving Your Performance

December 11, 2022 Brenton Gowland & Ron Tomlian Season 2 Episode 34
Business Builders Podcast
Effective Networking - Improving Your Performance
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

Changing our behaviour is very difficult. However, that is exactly what is required to improve our networking performance. By borrowing from continuous improvement methodology, we can establish a process to help us effectively change our behaviour and improve our performance. All it takes is a little discipline.

Today's episode is part 5 of our Effective Networking Series. This episode discusses a framework for improving your networking activities. The framework is as follows:

  1. Identify,
  2. Design,
  3. Practice, and
  4. Reinforce.


The topics we cover in this episode are: 

  • Topic overview, Reviewing Your Performance
  • Identifying what we can improve
  • Design an alternative approach
  • Practice your new approach
  • Reinforce your new behaviour
  • 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.

Brenton Gowland:

Today on The Business Builders podcast, we're continuing our effective networking series and exploring how to go about improving your results. So in this episode, we discuss a four stage improvement process that includes; identifying what you need to improve, designing an alternative approach, practising a new approach and reinforcing the new behaviour. Well, welcome to the Business Builders podcast. We are your hosts, I am Brenton Gowland.

Ron Tomlian:

And I'm Tomlian.

Brenton Gowland:

And we are coming to the end today Ron of our series about effective networking.

Ron Tomlian:

Except for the fact that we're going to be talking to a few people who are practitioners of good networking.

Brenton Gowland:

Yes.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah but in terms of the approach, today's the last day,

Brenton Gowland:

Yes. And we hope you've been enjoying it, if you've been listening, if you've just come in, and this is your first episode, or you've got the ability to enjoy for other episodes before. So before we get into today, we might just do a review of what we've done so far. So Ron, what have we done for the effective networking series so far?

Ron Tomlian:

So we've said, in terms of developing your networking, first look at your purpose, why you're doing it, then plan what you intend to do and why you intend to do it, then look at actually doing it, you've got to implement this stuff, you've got to get up there and network, review what you've done. And as we're going to talk about today, how do you improve your networking? What's the process for improving your networking?

Brenton Gowland:

So they're the steps that we've kind of put forward as being how to go out and to effectively network. And just quickly they are purpose, plan, do, review and today improve. So we're going to start with our sponsors, and then we'll get stuck into it.

Ron Tomlian:

There's SA Business Builders.

Brenton Gowland:

Indeed, we had a event last week, and it was a very small event, we only had about 12 people, but it was some great conversations. And I think we've got an end of year event coming up in a couple of weeks. Yeah, I'm looking forward to that. Yep. And if you again, if we always say this, if you're listening internationally, we just encourage you to go out and network because it's great for building was exactly what we're talking about at the moment. But great for building your capacity to get things done when you've got a large network. And SA Business Builders is all about bringing great people together with no agenda, just to talk get to know each other and add people to their network.

Ron Tomlian:

Yes and Adapt_CO. That's you.

Brenton Gowland:

Which is me and I feel like I'm in proposal season at the moment. No marriage proposals, just proposals for business. So what I do is I go and help people sort out their marketing, usually I help them get unstuck. And I do that by the application of marketing strategy, business strategy, and help them build their capability in the marketing area of their business. So that is Adapt_CO.

Ron Tomlian:

Very good.

Brenton Gowland:

Indeed. And now, we get on to the improve part. So again, we talked about earlier that the stages we've gone through are define your purpose, so purpose, plan, do, review, and today is improve. So if you just want to, as we've done with the other episodes, Ron, if you just want to go through the structure that we're going to go through today, what are our four points that help us focus on improving our results?

Ron Tomlian:

Well, firstly, identify, design, practice, and reinforce. And of course, our whole podcast is about explaining what we're talking about there. So I'll let you start with identify.

Brenton Gowland:

Yep well, firstly, just before we do get into that, that whole, just kind of want to highlight that this whole aspect of improving yourself is probably in a sense, the hardest part of the whole process that we've gone through in the sense that you're looking to change behaviours, and how easy is it to change behaviours Ron?

Ron Tomlian:

It's difficult.

Brenton Gowland:

Yes.

Ron Tomlian:

Talk to someone who knows, it's difficult to change your own behaviours. And here, we're talking about changing your own behaviours, not anyone else's.

