Networking Without Faking It: Building Professional Relationships

By the end

What you'll build

• Distinguish strong, weak and dormant ties, and classify your own relationships correctly using each one's definition
• Map the network you already have across five circles, producing at least 80 named people with tie type and last contact date
• Identify the brokers in your map — people spanning two clusters — and name the structural gap your map reveals
• Apply a give-first rule by choosing two forms of gift that are cheap for you and valuable to others, and sending one a week
• Open a conversation with a stranger using three prepared openings, and end one gracefully in under fifteen seconds without inventing an excuse
• Write a five-part follow-up message under 120 words that proves you listened, gives something specific and asks nothing
• Size a request proportionally to the relationship, and write an introduction request with a paragraph the sender can forward unchanged
• Restart a dormant tie with a message that carries no apology for the silence and no request of any kind
• Adapt your approach for introversion, events, internal organisational networking, seniority gaps and multilingual settings
• Keep a written 90-day contact plan with named people, dated weeks, and a recurring fifteen-minute slot in your calendar

Curriculum

What's inside

7 modules · 47 lessons

1. 01

   What a Professional Network Actually Is

   7 lessons
   • Start Here: An Honest Version of Networking
   • Strong Ties, Weak Ties, Dormant Ties
   • Brokers: The People Who Join Two Worlds
   • The Vocabulary of Networksword power
   • Why the Collect-Contacts Model Fails
   • + 2 more lessons
2. 02

   Mapping the Network You Already Have

   6 lessons
   • You Already Have a Network
   • The Five Circles Inventory
   • Draw Your Relationship Mapwriting lab
   • Dormant Ties: The Highest-Yield List
   • Mapping Vocabulary Recallflashcard sr
   • + 1 more lesson
3. 03

   Give First: The Operating Principle

   6 lessons
   • Give First, Without Keeping Score
   • What You Can Actually Offer
   • Making a Useful Introductionwriting lab
   • Proportional Asks
   • Offer Something Small, Out Loudspeaking lab
   • + 1 more lesson
4. 04

   Conversations: Opening, Holding, Ending

   8 lessons
   • Opening a Conversation With a Stranger
   • Your First Sixty Secondsspeaking lab
   • Questions That Go Somewhere
   • Ending a Conversation Gracefully
   • The Graceful Exit Drillspeaking lab
   • + 3 more lessons
5. 05

   Follow-Up and Asking Well

   7 lessons
   • The Follow-Up Message That Gets a Reply
   • Write the Follow-Upwriting lab
   • Introductions, Advice and Favours
   • Fill In the Askfill blank
   • The Ask, Written Properlywriting lab
   • + 2 more lessons
6. 06

   Harder Situations

   7 lessons
   • Networking as an Introvert
   • Public Writing as Passive Networking
   • Events: Before, During, After
   • Internal Networking in a Large Organisation
   • Talking Across Seniorityinterview lab
   • + 2 more lessons
7. 07

   Capstone: Your Map and 90-Day Plan

   6 lessons
   • What You Will Build and Keep
   • Part One: The Relationship Mapwriting lab
   • Part Two: The 90-Day Contact Planspeech template
   • The Weekly Fifteen Minutestimer
   • Your Two-Minute Account of Yourselfspeech practice
   • + 1 more lesson

The shape of it

How this course works