Changing my approach to networking
Jeraldine Phneah
August 27, 2023
I gave myself a KPI of joining one networking event per month early in my career.
This could be anything - attending a talk; participating in a workshop or joining a random dinner someone invited me to.
When people wrote in to ask for coffee chats, my likelihood of saying yes was a lot higher.
The idea was to say yes when young, early in my career and increase my surface area of luck. And, also to learn as much as I can from people from different backgrounds.
Deliberately putting myself in new environments forced me to develop better social skills and also led to unexpected encounters; new ideas, and meaningful relationships.
However, there were also cons. I found myself increasingly frustrated and irritated with poor social graces and lack of sincerity.
I left meetings feeling like I did not use my time optimally.
As someone who is more established now and more time/energy starved, I decided to be more deliberate about the way I network.
It is important for me to eliminate the noise and double down on the actions that compound most effectively in my life.
Here is how I make decisions about what events to go for:
☕1. Events when I am speaking or moderating
This gives me access to other speakers also. For instance, E27 Echelon conference or the recent Endowus/RealVantage event on investing for Millennials
☕ 2. Events with high quality attendees This could be private dinners similar to the one I hosted last year.
☕ 3. Events with a clear well-defined target audience and barriers to entry.
For example, I am flying to Bali to attend Hustle Camp. I have zero intention of starting a fund. My reason for investing time and money in this event is for the network, I feel that if people are willing to fly to Bali and spend two week days to attend something like this, they must be really serious and passionate about the topic.
My goal is to learn as much as possible from the speakers; driven people attending; befriend those from other countries and come back with valuable knowledge and friendships.
☕ 4. Events with topics I am deeply interested in
For example, this coming week I am going with Hengxuan to an event on Longevity and Healthspan. Earlier, I also joined his event on Buddhism.
Hengxuan is one of the interesting people I’ve met this year through coffee chats. I am inspired by his dedication to fitness; buddhism and expanding his knowledge through books.
Getting a timer to hold me accountable
I have been spending a lot of time at work recently with the goal of mastery about product, skill set, customers and more.
However, I do not feel that my productivity is where I want it to be.
I don’t have a problem sticking to the schedule I have set for myself. For example, if I plan to work from 930AM to 1130AM, I will really do it.
However, I find that when working, little distractions often derail me during these two hours.
These interruptions add up. It is not just the time I lose on distractions, it also takes time and energy to refocus my attention.
To counter this, I recently bought a timer to improve my productivity at work and hold myself accountable.
The idea here is to fix my time taken to completed specific tasks.
For example, if the task I have given myself is “Research customer and account for tomorrow’s meeting; prepare three common use cases and come up with questions to ask them”, I want to take 25 minutes at most.
Without a timer, I will sometimes be distracted and might talk to colleagues or check my email.
By forcing myself to complete this in 25 minutes with a an alarm at the end, I hope to be more focused and eliminate all distractions during this period of time.
“To produce at your peak level you need to work for extended periods with full concentration on a single task free from distraction. Put another way, the type of work that optimizes your performance is deep work.”
I believe in working in focused, intense sprints where I give 100% of energy to completing tasks within a set time frame.
Here is how I typically operate:
60 minutes of deep focus
20 minute break (walk or housework if I am at home)
Repeat x 3
The value of watching your own videos
My new manager has been reviewing videos of me presenting in customer meetings with me each week and diving into growth areas.
It is quite a painful process to watch my own mistakes as it happens. And, also stressful.
However, this has helped me make improvements in the way I communicate; posture; tonality; gesture; the pronunciation of words and taking back control of the meeting when it goes off course.
Many actors and top athletes watch their own videos. This is a powerful tool for improving technique and tactics. Video enables you to more clearly understand and see what you need to work on.
My main mode of learning and communication is through visuals. I believe this is due to my background in arts when I was younger. Hence, I felt this method of learning to be super effective for me in improving my skills.
I have been doing this for my media interviews and also when I speak in public as well.
Super grateful to have a manager who is strong in coaching and very clear in his feedback.
If you are looking to improve the way you present, communicate and ask questions, I highly recommend video-ing yourself and then watching your own recordings.
I recently did a media interview on my layoff and here is a snippet about us discussing the relevance of company loyalty in today’s context. The full interview will be out soon! Stay tuned!
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