Brenton Gowland:

Correct. So it takes self discipline and the first four steps. Part of it is going out. We talked about last week about the review process. We go and find people who can give us feedback, we make observations, the idea is to identify areas in what we are doing when we networking that can improve. And I think you said on the last episode, that if we identify the root cause of why we're doing something that is causing us to maybe not get the results we're after, based on the purpose that we set out for when we talked about what's our purpose for networking. Then if we can identify that root cause we can do something about it, right?

Ron Tomlian:

Absolutely.

Brenton Gowland:

So this first step today in the improve process is to identify those things. So in the review process that we talked about last week, we talked about again, seeking feedback, making observations, recording what we observed and the feedback we got, and then reflecting and perhaps finding if there's a behaviour or challenge, finding what that is, you know, the behavioural challenge might be you just don't listen or I think we were talking before in our pre chat about the fact that some people have this habit of just rocking up late all the time, and it's an ingrained behaviour. I don't know anyone like that do?

Ron Tomlian:

Well, don't look at me.

Brenton Gowland:

I'm not, I'm not, I'm probably looking at myself. I'm a just in time arriver. I think I gotta change that because you sweat when you arrive and just in time. So that's a behaviour I got to change. But the point is that when you can identify something that's a behaviour that has to be changed, you know, why am I arriving late? What's going on? How is it is much more than just saying, Hey, I'm going to arrive on time from now. No, no, no, you got to go back and find out what's going on. So the point of identifying is, once you've done what we did in the review process, recording and reflecting. You make a list, the list is the things that you recognise that you can improve. And when you start doing this process, you might have a few things you might have, let's go back to what I just said, I'm arriving late, I'm not listening, I keep cutting people off, my elevator pitch needs improvement. I've got a few aesthetic things, like I got to polish my shoes, like we talked about the other week, or I got to bring tic tacs, those little things are easy. But it's the behavioural change things that are hard. So when you've written your list of these are the things I've got to work on. I also really encourage that people rank them in order of what is going to get me the best result quickest and the best, in a sense, bang for my improvement buck. And I would say for me out of those three, it's the listening one. You know, people will forgive you the first and second time you're late. And they might jump on the bandwagon in the third time and say you do that again, And I'm not gonna bother turning up or whatever. But you've got a bit of grace there, you've got a bit of grace with other things, but that not listening to people, people will go, they don't care. So I would rank the listening thing for myself, I'd make my list, I've got my three, four or five things, whatever they are that I've observed that I got to change, even the elevator pitch, I'd still rank that lower, I would rank number one, I got to learn to listen to people. And once you've done that, that's what I would then focus on for the next at least 30 days because it takes at least 30 days to change your behaviour.

Ron Tomlian:

Well, let me ask you the question, if you've got two or three things, why can't you work on all of them at once?

Brenton Gowland:

Because it will be very difficult to effectively establish a new behaviour, if you want to establish a new behaviour. They say it takes 30 days, that's what the research says. At least 30 days to establish a behaviour. And secondly, if you're trying to work on three behaviours at once, it's just going to be so so hard. It's better to focus on one thing, because there's going to be all these different nuances to listening, for example, because active listening also means asking questions.

Ron Tomlian:

So the simple answer is focus.

Brenton Gowland:

One! Focus on one thing at a time, because you're not going to change overnight, you're not going to make these things better. But if you can make incremental improvements in what you're doing, you know, over time, incremental improvements become quite significant.

Ron Tomlian:

That's right, so focus on one thing, and design, the second idea, design an alternative approach.

Brenton Gowland:

So once you've got your list, you then want to think about how you can change his behaviour. And this does come to the question we talked about before, why am I not listening? What's driving that behaviour. And there's all sorts of things you can do to look at driving those behaviours that are outside the scope of what we're going to be talking about here. Because you know, you have to analyse what's in my personality, what's in my makeup that's making me talk over the top of people. Like we have a person that we both know who very openly says that he's very, gets very excited and has to really work on listening. Otherwise, he'll be bouncing around the room and annoying people and other people have to bring him back to Earth. So he knows that about himself and he recognises he has to change it.

