Be a Hub for Your Network
Lesson 7 from: FAST CLASS: Personal Branding for Creative ProfessionalsDorie Clark
Be a Hub for Your Network
Lesson 7 from: FAST CLASS: Personal Branding for Creative ProfessionalsDorie Clark
Lessons
Personal Branding is Not What You Think
06:28 2Telling the Branded Story
11:47 3Understanding Your Brand
05:02 4Discover Your Personal Narrative
04:28 5Brand Through Leadership
03:52 6The Wingman Strategy
04:07 7Be a Hub for Your Network
05:06 8Your Online Presence
06:22Lesson Info
Be a Hub for Your Network
So I wanted to go ahead and move over to our next major thing that I wanted to mention, which is the hub strategy. And so this relates to research that's done by this guy named Ronald Bert. He is a sociologist at the University of Chicago and has done some really interesting looks into the nature of networks. And specifically he's focused in on the question of what makes someone indispensable in a network. It's kind of a kind of a powerful concept, right? How do you make yourself indispensable? So what Ronald Bert has discovered and I think it has a lot of relevance for us is that if you are at the center of the network, there is a tremendous amount of power there because you know, you've got, you've got people splayed all around, you know, million nodes, but in any organization or in any field they're going to be a lot of silos, right? This is an inevitable part of human nature that people who probably should talk to each other are not talking to each other. That was what Robbie disco...
vered a moment ago when we were talking about his work in the nonprofit community in boston, it made perfect sense for these fundraisers from different related causes to be talking. But for whatever reason they weren't. And so he said, you know what, I'm going to connect them, I'm gonna unite them by starting this group and by doing that, he created a kind of power for himself, not because you know, he was, you know, oh, I must have power, but but you know, sort of as a byproduct, he created power for himself because all of a sudden he was a connector, He knew everybody and he had access to information that other people didn't, he would hear about things before other people did, he would hear about new ideas before other people did simply bite into the fact that he was just at the center of things. So the question is, how do you, how do you put yourself at the center? Is there a way that you can do that effectively? And so one strategy that I wanted to suggest to you guys as a possibility to consider is I actually have a friend who worked at a large research hospital and she had what I thought was a really fascinating idea. It was that one day a week for one hour a week, pretty simple, one hour a week, she would ask a different person in a different department to lunch, that's all. But if you really think about it at the end of the year And you have 50 new contacts all across your organization. So if you work at a large organization, that's really amazing because it means that, you know, people all throughout it, if you have a question of any kind, you either know who knows it or you know, someone who knows someone and you can get it done. It makes you so much more effective. But even if you're self employed, like I am or like many of you guys are just doing this and saying, you know what, once a week I'm going to have lunch with a different person in my community or in my profession, just your network expands dramatically one hour a week and you can become a hub, You can make your own network, so thinking, thinking about just what a little time invested over the duration can do about it. So the question that we have to ask ourselves, like Robbie, did is is there a way that you can bring information from one place to another or ideas from one place to another? Maybe they're not talking now, but they should, if you are at the center of that through your conversations through your connections through groups that you start or memberships that you're a part of it really means that you're bringing something distinct to the table that other people are not, and that's the reason people would want to work with you, you really are different. So what I'd like you guys to think about right now is um your own hub, how do, how do you become a hub in your life? And so maybe you can just, you know, we don't have a sort of special slot to write this down. Exactly, So this is more sort of a close your eyes and think kind of thing, but I'd like you to think about ways that in your own life, you can connect people or connect groups. Are there? You know, if you, for instance, we're going to have lunch with a different person every week, who would you start reaching out to? And or if there were groups that you could bring together, um what groups would you want to bring together? How can you be more of a connector in your own lives? So just think about that for a minute. And Ronald Bert from the University of Chicago says that this is really one of the most crucial elements that we can embrace in terms of making our careers successful. If we want to thrive, it's because we have to make ourselves indispensable.
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Ratings and Reviews
Sandi K. Terry
I never thought I would watch a class on personal branding and end up wishing that I had watched the longer one instead. Wow! I watched this instead of a different one I looked at on another platform that struck me as the antithesis of this class. It gave me that yucky, using-people feeling that Dorie teaches you NOT to do. If you're like me and confused about how to create a personal brand (part of my new career as a UX designer) and you're put off by what you've seen elsewhere, take this class instead. I am so glad to have taken this class and only wish I had watched the longer one instead. Five stars; highly recommended!
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