#403： A Better Way to Network
Episode Stats
Summary
David Berkus is a professor of leadership, a sought-after public speaker, and the author of the book Friend of a Friend understanding the hidden networks that can transform your life and your career. In this episode, David shares what s wrong with most traditional networking tactics and why they re not very effective. We then dig into the power of the network you already belong to.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast networking you're
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told that something you need to do to advance your professional life but the tactics most
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networking professionals suggest either don't work or make you feel icky and awkward I guess
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he argues that you don't have to go to networking events or hand out business cards left and right
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to network effectively you just need to realize you're already embedded in a really effective
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network right now his name is David Berkus he's a professor of leadership a sought-after public
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speaker and the author of the book friend of a friend understanding the hidden networks that
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can transform your life and your career today on the show David shares what's wrong with most
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traditional networking tactics and why they're not really effective we then dig into the power
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of the network you already belong to David explains what dormant weak ties are why it can be beneficial
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to silo yourself off from others sometimes how to balance siloing with connecting and how to turn
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work friends into friend friends and friend friends into work friends lots of great counterintuitive
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insights in this episode after the show's over check out the show notes at aom.is slash friend of a
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all right David Berkus welcome to the show thank you so much for having me so you just came out
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with a book called friend of a friend there's lots of of a friend of a friend of a friend there but a
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friend of a friend understanding the hidden networks that can transform your life and your career it's
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a book about networking but as I was reading this and we were talking before the show this is a book
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about networking that's not like other books about networking that I've read start off like how do you
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think what's the what's the common approach that people take towards networking whenever they put out
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a blog or a book on the topic what's the typical approach so I mean fundamentally I think a lot of people
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will take they'll take networking and they'll define it really as trying to meet strangers trying to
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meet new people trying to run up the count on their LinkedIn connections or their Facebook friends or
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etc and I think most of us think of you know that that weird awkward unstructured room maybe it's a
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cocktail party maybe it's a sort of mixer hour before a conference or whatever and then like you know
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like like you said they end up kind of feeling okay this is icky and weird because we take a lot of
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people's advice on how to work that room and then it's it's their advice and it might work for them and
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then we try and apply it to us and then we feel inauthentic and sleazy and weird like no wonder
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you're trying to be someone else in that moment I mean fundamentally like advice is great especially
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if you can get it from a lot of different people but if you just read a blog post and then you're
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trying to take that those insights and turn them into the perfect elevator pitch you're gonna feel
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like someone else because you're literally being someone else in that moment yeah I mean I've found in
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my experience those that stuff like the typical networking stuff mixers cocktail hours you know
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pressing flesh right like it's not very effective either yeah no I mean we and it's it's not all
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that effective maybe one person out of a hundred is going to be useful if we're defining useful as
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that sort of immediate way that I can help them or they can help me type of thing in instead of just
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thinking like oh this is a new person and I'm a good human being and so now I have this connection
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and over time I'm going to continue to increase that connection that might work out but that's
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fundamentally I think a lot of people leave that room after doing that I love that term pressing
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flesh right shaking hands kissing babies whatever you want to call it they leave that room and
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because they didn't find that one in a hundred they think the whole thing you know was a waste of time
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and truthfully the whole thing probably was because there's a lot of research that shows that people
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if you actually go to a networking event or any sort of unstructured time a meetup or anything like
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that you spend way more time talking to people you already know than meeting new people anyway so
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not only are you not applying all of that advice for how to you know wow and dazzle new people that
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you've just met you're also not spending a lot of time and it's not you it's the unstructured nature
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of the event in general all right so how is your approach that you took with friend of a friend
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towards network and and we're talking broadly speaking because we'll get into the details
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how is that different from the typical approach towards of networking yeah so my my big idea is that
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we don't we need to sort of redefine it it's not about meeting new people to me it's not that you
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can grow a network you don't even have a network you exist inside of one already you know all of us
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exist inside of a network whether it be our community our industry etc and so if that's true
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then maybe the right approach is to figure out how networks work and so for the last two years
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i've been reading kind of basically every major study in the world of network science it's about a
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60 year old scientific discipline and trying to find the things that are sort of universally true
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about all networks because those are the things that are most likely going to be true
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for you in your situation and i think people more more so than needing to learn the perfect way to
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introduce themselves etc need to understand the science behind the network they're already in
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and then they can act accordingly in a way that feels authentic to them gotcha okay i like that idea
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recognize the network you already have don't you don't have to go out and reinvent the wheel
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because you already have the wheel it's exactly right in fact there's at one point in the book we
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even say that if you don't like going to those events you don't like meeting totally new people etc
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you can actually sort of you can respond i don't want to use the term build your network
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because i just said you shouldn't use it but you can actually sort of grow your connections and
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nurture connections and meet new people all through existing contacts and through working
