Business Networking and Sex - Ivan Misner [22]
He Comments . . .
Tell it like it is, sister! I know I tend to be single-minded when it comes to just making sure I get that business, but investing networking time and confidence, then counting on the bottom line, from a virtual connection leaves me feeling a little queasy.
She Responds . . .
It all boils down to each gender really understanding the other, and you can’t do that without practice and face-to-face observation.
Ladies, the other half of the population is men, no? So wouldn’t it serve us well to learn how to network in their language? It will make us more successful, not to mention make the whole process a lot more fun. Hold onto your purses—it’s going to be a wild ride!
Genders Credit Networking Important to Success
Ninety-three percent of women felt networking played a role in their success, while 89.9 percent of men felt the same way. It may not seem a big gap in numbers, but as Ivan “The Survey” Misner defined “statistically significant” for us recently, I’m sure you’ll remember the tiny pebble in the marathoner’s shoe story and see the reason we keep track of numbers.
Ladies, are any of you shocked that more men than women feel responsible for their own success without the help of others? I’m sure those guys also feel completely responsible for their own births and upbringing, too. Their poor mothers!
This directly relates to how men responded to the question, “How did you learn to network?” More men said they learned it on their own, so it makes sense that higher numbers of these supermen would also not attribute networking to part of their success. Heck, these are the same guys that won’t stop and ask for directions with a tank on “E” in the middle of the desert and a woman in labor in the car.
He Comments . . .
Don’t you think you might be exaggerating just a little bit?
She Reponds . . .
Maybe. Let’s get back to the survey results to help illustrate my point. It’s not surprising that more women than men say networking contributes to their success when you think about how collaborative we are by nature. Let’s use your cave-dwelling era as an example, Frank, and imagine all the things the cave gals did to form community, such as working in shifts to keep the fires burning while the he-men were out hunting, or sharpening their spears, or something. Imagine those women gathering wood from the forest around them while keeping watch over the clan’s children in shifts, or even nursing one another’s babies. Women had to form groups and collaborate to survive back in prehistoric days, and that still holds true today, though to less of a survival degree and more of a thriving degree.
The bigger issue under investigation is how success is defined differently by each gender, and why. During one of our writing powwows, co-author Frank and I pored over statistical data that triggered an intricate conversation on that. The fact that women are more relational and men are more business driven seems to directly shape their definitions of success as well as personal identities and self-esteem levels, depending on how well they excel in those areas. That subject matter would be worth an entire survey in itself.
Consider the information below from Dr. Jeff Cornwall, co-founder, president, and CEO of Atlantic Behavioral Health Systems, and author of six books on entrepreneurship:
Over the past couple of decades we have seen a steady increase in the number of women becoming entrepreneurs.