Ron Tomlian:

And he can't change it until he recognises it but once he has, he needs to do something about it.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah. And that, once you've recognised it you start to annoy yourself, when you, and that's a good thing, really. If you go out and you catch yourself talking over the top of someone, you'll think, oh boy, I've done and again, you might go a bit down on yourself or whatever. Or you might remind yourself to stop and listen. But this is where this design part comes in. You need to design what you're going to do differently, what that habit is that you're going to establish or put into the mix. That's going to cause you to be able to go somewhere and actively listen. And we talked about the other week. That methodology I learnt from someone in my network, which was the traffic light mechanism. Now that's one mechanism. So I would have.

Ron Tomlian:

Just as a reminder, take me through that again.

Brenton Gowland:

Oh, okay. So the traffic light mechanism is where when I talk to someone I literally imagine a traffic light, set of three lights. A traffic light is a red light, an amber light and a green light. And I imagine that when they're talking, the red light is firmly on, and I will picture it in my head that the red light is on. When they stop talking, I move to Amber. And when it's Amber, that means reflect to me and decide do I make a comment? Do I say something in response? Or do I ask another question? So I make that decision during the amber. And I might be silent for one or two seconds, and they'll see that I'm thinking, then I will speak once I've made that decision. And that's done me really well. Because you know, sometimes the red light will go off when they stop talking. And you'll be on Amber thinking, What do I do? Do I do this? Do I do that? But they'll start speaking again, and you haven't cut them off? And they keep going with their thought? Because the fact is, when you're networking depending on what your purpose is, the more someone else talks, the more you learn, and then the more you have to be able to further that relationship, if you choose to do so later.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah, absolutely. Because you're getting information on what's relevant to them, and how in your communication, you can pitch it to something that is relevant to them.

Brenton Gowland:

So my design part might be that I'm going to use that traffic light mechanism, there's 100 other different things you can do. You might do some research online.

Ron Tomlian:

And I don't think you should ever underestimate the power of asking other people what they've done. Get ideas from what other people have done. You know, if you've noticed that somebody is listening better, how did you do that? Yeah, so don't don't underestimate that as a source of inspiration for the activities that you can undertake to improve that behaviour.

Brenton Gowland:

And also observations when you observe people who are very good at listening, I have noticed that people who are particularly good will block other people out if they're listening to someone talking. Now, I'm not necessarily thinking that's the right approach. I might be the type of person who literally they'll ignore people or whatever. And I've watched that and gone, I might have a hybrid version, and just say, Excuse me, I'm talking, give me a moment, let John or Jeff or Joan, finish what she's saying. And then we'll talk but just just pause for a moment. That's me, I'm not the type of person who will actively ignore, but I observe other people, and I'll go, does that work? Does that not work. So observation is great as well. But again, back to the point, you need to design, this is what I'm going to do to try and change this behaviour. So I'm going to actively when I go out and talk to people, I'm going to use this all the time. And you might need to, I would say you need to commit to doing something like that for about 30 days, but I would, I would have a reminder, I'd write it down, I'd have it in my wallet, I'd have it on my phone, like as a screensaver is and I would just have a stoplight on my phone.

Ron Tomlian:

And I think it during this phase, it's a good idea to look at what measures I could be looking at, to ensure that that behaviour is being met. Is it the number of times that during a an event that I have actively listened and aim for 100%? Is it the number of times that I've seen a traffic light in front of me when I've visualised it, and work towards 100%? Having measures gives you the opportunity to say is this working? Or isn't it working?

Brenton Gowland:

Well, that's really interesting, actually, because I use my phone a lot, you've noticed that I take notes on my phone when I'm out.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah.

Brenton Gowland:

I'll tell you a long time ago, tell people that you're actually taking notes and not doing SMSs because they will wonder sometimes, doesn't matter what they say I always carry, I'm just taking notes, just so you know. Anyway, if you do what you just said there, you could actually have like a tally system or some app. I'm sure you can find something where when you're talking to people, you go tick, tick and actively as you're going to tick a box that shows that you've actually done that thing. And at the end of the day, you can go, I talked to 20 people and actually 19 of them, I used the traffic light mechanism, well, I'm almost there, I can probably get to 20.

Ron Tomlian:

And that gets us into the next area, which is practice it. Give yourself opportunities to actually put this into practice, and consciously go through the process, even if it might seem clunky at first. One of the things that I do with my TEC members, is take them through a script associated with active discovery, it really a script for listening in an active way to help people unpack the problems they have and find solutions. Now, the first time you go through that script, it's clunky, and it seems unnatural. And people say I can't use that term. I change it, but it doesn't matter. Get it done. take people through it. And I know people hate this process. And so call it something else but role playing. Get somebody to work on it with you. Before you go out and practice it in the real world.

