When it comes to professional connections, many people always think about how to meet big names. However, according to Duan Xudong, Microsoft's global customer service project manager, building a network of newbies in the workplace should start with the colleagues around them.
Duan Xudong has changed many jobs in the past ten years. He has worked in a small company with four people, worked for mature foreign companies such as GE and IBM, and started a business. Each of these jobs is inseparable from the rapid establishment of connections. Recently, he shared some practical methods for building connections within the company on the workplace social platform Chitu. We have compiled the following for you to directly verify the effect:
1. Ask your manager for advice.
Your manager must be stronger than you. You can at least get some guidance and advice from him, but don’t ask him for advice on how to expand your network on the first day you enter the company. Whether you are new to the workplace or joining a new department, you must first work hard for a month or even a quarter. After quickly becoming familiar with your work content and team situation, you may feel the need to expand your circle. This is a good time to talk to your manager. When communicating with your manager, be sure to focus on your own work, because only in this way will he be interested in helping you. You can ask like this: "Boss, I have mastered my job and am familiar with my colleagues in our department. Do you think it will be more helpful for me to get to know which colleagues in which departments?" After the manager recommends people, the best way is to ask him to take you to get to know these colleagues in other departments. If that doesn't work, you can take the initiative to go to these people and say, my manager wants me to get to know you and ask you for advice. What kind of work do I do? We may have intersections in the future and whether we can communicate more.
2. Find at least two"job mentors".
After you join the company for the first time, your boss may say that you are here, Zhang San, please help him work as soon as possible. Regardless of whether this relationship is assigned by the boss or is a formal working relationship, this person is actually your "work mentor". He will help you continuously improve your work skills and let you enter the role as soon as possible. You must seize such an opportunity. Generally, the people assigned to help you are relatively enthusiastic and familiar with the business in the team. You can learn more than just the work content from them. I will communicate with my work mentor for at least half an hour every week, asking him for some work issues, or showing some of my work results for advice, or even talking about other things such as how to deal with managers better. Of course, you can also ask your work mentor for advice on how to expand your network.
In addition, be sure to develop at least two or more work mentors and learn as much as possible from them. After entering the workplace, it is most important to learn from the strengths of others. Everyone has a different work style and method. If you only learn from one person, you may end up with many behaviors and habits like that person. The mentor I was officially assigned after I entered Microsoft was a Taiwanese colleague. His advantage was that he was flexible and had very strong communication skills. Because our cultural backgrounds are similar, we communicated very smoothly. After about two months, I felt the need to ask more colleagues for advice, so I asked an Australian colleague to serve as a work mentor. He has a programmer background and is very rigorous and serious in his work, but also has a humorous side., plus he is an English speaker and is very good at communicating in English. I also learned a lot of communication skills from him.
3. Find yourself at least one“career mentor”.
The role of a career mentor is completely different from that of a work mentor. The most fundamental purpose of a work mentor is to get you into work quickly, while a career mentor is more about pointing out a general direction for your career development. From an expectation point of view, he can help you develop in a company better and faster. This role is often at least another department manager at the same level as your manager, or even a senior person in the company who is one level higher than your manager. In addition to my manager, I now have three professional mentors. One is the general manager of the service department, one is the product manager of the product department, and the other is the manager in charge of training. Two of them were found by my boss for me, and one was found by myself using a proactive attitude.
Of course such people are difficult to find. Generally speaking, there are two ways. First, when you are familiar with your work and environment, you can first ask your manager for advice. If I want to ask some other outstanding managers like you in the company who can give me some other help to be a career mentor, can you recommend one to me? In addition, you can seize the opportunity to get to know the boss yourself. For example, if you have had some exchanges with other departments through work relationships and find that the boss is very capable and recognizes your work results, you can have a private chat with him about whether he can be your career mentor. Mature professional managers prefer to deal with and train up-and-comers who are proactive and have high work quality. And if you give the other party a better expectation, the other party will know how to help this young man. You can tell me that I won't bother you too much, and we will even have lunch together every two months. I will talk to you about my current working status. You can give me some feedback and suggestions on what I think about, how I can develop in this company, and how I can make myself better.
4. Expand personal relationships by participating in various company activities and interest groups.
This is actually not so closely related to your daily work. Especially larger companies will have various activities, such as reading, running interest groups, or some trade union activities. If you want to meet some colleagues from other departments who have nothing to do with your work to expand your circle, you may consider actively participating in such activities and making more friends here.
To some extent, workplace connections are more utilitarian and there is no win-win premise. Many times you will not be ignored if you send an email to the other party or go to him or her. Therefore, when you establish interactions with others, it is best to set a clear purpose for others and set reasonableexpectations, otherwise the other party will be worried about whether communicating with you will require him to spend more energy or work overtime to do other things. You can say that I hope to have more in-depth communication with you because of this project. Can we have a half-hour meeting every week or communicate every month? You don’t need to do anything. At that time, you can just share the things you have at hand.
rather thanIt's better to use some tricks to get the other person to help than to communicate with the other person sincerely. Proceed from the shallower to the deeper, and get help from the other party little by little. For example, I just need you to do this, are you willing? If you feel like one week is too much communication, how about two weeks? If you feel that it is a bit inconvenient to share those things with me, can you narrow the scope a little and share it with me in a smaller size? Would it be more convenient?
Once you establish a professional mentor relationship, you must maintain it diligently and proactively report to others your work progress, your mental journey, andwhat help you need, etc. The less burden and pressure you put on the other person, the more willing the other person will be to help you.
When someone helps you, be sure to express your gratitude sincerely. There is no word thank you in my email signature, because I type the thank you in each email personally. I will use different words according to the degree of help. Some are "thank you", some are "thank you very much", and some are "very grateful". When you work with this kind of mentality, over time, the other party will definitely feel that you are a grateful and sincere person.
Be brave enough to step out of your comfort zone and build professional connections from a broad and deep perspective. It’s easy for us to get into a comfort zone, and after getting very close to certain people, we tend not to get to know more colleagues. But this also limits your opportunities to meet more friends and expand your professional network; in addition, to expand the depth of your professional network is to proactively and humbly ask for advice from people who are at least better than you. Maybe they are professionally stronger, have a higher level, develop earlier or run faster. And you should maintain a relatively long-term relationship with them, which will not end just because you change departments or change jobs.
Finally, it should be emphasized that continuously improving one's comprehensive ability is alsothe top priority. Whether you want to meet famous people or want help from noble people, if you are not strong, no one can really help you.
