Inward Bound

From the desk of Ron Sukenick

Your first instinct, when thinking about going into the Beyond Networking zone, is probably to picture being outward bound, going outside your circle of friends to meet new people. After all, what you're trying to do is create connections that can benefit your business. Perhaps when you think about going beyond traditional ways of doing things and moving outward, you're conjuring up a mental image of the Space Shuttle, or, if you're a science fiction fan, you see the image of a time machine reading to speed you into the future. That's how I started out thinking about reaching beyond networking, too. But true Beyond Networking actually starts in the other direction. To progress from the shake-hands-and-hand-out-a-lot-of-cards-and-brochures type of networking, and move on to Connection, we start by going inward.

You see, we each have our own built-in perspective on life and on everything that's happening around us. Often, when a sale or a business deal doesn't go the way we expected, we find that hard to understand. After all, from our perspective, this deal (or sale) was the best thing since sliced bread! (The other person was just blind not to realize that!) The fact is, we can't understand - until we understand the Model of Human Behavior. We can network all day long, but until we truly get to know our own behavior style and then come to know the behavior styles of other people, we'll never really get it. Oh, we may succeed in getting our sales numbers up and even pull off some really big business deals, but we'll never reach the Connection phase. That would be a pity, too, because the connection phase is where stuff really starts to happen for us and for everyone with whom we connect.

Once I'd studied to become a Certified Human Behavior Consultant, offering the Ultimate Discovery System, a whole lot of things started becoming clear that had once been the source of my biggest frustrations.(I'm still on my journey with a long way to go, but now I know the right direction to be heading.) Try to imagine this: If you could read someone else's mind, and understand "where that person is coming from", you'd be so much better equipped to communicate clearly to that person, wouldn't you? In this blog, Beyond Networking, we'll be exploring the four personality styles (it really does feel like exploring a beautiful park or a secret cave!), always coming back to where everything begins - understanding ourselves.

Let me put this another way - have you ever been driving home after an unsuccessful meeting? (You know, you didn't make that sale, or you didn't get the other person excited enough to want to participate in your project?) Having been involved in sales and in projects my whole life, I know how that feels, all right! So you're driving along, asking a lot of Why's: Why couldn't he…? Why didn't she…..? Why can't they…??? Sound familiar? That's exactly the point of going Beyond Networking. All those "Why's" come from outward-bound thinking, and, remember, we're going beyond that!

Watch out - we're coming IN!