Brenton Gowland:

That becomes really important for things like your elevator pitch.

Ron Tomlian:

Absolutely. So depending on how big the change that you're trying to make in terms of your behaviour is use different mechanisms for helping yourself to make that behaviour change. So role playing a role practising actually putting into play in smaller conversations. Don't do it, either for the first time when you're trying to pitch for a million dollar contract, or multi million dollar contract, do it when you're talking to your family, do when you're talking to your friends and see if you can't get some of these behaviour or the behaviour that you're trying to address into your normal pattern.

Brenton Gowland:

So you're really saying experiments as well. So practice kind of goes in line with experimenting? Yeah.

Ron Tomlian:

Absolutely. Yeah, and see what works and what doesn't. And having measures helps you determine objectively, whether it's suiting your purposes or not. Because sometimes you have to change course, this isn't working for me, I'm going to have to come up with a different design, how will I know whether I do or don't have something to measure?

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah. So sometimes, the listening thing is a tough one, because I struggled with that. And it, it took me a long time. And that being hyperactive thing, I had a little bit of that as well. So I commiserate with this person we were speaking about who knows that they are quite hyperactive, when they're with people. These things take time to change. So might not be 30 days that it takes to get this done, you might practice for 30 days and go Well, that's not quite working, and then modify it based on your measures. And you've already got that review and improvement loop established that we talked about last time. That's the whole purpose of review. We spoke about making observations, getting feedback. So it comes into that. And it might be worth noting before we talked about this review and improvement loop is a practice method in so many different areas. We're applying it to networking.

Ron Tomlian:

Oh, yeah. I mean, what we're talking about here in terms of improving is the the loop that's used in Quality Improvement. Plan, Do, Check, Act. Really wouldn't we're not, we're not suggesting anything different. But applying it here as a discipline to your networking practice.

Brenton Gowland:

Yep. But if you can practice something, put it into practice and do it for about 30 days, religiously, you will start to form a habit. So for instance, that stoplight mechanism, it might get to a point where you go, I don't need to record this, this is just happening. And then what the measures might change, because you might go, what have I heard from this person, and you start to learn that I can make this notes, this notes, this notes, recall all this stuff. And then when you try and recall a conversation with somebody else, and you go, wow, I didn't, I don't really know what we spoke about, it's probably an indication that you did too much talking. But when you get them talk that so what I'm getting at is there might be other measures that happen in the future. But the whole point is, you know, roundabout, 30 days, you focus on one of those tasks, one of those things you want to change. And yet you start to get to a point where it starts to become part of your natural way of doing things.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah, and you can break it down a bit to I think, when you're when we're talking about getting good at listening or getting better at listening, it might be associated with one particular time that you're not listening. You know right at the beginning, I found many years ago that people were saying to me, you don't remember the names of the people you've just been introduced to.

Brenton Gowland:

Oh, that's a common thing.

Ron Tomlian:

That's very common. And what I found is that I was too busy listening to how someone was introducing my name and what was right. So I stopped listening.

Brenton Gowland:

Were you thinking about the answer, we're gonna give?

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah, something along those lines, you know, so, here's the thing, when you find that there, you can start, you find the problems, you can start breaking it down into sections. And, you know, chunk it if you like.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah, so it might be the intro section that you need to work on when you break the ice.

Ron Tomlian:

You know, for our friend who's too enthusiastic it might be that he needs to talk to himself just before he gets into a situation or an event. So that he can calm himself down and not be so enthusiastic, non be so giddy with excitement. That that might require a bit of self talk and so on and find that the rest of the behaviours flow from that. So he is better at listening because he's not so excited to start with.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah, that's interesting because changing one behaviour might change a few behaviours, but you're focusing on the one behaviour so people can relapse Ron.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah.

Brenton Gowland:

When you when you, let's say you're on a diet. Like I was last year I got to December and I was really happy with where I was at. Then I got COVID twice and I was no actually I got COVID once was in lockdown twice and I fell off the waggon with gym and all that and I didn't get the habit back and I started to go in the other direction. How do you stop relapse? When you've you've done 30 days worth of work, what do we do next? What's the next stage?

Ron Tomlian:

What when we were talking about relapsing? Well, a good way to prevent the relapsing from happening is looking at how you reinforce that behaviour.