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your way through the network you have you don't actually ever have to go to one of those events
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ever again and you can still have you know a thriving network that you're able to help and is able to help
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you i like that so let's talk about you know recognizing the network that we already have
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so the chapter you talk about weak ties what are weak ties and how why are they more powerful than
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strong ties so i guess you have to define what is a weak tie what is a strong tie and why are weak ties
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better yeah so if we think about a network as that sort of three-dimensional object right circles and
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lines connecting other circles if and if you're listening to this and you're like i have no idea what
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he's talking about run a google image search real quick for the word network you'll see a bunch of
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clip art it's exactly what we're talking about right so we think about that they often use space
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how close to another person you are as a marker for how strong the relationship is right and so strong
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ties would be those people that are very close to you in the network they're your close friends
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they're your social structure they're usually a lot of your family members etc and they're really
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important for what the sociologist ronald burke calls bonding capital a form of social capital that's
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really about support and about having people that you know you can rely on and who can help you
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but in terms of new information whether it be new job leads new perspectives kind of a new
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alternative approach to something just any anywhere or new introductions to new people any of those
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situations those close contacts are actually fairly redundant right we keep people close to us who think
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like us who are all interconnected with people around us and so it's the people further out weak ties
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in particular that become the sources of new information new introductions to people that are
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dissimilar from us people that we might not have ever met in any other capacity those all come
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through your weak ties in particular there's a very specific type of weak tie called a dormant tie
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which is essentially a strong tie that grew weak over time because you know you didn't talk to each
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other for a while maybe you went to college together and now you don't talk as much or somebody changed
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jobs etc and those are actually the most powerful type of tie when it comes to new information new ideas
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new introductions etc because the strength of the relationship is already there but there's
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somewhere else in the network kind of clustered around people that are that are different from
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the people that you're clustered around and so it's easy to sort of rebuild that connection
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and get access to all of that information it's really easy to strengthen it again because it was
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already strong once than it is to meet a total stranger and build rapport with them over time etc and
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so those weak and dormant ties I kind of refer to them as the hidden network they're the thing we
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neglect so often I mean you think about most people's job search they ask their friends and a few trusted
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people and then they jump right to applying on monster.com instead of thinking about these weak
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and dormant ties that are shown to be in study after study the most potent sources of all sorts
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of new information and new introductions yeah I love that insight because I've you know I've read
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about we've even published things about weak ties and the typical when people write about that their
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typical approach is okay you need weak ties so go to networking events so you can establish more weak
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ties that ever say no you already have weak ties go there and mine those and see where what were
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those lead right no that's exactly right I mean if you've been alive for more than like four years
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you already have weak ties like just the nature of being a human means you have different relationship
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strengths and there are people that you've lost touch with that you need to reconnect with what I
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think is really funny is in a social media world the number one complaint I guess privacy is now the
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number one complaint but before that the number one complaint about sites like Facebook etc was
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oh my news feed is inundated with people I don't really care all that much about those are literally
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your weak ties telling you what's going on in your life you can use that information to go reconnect
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with them over whatever they're announcing right so there's there's an incredibly I mean you've got to
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rein it in so it's not dominating your time but there's an incredibly valuable way now to keep in
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touch with your weak ties that's never existed before in human history so I mean what's your approach to
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managing those dormant weak ties do you have like a system in place that you use to to keep those
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keep those alive yeah so there's there is there's a couple systems that almost function like personal
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customer relationship management or CRM systems I actually do use one called contactually but the
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truth is its main feature is that it'll ping you if it's if it's noticed that it's been so long between
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conversations with a weak tie and normally I never end up getting pinged because I do exactly what I was
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hinting at earlier so I about two years ago when I was doing the research for this book and starting it
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I decided to practice what I was about to preach and I turned I re-followed everybody in my social
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networks on LinkedIn and Twitter etc and I started making a point at least once a week to find someone
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who was announcing something like say they were saying oh I just got a new job and I'm moving to
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Chicago I'd use that information to reach back out to that weak tie and the key was I wouldn't just
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click like or say congratulations and do the things that get you know drown out in the sea of
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comments I would send a more personal message so whether that be a text message a phone call an
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email whatever's right for that person and whatever I have access to and I I would say something like
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hey congratulations that's that's so awesome congrats on on moving to Chicago then I'd usually try and
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provide value in some way so I you know the case of Chicago I'm thinking like you probably need to
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know that you can skip all the other deep dish places Gino's East is the best and then use that as an
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opportunity to invite them into a further conversation we should catch up sometime soon or I might say what
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else is new with you etc or might write a little blurb about what's new in my life it depends on
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the the person but really it's the matter of seeing that information that's broadcasted online it's
