The Pros and Cons of Similar and Diverse Professional Networks

As you exit the army, one of many instruments you may want in your profession toolkit is a vibrant and rewarding community of contacts. You'll deliberately domesticate skilled relationships with these people in order that they'll be inclined to refer, endorse, assist and advance you as you develop your expertise, abilities and alternatives in post-military life.

But ought to the folks in your community be alike? Should they be of the identical rank and job titles, expertise, diploma of entry and previous experiences? Or are you higher served by having a various set of networking contacts representing a wider vary of experiences, insights and entry to different contacts?

Pros and Cons of a Network of Similar People

I as soon as heard a speaker advocate for having a community of like-minded contacts. He believed that if you encompass your self with people who find themselves such as you and comparable to one another, you possibly can construct depth in your positioning within the trade.

You grow to be referred to as a part of a extra elite circle, can glean insights and data solely out there to folks "in the know," and may advance your profession by leveraging extra focused trade contacts. And, since folks are inclined to do enterprise with these they like, the considering goes that extra folks will study to love you and afford you possibilities to compete for promotions and jobs in the event that they know you properly since you're considered one of them.

The detrimental to networking with people who find themselves such as you is that you just may miss completely different factors of view, new traits and insights, and the chance to develop your publicity to new potentialities. You additionally may grow to be so narrowly centered into your space of curiosity or specialty that you just miss the possibility to broaden your profession later. If you determined to shift your profession in a brand new route, you'd have to determine your community another time.

Pros and Cons of Having a Diverse Network

OK, I'll come clear: I'm an enormous fan of getting a various community! I really like realizing folks from completely different industries, firms, jobs and even nations, and cultivating skilled relationships with them. I thrive by studying about their work and their worlds, their experiences, successes and challenges. From cultural variations, life-style dissimilarities and even variety of perspective, I develop.

Introverts and extroverts, analytical sorts and creatives, individuals who do what I do and individuals who do vastly completely different work, my community contains all of them. If I'm courting a potential consumer in an trade I'm not versed in, or a rustic I'm not aware of, or who holds a job I do not perceive, there may be somebody in my community I can attain out to for recommendation and perception. For my work and my world, having a various community is right.

The draw back -- if there may be one -- to having so many several types of folks is the hassle it takes to maintain the relationships thriving. If my community was all comparable, I may (theoretically) ship an analogous replace message to all of them, submit the identical kind of message on social media repeatedly and solely have to take part in a single kind of occasion or trade assembly. Since my community covers so many industries, sectors and areas, it is easy to unfold myself too skinny.

Another potential danger to such a various community is lacking the flexibility to kind deep and significant skilled relationships. If they have been all comparable and have been a smaller group of contacts, I may ask extra comparable questions of them (and obtain extra persistently alike responses). I would not must spend as a lot time nurturing every skilled relationship, and following up and following via on so many subjects would take much less time.

Even although it appears to take extra effort and time to community with a dissimilar set of contacts -- who've completely different backgrounds, targets, tales and time zones -- I really feel that the richness of the expertise outweighs the price of time.

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