David Burkus: How to hack networking | David Burkus | TEDxUniversityofNevada

So, we all have that person in our lives who seems to be connected to everyone. You know, that person with the perfect elevator pitch, that person who knows how to work a room, that person who keeps winning friends and influencing people, that person who never eats alone, that person who is the quintessential networker. Don't you just hate them? (Laughter) I mean, you don't hate them outright, but you probably hate that somehow networking and making connections, it seems so easy to them, and every time you try, you just feel like that sleazy weirdo pushing business cards in everyone's hand. Or you make a conscious effort to go to that networking event, and then you end up standing in the corner of the room next to someone you already knew, trying to figure out how long you have to stay and how to leave without being noticed. I'm right there with you, most of us are. And we know that networking and professional connections are hugely important to our careers and our lives. In one study, executives who were taught to see what sociologists call "social capital" - this is the value in an existing network and the potential value in new network connections - the executives who were trained to see social capital were more likely to get promotions, more likely to get raises, they had more fulfilling careers overall, and we know that companies whose employees are rich in social capital dramatically outperform their competitors. But, working makes us feel awkward. In one study, participants were asked about a time where they had to reach out and make a new professional connection, and the participants who had to do that were more likely to experience subconscious thoughts of getting clean. So, to translate, networking makes us feel dirty. (Laughter) So, how do we reconcile these two ideas? We know we need a robust network, but we know we feel really awkward every time we try. Well, the good news is that the same studies that demonstrate the power of a social network also offer a totally different and refreshing way to look at it. In fact, they suggest that we need to redefine networking. Networking's not really something you do. A network's not something you have, it's not about meeting strangers. In fact, the best definition is probably that it's about understanding the network that's already around you and acting accordingly. I mean, I like to think of it as it's about knowing who's a friend, and who's a friend of a friend. And when you adopt that mentality, and you look at the research, you're left with three implications that almost anyone can do, hopefully without feeling awkward. The first is that contrary to popular belief, some of the biggest wins, the low-hanging fruit in networking, if you will, comes not from meeting total strangers, but actually from reaching out to old friends. Sociologists call these weak ties, or dormant ties. Dormant ties are those friends that you used to be close with, but for whatever reason, you don't talk to as much anymore. And because those people are in different social circles now, or different industries, sometimes different geographies, they provide the same new information and new opportunities than total strangers would, but it's easier to build rapport with them because they're ... Well, they're not strangers; they're literally your friends. You just haven't talked to them in a while. One of my favorite examples of dormant ties unlocking a powerful connection is the story of Dana White and Lorenzo Fertitta. You might recognize those names. Those are two of the three former owners of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, which was just sold for four billion dollars. I'm paying attention. The story goes that Dana and Lorenzo were high school acquaintances. They went to high school together until Dana got kicked out, which is the ultimate way to become a dormant tie, and about ten years later, the two reconnected at a high school friend's wedding. They found out that they shared a mutual love of prize fighting. Dana was managing a few early UFC fighters. Lorenzo was working in his family's casino business, serving on the boxing commission. They reconnected over the love of prize fighting, and they did what most of us do when we meet an old friend. We go, "Well, that was great, we should do it again sometime soon." But unlike us, they actually did. (Laughter) A couple weeks later, Dana found out that the original owners of the UFC were losing money and were looking to get rid of the franchise. So, he calls his new old friend, Lorenzo, and he says, "Hey, I think the UFC is for sale, and I think you should buy it." And they do, and they give Dana ten percent, which is awesome. The combination of Dana's knowledge of the sport, Lorenzo's connections with the athletic commission, makes for a powerful connection that would have never happened had two friends not reconnected at a high school wedding. Now I know what you're thinking, if your take away is, "Go to more high school weddings and reunions,” that doesn't solve the awkwardness problem. So try this. Make a list of four or five people you haven't talked to in a while. Scroll all the way down to the bottom of your friend list on Facebook and reach back out to those people. You don't have to have an agenda, in fact, that's what makes it awkward. Just reach out and see where the conversation goes. You'd be amazed. But there are times where you have to step outside of your circle, and when you do, the best way to do that is actually to go through your circle. When you have to meet new connections, the best way to do it is through friends of friends. Maybe you've heard the term "six degrees of separation," or maybe you've played the game "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon"? The truth is, in study after study, almost the entire world really is connected by five or six introductions. And the majority of your professional world is probably connected by one or two. So, when you need to meet a new person, start asking current friends, "Who do you know in 'blank'?" With 'blank' being whatever industry or region or sector that you're trying to meet new people in, and then ask for the introduction. Go through the friend of a friend. You would be amazed at the breadth of the network, just one degree of separation