The most efficient way to enlarge and tap the full potential of your circle of friends is, quite simply, to connect your circle with someone else’s. Politicians, the inveterate masters of networking, have exchanged their networks in this fashion for years. They have what are called “host committees,” groups of people hailing from different social worlds who are loyal to a specific politician and charged with introducing their candidate to their respective circle of friends. To my mind, it offers a great template for people looking to expand their own network.

Are there worlds you want more access to? If so, see if you can find a central figure within that world to act as your own one-person host committee. In a business context, say you plan on selling a new product that your company is introducing several months down the line, and most of your customers will be lawyers. Go to your personal lawyer, tell him about the product, and ask him or her if they’d be willing to come to a dinner with a few of their lawyer friends that you’d like to host. Tell them that not only will they get an early look at this fabulous new product, but they’ll have an opportunity to meet your friends, who could become potential clients. They’ll become responsible for holding events that will usher you into their group of friends. You’ll become responsible for doing the same for them.

This kind of partnering works wonderfully. But the underlying dynamic at work has to be mutual benefit. It should be a win-win for all involved.

If you are sharing someone else’s circle of friends, be sure that you adequately acknowledge the person who ushered you into this new world, and do so in all the subsequent connections that they helped foster. Never forget the person who brought you to the dance. Trust is integral to an exchange of networks that demands treating the other person’s contacts with the utmost respect.

As your community grows, partnering becomes more of a necessity. It becomes a matter of efficiency. One contact holds the key to maintaining all the other relationships in his or her network. He or she is the gatekeeper to a whole new world. You can meet dozens, even hundreds of other people through your relationship with one other key connector.

Two quick rules of thumb for network sharing:

1. You and the person you are sharing contacts with must be equal partners that give as much as they get.

2. You must be able to trust your partners because, after all, you’re vouching for them and their behavior with your network is a reflection on you.

A word of caution—never give any one person complete access to your entire list of contacts. This is not a free-for-all. You should be aware of who in your network is interested in being contacted and how. Exchanging contacts should take place around specific events, functions, or causes. Consider carefully how your partner wants to use your network and how you expect to use his. In this way, you’ll be more helpful to the other person, which is the kind of genuine reciprocity that makes partnering, and the world, work.

Image from amber online.

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