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By Root 774 0

People feel more motivated as a result of doing better.” We are inclined to agree: The behavior is more likely to fuel the success than the success fueling the behavior. In other words, the more you do something, the better you get at it. That applies to playing a musical instrument, competing in a sport, or networking for business. You can’t win the game if you don’t practice. And if you don’t practice, you won’t get better—which means you won’t like it. This frustrating cycle can be broken by looking at an activity’s components and identifying which elements feel enjoyable. If people focus on the aspects of networking that they like, they’ll do it more—and thus enjoy more success. For example, here’s one man who teams up with his wife because he believes she is so good at the process it improves his success at it:

My wife does a lot of networking for me. She is really good about starting conversations, and after she warms the person up, she introduces me. I then continue the conversation to build the relationship. My wife is also very good about following up with people, and then bringing me in again and again.

On the other hand, here’s a comment from a woman who identifies her emotional intelligence as being important to her success in networking:

Being able to develop a good relationship initially helps me understand how to best work with someone else in business. Having this emotional intelligence is my strength, and I can help others get their needs met. That in itself helps me meet my own needs.

He Says . . .

This is pretty simple. As adults, all we are is big kids. If we don’t like something, we don’t want to do it. If we enjoy a particular activity, we wish to do it more. Because we enjoy it, we focus on it and want to get better at it. This is the same with men and networking for business. Men who enjoy it will do it more, and become better at it. The more often they do it and the higher their level of skill, the greater results they will achieve. The greater their results, the more inspired they are, and the more motivated they become to continue and create greater success.

If we look at the adult learner, we know that both men and women alike will enjoy learning more when they are engaged in the process. Andragogy is the art of teaching to adults. In order for adults to want to learn, the teachings must be problem-centered rather than content-centered; permit and encourage active participation; encourage the use of past experiences; be collaborative between instructor-student and student-student; be based on planning between the teacher and the learner; be based on an evaluation agreement; and incorporate experiential activities. Why do I mention all this now? Because if we are looking at the behavior of our networkers and saying that the behavior drives the success, then the behavior of learning will drive greater success.

She Says. . .

Have you ever met anyone who had a bad attitude about what they were doing and at the same time was highly successful at it? We become successful at the things we believe we can become successful at.

How do we become successful at anything we do? By doing it correctly? One of the statistics in our study shows that people who enjoy networking also spend more time doing it, have developed systems for tracking results, and spend more time working their networks.

Think about when you learned to ride a bike, roller skate, ski, or knit for example. Were you good at it the very first time you tried it? I remember when I got my very first bicycle, my grandparents bought it for me, and my grandfather helped me get on the bike. It had little training wheels, and for several days I wobbled around the neighborhood. After the third day, my grandfather took the training wheels off and ran alongside me as I struggled to maintain balance and stay upright. Finally, he let go of me, and I was riding on my own. After that, I skinned my knees and elbows, crashed into things, and had a bunch of accidents, but kept riding because I loved it. I never considered that