Ok, So Networking works. We all know this – If you go to a function, you meet someone and you can find equally beneficial value… or you just get along, you have networked and now you have a new contact.

But what about “internetworking” or “networking 2.0” or most commonly “Social Networking.” Here’s the simple truth… If you’re not doing it… Start Now!

It’s not going away! It’s like automatic road tolling, you can resist it all you want, but eventually the manual booths will and have gone – and the “I haven’t given you my credit card and have 3 days to pay system is terrible!”

Join Twitter and Linked In – These are the two best business tools for internetworking. Facebook is much more personal and myspace is for kids and bands. Linked In lets you easily manage the people you network in the real and the cyber world, and Twitter is the ultimate information spreading and receiving device.

So be cool, and retweet me.

Are you a glass half full person, or maybe half empty… Do you realize that all of your actions are constantly impacting other people? Do you yearn for happiness in life or just enough money to buy things that will make you happy?

I believe that positivity is the single most productive trait in the world. Positive people get promotions, Positive people top the sales figures, positive people get the girl, positive people start their own businesses. Positive people impact other people positively and create a better environment… So what are the negatives? Well that’s easy… there are none.

Positivity breeds positivity, just like negativity breeds negativity. To bring this into a work related context, people always talk about ‘culture’ at work. Culture is a broad topic and can cover many elements that I won’t go into now, but one of the most common references re: culture is ‘staff happiness’ and ‘morale’. These characteristics can be very heavily impacted by positive people. Company’s often speak about having the perfect culture – ‘we could have the Google culture…’ The truth is that culture starts with you. If you are a positive, energetic person, you will positively impact people who then may positively impact other people and so on so forth down the line – this is culture in action – people impacting other people. It’s not necessarily top down, its everyone impacting everyone.

If you are not content with the culture in your organization, here is your challenge for the week:
Start changing it!

• Say ‘hello’ to a few more people of a morning.
• Intentionally try to brighten someone’s day…
• Smile at people.
• Randomly high-five people you pass in the workplace (I call this the ‘high-five’ culture).
• Tell someone they are ridiculously good looking (I call this the ‘good looking’ culture).

As the culture begins to spread, you can then watch this boomerang return home and someone you work with might brighten your day. Positivity breeds positivity.

Please share your stories in the comments section below. I’d love to hear how you went. If I work with you, I expect some comments regarding my handsome looks on Wednesday. Why don’t you begin by forwarding this to anyone you think could do with a dose of positivity?

I’ll leave you with these two quotes.

‘Our environment, the world in which we live and work, is a mirror of our attitudes and expectations.’ – Earl Nightingale

Or in the words of my generation:

‘Cheer up Emo Kid’

In case you have been living under a rock for the last 10 years ‘The Sims’ is a computer game based around regular people doing regular things – it’s like a dolls house filled to the brim with some of the best artificial intelligence ever created.

In order to be successful at The Sims you need to be able to manage relationships. In this game your success in your career is directly correlated with 3 things.

• Your health/Wellbeing – Are you going to work tired from staying up all night? Are you hungry from not eating? – This will affect your success.
• Skill set – Do you have the right skills for the job? If you take the career path of being a Chef, a requirement for the job may be that you need 6 culinary points. If you only have four points, your Sim had better get cooking!
• Relationships – Finally and most importantly are relationships. Whilst skill set is specific to your career, your social currency will directly impact your ability to get a promotion – to hit the next level you may need 2 or 3 additional friends.

If being successful means maintaining relationships, and you want to be the CEO, you have a lot of relationships to maintain! It is important to note at this stage that Sims don’t differentiate between personal and professional relationships. However, as posted in The Theory of Relationship Management they still need to keep a hold on all of them.

So how does a Sim maintain a relationship? Ultimately they keep in touch with their friends. If they have similar interests, they can get deep in conversation and become close friends. If they don’t have much in common they’ll usually just shoot the breeze about the weather etc.. A Sim needs to call their friends on the phone consistently and chat away to keep things strong – they will throw parties or functions to get them all together and then party their way to a better relationship (kind of like a corporate lunch/dinner).

And at the end of the day if they neglect their friends… just like regular life, they lose them and their likelihood of a promotion becomes more difficult.

So how do you manage a relationship?

As a sales person, so much comes back to ‘how much I can sell,’ however I believe that this statement is redundant and belongs somewhere back in the 1940’s. The question today should be ‘how many relationships can I maintain?’

First off let’s define relationships – there are two kinds; personal and professional. Personal relationships are your family and friends. Professional relationships are those related to your career or investments, i.e. clients, staff, managers, suppliers etc.

The truth is, a person can only manage so many relationships before they start letting people down. Whether they are personal or professional is inconsequential. Someone who is a workaholic and works very hard to manage all of their internal and external business relationships will often let their personal relationships down by constantly canceling at the last minute or not answering messages. Similarly, those who place a higher value their personal relationships, will often have difficulty growing and maintaining their professional relationships, which may hinder their professional advancement.

Technology has certainly made it simpler to communicate with your contacts; however it has also created greater transparency and higher expectations for immediate responses. There are very few excuses you can use for not returning a phone call, or if a facebook post remains unanswered. With this in mind it is important to understand that the amount of relationships that you can manage will directly correlate with your success as a business person – that’s networking.

Over the coming weeks I will be discussing ways to better manage these relationships, and the great success that they can bring.