out from you. That breadth certainly surprised Michelle Mckenna-Doyle when she was looking for a new job. Michelle grew up in the south, all of her brothers played football, they were a football family. Her father believed that one day, one of his kids would make it in the NFL. And Michelle took a different path, she didn't play football, she studied accounting. She actually transitioned mid-career to IT. Eventually, she became the chief information officer of companies like Walt Disney World and Universal Studios. And one day she found herself on the NFL website - she was checking her fantasy football league - she scrolls down, notices in the career tab that there's a job that sounds an awful lot like her, but it wasn't listed as CIO and she had no connections to the NFL. So she started feeling out her network through friends. She found a dormant tie, an old colleague who worked with her at a prior company and now worked at an executive search firm. But that firm wasn't handling the search, but he knew who was. So he makes the introduction. So, if you're keeping track, we've got one weak tie and one introduction, and now Michelle is interviewing in front of the executives at the NFL. She's convincing them that they need a CIO, and she's convincing them that it needs to be her. She gets the offer, she accepts the job, and on the day she starts, she becomes the highest level female executive in the NFL ever, up to that point. And her father finally gets to see one of his kids make it in the NFL. (Laughter) There are those times where you meet random strangers, and when you do, the research suggests that maybe you should try a little different tactic than that question we all love: "So, what do you do?" Instead, ask about hobbies, ask about passions, find shared non-work interests. The research suggests that the more and more diverse ways that we connect with another person, the deeper the relationship that we build faster. It's not really a work-friends versus real-friends thing, we're all just friends, so find a non-work reason to connect. One of my favorite examples of this is a friend and fellow writer, John Levy, and John is known for throwing some of the most amazing dinner parties with some of the world's most influential people. The reason they're so effective is that when guests arrive, John asks them to refrain from saying their name and occupation, pairs two people together, and then he assigns them tasks. And so now you have two strangers that can't use their usual script and just learned they have to cook their own dinner, (Laughter) and they have to find non-work reasons to get to know each other. As a result, when the dinner's over, they leave better connected to each other and to their host. And what started as a simple dinner among a few strangers has compounded over the years, to where John is entertaining best-selling authors, award-winning musicians, Nobel Prize Laureates, one time even royalty. And to say that this has had a positive effect on John's career is like the understatement of the day. But it's also provided some amazing opportunities for adventure and for deep, close relationships. Okay, I know what you might be thinking. "I don't know how to host a dinner party for royalty." I don't either, and that high school weddings thing still makes me feel awkward. I've skipped every one of my high school reunions. But when we look at the research and when we redefine networking, these three ideas are something that we can make our own without feeling all that awkward. Reconnect with our old friends, turn work friends into real friends, and connect through friends of friends. But there's a deeper reason for taking a science approach to networking, and that's that your network has a massive effect on you. Maybe you've heard the phrase, "Show me your friends, and I'll show you your future?" You probably haven't heard it since you were a teenager, because we usually tell it to teenagers to get them to stop hanging out with that scruffy kid from down the street. (Laughter) But the truth is, your friends affect you more than you know, and so do their friends. About ten years ago, two researchers, Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler, conducted one of the largest social network studies ever. They used health data from the Framingham heart study, which was the largest and longest-running health study ever, and they found, well, they found that your friends make you fat. (Laughter) They found out that if you have obese friends, you are more likely yourself to be obese. So your friends make you fat, but so do their friends, and so do their friends' friends. They found that your friend of a friend of a friend, even if you've never met them, has a statistically significant influence on your weight. And the truth is, we don't know why. We don't know why it's so strong, three degrees of influence out, but that hasn't stopped Christakis and Fowler from looking, conducted similar studies, one of smoking rates, and found the same level of influence three degrees of separation out. And then, the most fascinating study was of happiness. The two found out that your friends make you happy. I mean, it's no surprise, right? If you have a bunch of friends who are happy with their life, you're more likely to be happy with yours. But so do their friends, and again, so do their friends' friends. If your friend of a friend of a friend is happy with her life, then you have a six percent greater likelihood of being happy with yours. All right, six percent, big deal, right? But consider, that if I gave you a $10,000 raise, that would only increase your happiness two percent. So your friend of a friend of a friend, even if you've never met, has a greater influence on your life happiness than your salary. That is perhaps why this is so important. That's why we need this approach to networking. That's why we need to redefine it, not as meeting total strangers at cocktail parties, but as knowing who's a friend and who's a friend of a friend. Because it's about more than just getting promoted more. It's about more than just making more money. It's about how happy you are with your life. I mean, it really is, "Show me your friends, and I'll show you your future," but it's also, "Show me your friend of a friend, and I'll show you your future." Thank you all so much for having me. (Applause)