Building Great Career Networks

Hi! I am The Purpose Doctor, and my name is Ayobami Olugbenga-Wyse. I am a purpose-driven peak performance and career clarity coach. I help people map out their career paths with ease and to help them operate in the ideal career they are best built and designed for. Thanks for subscribing to my “Wyse Career Nuggets”, it’s my way to help you create a productive and highly rewarding career.

In the last career nugget, I shared how your career success is a reflection of the quality of your network. Today, I will be showing you how to build great networks for a successful career.

I remember one of the fun things I loved to do as a child was planting. It all began from one of the various experiments given to me by my Agric teacher to plant seeds and watch them grow. I took a drive past one of the buildings we once lived in as a child, and to my amazement, one of my fun experiments as a child still stood tall, it was a mango tree that began as a fun seed, planted into the ground by a fun playing child, who was a fund of planting over 15 years ago. I couldn’t help but park my car to roll back the years. The moral of my story is to make us understand one thing, and that’s the fact that building a great network in life is like nurturing a seed till it grows into a plant or a tree.

As career professionals, building a successful career starts from building great networks. You must identify and recognize the potential seeds, the ground, and the season for planting. I shared how to evaluate your potential networks in the last nugget, which is similar to identifying the seeds. The next will be to identify the grounds or places to have these seeds nurtured and the right time or seasons to plant and nurture these networks. Who do I need to connect with, what kind of seeds are they, where can I find them, and at what seasons of my life do I need them? There are some networks needed for specific seasons, and there are some required all around.

Building a great network is just like planting a tree, it will require time, attention, energy, resources, and more. However, the beauty of it is that the time of harvest and when the tree begins to bear good fruits far outweigh the sacrifices made. Many times we only see, appreciate, and covet the harvest or the fruit-producing times of great relationships, but we never want to do the real work of proper nurturing.

As career professionals, we build relationships in for main cardinal ways for impact and success. We build upwards, downwards, and sideways. Upward nurturing will refer to how well we nurture and manage those above us. These are people we hold in high esteem and desire to model our lives and career successes after or are very influential to our career success. Like your bosses, senior staff, line manager, mentors, coaches, etc. These types challenge us to become better. If you have nobody you are looking up to or who inspires you, then you will remain where you are for a long time. You become a one-eyed king in the land of the blind. You require relationships that have the potential to pull you upwards and push you up your career ladder quicker.

On the other hand, we also need to build relationships downwards and give back. It’s possible to get carried away by our need to thrive and then neglect those we also look up to us and need our help. There is someone you are better than at every point in your life, and your greatest form of success is one that incorporates legacy building and investments in people. Success is in continuum and should never start or end with you. This kind of relationship, help us remain in tune with reality and keep us humble. They reinforce our position as great career-leading professionals. Constantly ask yourself, if you are feeding off someone, who is feeding off you?

Beyond building and nurturing relationships upwards and downwards, managing relationships sideways refers to building networks with your