Brenton Gowland:

And that's, of course, I was just teasing there, because that is the fourth thing that you need to do. Because once you've done the 30 days, you need to reinforce, reinforce, reinforce. Until that becomes part of who you are. To be able to listen to someone.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah. So if, for those who are listening and are familiar with the Plan, Do, Check, Act, process of quality improvement. This is the wedging process. This is where you wedge the behaviour into the way you do things from now on. And I find that things like rewards.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah.

Ron Tomlian:

Are a good way. If I if I, if I can do this for 30 days, it's starting to become a habit, but okay, I'll give myself a little indulgence.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah, that's great. And so you would nominate what that is, maybe when you start the process and go, then well, I'm gonna go out to the movies, or I'm going to go out with some mates to dinner or I'm going to take my wife on a date. Well, I thought you might not want to do that one. You might not want align that one with your your behaviours. You might want to leave that completely separate. Maybe make it about you.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah, maybe an afternoon off. Or you might be looking for that new set of golf clubs, depending on how big the behaviour change is. I wouldn't buy golf clubs on the basis of I'm not going to bite my nails any more.

Brenton Gowland:

Any excuse to buy a golf club would be great. Well, yeah, but if you think about it, if you can make yourself an active listener that's worth a golf club or two.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah, absolutely.

Brenton Gowland:

It's worth a whole set, because you're going to win a lot more work if you can listen to people. So.

Ron Tomlian:

But here's the thing, active listening is not about one behaviour, it's about multiple behaviour. So if you want to become a better listener, think about a number of behaviours, you've got to change.

Brenton Gowland:

So the really important thing here is getting into that loop to process. The review improve process that we're talking about with the quality improvement. And the reinforcing is really about going, now for the next, once you've rewarded yourself for the 30 days, is going What am I going to do for the next 30 days to get to the next point, so you don't drop it? You keep it running.

Ron Tomlian:

So you've got this process of continuous improvement. Like I said before, though, these are well known processes. Yeah. Whats.

Brenton Gowland:

But do people apply them to networking.

Ron Tomlian:

Exactly. This is this is the point I'm making. What we're trying to do here is get something that is seen as almost a dark art, or a natural talent, which is a word that I absolutely hate when people say Oh, you just talented in that area. It's easy for you.

Brenton Gowland:

No it's a lot of work to get to the point where you're actually good at something and make it look effortless. Someone said to me once, you know someone really knows about a topic when they talk about it with ease, and there's no jargon. It's just, this is the way it is.

Ron Tomlian:

Yes.

Brenton Gowland:

Here's how it works.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah, if they could explain, I had a friend who was a PhD mathematician. He was the smartest guy in mathematics. I knew not because of his PhD, but because he could explain math, very complex mathematical concepts to a child.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah, that's great.

Ron Tomlian:

So he understood it so well, that he could explain it to literally anyone, to me, that's what makes a real expert. That's what makes a real genius. And that's when when you someone really has that skill of that area covered.

Brenton Gowland:

And as we talked with, a long time ago, Tony MacKay, who was talking about leadership lessons from defence, and we kind of established the idea that to become an expert in anything takes 10,000 hours. Now, it's not going to take you 10,000 hours to change a behaviour. But the point is, it takes a lot of time. And for that to become an intrinsic part of who you are, you've got to keep working on it until it's a natural part of who you are. So yes, you've done your 30 days, you can go to point two on the improvement list, and start working on that. But the underlying other behaviour, you keep rolling along, it should be less work by that point. Because you've established the beginnings of a habit. You're taught, as you're talking about, we're wedging in in we've gone out and celebrated in some fashion, bought a golf set of golf clubs, whatever. That's a pretty extreme thing, but love it.

Ron Tomlian:

Yep.

Brenton Gowland:

But if you can establish that, you can then you know, keep that rolling in a much simpler fashion and don't need to work as hard to get it established, you then can work on the next thing. So you can be working on multiple things at once. But you need to keep up the work until it's part of who you are.

Ron Tomlian:

And the whole framework for doing this is by going out there and continuing networking while you're communicating with other people while you're meeting other people. So that gives you the opportunity to make those improvements on a continual basis.

Brenton Gowland:

Yep.

Ron Tomlian:

It's just about being deliberate and disciplined.

Brenton Gowland:

100% and being self aware And that is the hardest thing about the whole thing. It's about creating structures and frameworks around you that help you to be self disciplined. And we talk about coaches all the time. But one of the really good ways of making sure this happens, even if it's just someone that you're trying to maybe the two of you who are both trying to improve your networking, you make each other accountable to each other, or you get a coach that you can be accountable to with this kind of a process. So the process again, that we've talked about how to become effective at networking, you got to establish your purpose, why am I networking? What am I trying to achieve, then you've got to plan your networking. So be purposeful about it, not to use the word purpose twice, but really be clear about where you're going to go, what you're going to do, who you're going to talk to.

Ron Tomlian:

To make that purpose, a reality.

Brenton Gowland:

To make the purpose of reality. And then there's a whole list of things for doing it. So purpose, plan, do, and then review everything, get into this review and improve loop, purpose plan, do review, improve, if you can establish these things that we're talking about, give it a year's time. And you know, you might be acting at about 60% of your ability at the moment. Next, you might be getting 60% of the result you're looking for. But next year, same time, you might be getting 70 75% of the result, depending on how committed you are to this process. And the idea is over a bit of time to really become a star at networking because anyone can.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah, absolutely. It's it's a learned skill, just like just about every other thing that you do in life. Can I improve it? Absolutely. You've got but it starts also with a mindset. can i improve? Is it all about how it was what I was born, what it was given with? That? No, it has to do with how committed I am to making improvements along the way.

Brenton Gowland:

I know people who are very introverted who've become great networkers. They don't look to talk to everyone, but it goes against the very nature and they've become excellent at it.

Ron Tomlian:

And it's the same with so many other things. You know, you talk about people who have a morbid fear of public speaking who become great orators.

Brenton Gowland:

You know, sometimes people who are introverted can be better networkers, then people who are, as we were talking about our excited friend.

Ron Tomlian:

And this whole myth of natural talent, it can become a problem that many people have said, sometimes a great skill or a great ability becomes a negative. So your greatest positive becomes a negative when it's overplayed.

Brenton Gowland:

Yes.

Ron Tomlian:

So be careful of that.

Brenton Gowland:

So if you've been listening, we highly encourage you to put these things into practice that we've been talking about in the last four episodes, in today's episode, obviously, and we've got Christmas in a week or so. So we've only really got time for one episode rather than two Ron.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah, so we won't meet our initial goal of 24. But we'll get to 23, which is pretty good. So we're getting more disciplined, which is good. And we'll carry that into the new year I hope.

Brenton Gowland:

And as a bit of a special rather than being fortnightly, because we're coming up to Christmas, we've got to move things along. So we're going to have another episode for you in seven days. So in one week, so finally, I've been saying one week for a long time. We finally get down to a one week cadence right at the end of the year.

Ron Tomlian:

And we might carry that on into next year. We'll see.

Brenton Gowland:

And we've got a very special guest for next week. So someone who's coming along to talk about networking. This person is an expert networker, and we highly recommend you listen along with us and that will be our Christmas Special.

Ron Tomlian:

Yes, I'm looking forward to that.

Brenton Gowland:

A networking Christmas Special. How Business Builders podcast of us.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah, absolutely. It's like the old Christmas specials of Andy Williams and Dean Martin and it's making me feel nostalgic.

Brenton Gowland:

Brenton and Rons networking Christmas Special. Let's learn about networking just before Christmas. And because listen, there's a lot of lunches that are going to happen. Maybe it's a good opportunity to network.

Ron Tomlian:

It's a good opportunity to start putting this into practice right away.

Brenton Gowland:

It's when the cousins bring their partners along and so forth, Oh it's a networking opportunity.

Ron Tomlian:

Ah well. Just think of all the business networking that's going to be done between now and Christmas.

Brenton Gowland:

Oh true, lots of parties, lots of end the year functions, networking opportunities galore ?

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah. Even internally, don't forget, there's always the internal networking that can be done within organisations too. Agreed, Christmas parties, internal networking. Listen, we will see you in one week. We're almost at that festive part of year we're very close. So we look forward to seeing you in one weeks time just before Christmas. So it's goodbye from me.

Brenton Gowland:

And it's goodbye from me.

Introduction
Topic overview, Improving your performance
Identifying what we can improve
Design an alternative approach
Practice your new approach
Reinforce your new behaviour
Recap and Wrap Up