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public you're not stalking them you're not being weird they posted it but then taking that conversation
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to a more personal medium and using that and making that a habit you end up kind of doing it with all of
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your weak ties regularly and that's the other key where a lot of advice books go wrong is they'll say you
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need weak ties so they'll either they'll say go to networking events and make new weak ties or they'll just say
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so when you're looking for a job hit weak ties it's kind of too late at that point they can kind
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of smell your desperation on you and know that you don't actually care about them etc it's much
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better to make it a habit to be regularly checking back in with these people gotcha so another feature
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of networks that we already exist in that can be I don't say I don't know exploited is that's not
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the right word because that sounds mercenary leveraged is a word so I use this analogy that we there's a term
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in network science called social capital that there's value to the network and then there's
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value being a part of the network and I think if it's sort of if it's capital it's like an investment
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you are pouring into the network and yeah it's okay to make withdrawals from it every once in a while
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as long as you don't overextend your account and go into the negative right okay so yeah the example
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one one area in our networks are these structural holes that exist on our networks what are those and
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and how can those structural holes be a way to you know it I don't know make our network more
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effective or efficient yeah so this is a fascinating insight from the world of network science for me
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because I think a lot of us when we think about networking we think about oh I need to get to know
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everybody in my company or I need to get to know everybody in my industry and we think of like the
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quintessential networker is the one that's in the center of that cluster for that company or that
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industry or trade association or whatever but the truth is so the clusters are important for a couple
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different reasons but there's comes a point where as you get to know new people like we were talking
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about earlier the new people become redundant and in fact the most valuable people to a network
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are the people that serve that cluster of people that they're in by connecting them to a new one so
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the the term we use for the space between two different groups of people or two different
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clusters in the network is a structural hole I like to think of it as sort of like if you think
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of networks almost like a gravitational pull that empty space between earth and mars right that's a
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structural hole in is the space-time continuum or something I really don't understand because
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didn't study physics and and it works the same way it's the people that build a bridge between
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these two clusters that allow for information to flow between them that end up creating the most
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value so I mean for folks that are having trouble with this in the book we talk about Jane McGonigal who
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is an amazing woman that connected the video game design community and the mental health and medical
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profession in order to create a sort of gamified way to do recovery from things like head trauma
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depression and all sorts of other sort of mental illnesses that came never would have happened had
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she not connected these two communities and you can do that within your like say your company like
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if you're in sales like you reach out to people in engineering or product development yeah no exactly
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right so this is this is huge inside of in fact when I was writing this book I almost wanted to talk
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about this but I decided it was a little weird and I didn't want to ask his permission even but I
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remember having this exact conversation with a brother of mine a couple years ago because he
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was talking about well I want to get to work more in finance but this is still a job in the marketing
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department I'm just running the budget so I'm like that's perfect you're the only person on the
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marketing side that's going to be talking to the finance side you're going to be in a tremendously
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valuable linchpin between these two communities and I mean here's the issue though that whenever you try
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to mix different clusters or silos is that you know one cluster like thinks one way the other
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cluster thinks another way and so if you're trying to bridge the two they're both going to be sort of
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suspicious like who's this guy from x department I don't know he's not like us like how do you get
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how do you be a connector and you allow these two groups to be receptive to to new ideas right
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yeah so so this is where it gets a little tricky right this and this is not a rookie networker move
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like this isn't the kind of thing you can do right out of college right because you don't want to be
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on that person on the edge of the cluster screaming I really think we should talk to this department
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over here you're like you said you're just kind of going to look like that crazy person or you know
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you're going to get hate from both sides the trick is to know when you're embedded enough inside of one
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cluster that you can actually you have strength of relationship to where people will trust you and
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listen to you as you now begin to do that crazy thing it's still going to look crazy I mean we train people
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especially if you work in a large organization to climb up the corporate ladder to get to know more
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and more people in that community so you're still going to look a little different in fact one study
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we use in the book actually calls these people organizational misfits which which I love because
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it turns out to be a strength but it's a good description of these people but the ones that are
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the most successful are ones that are a little bit embedded into that cluster and then now because they
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have those relationships move forward so this is something you can't do right off the bat in your career but
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when you there's there is a point or as you're meeting new people in that industry they become to be
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redundant and that's the point at which we should be thinking about okay well what other communities does
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this community need to be connected to and how can I go out and do the same thing in that community and
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eventually connect the two yeah I love the example you gave of when Stanley McChrystal the general
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kind of took charge of you know things over there in the Middle East and he wanted all these different
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disparate agencies and military units to start working together and so they actually had like
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rain army rangers get embedded with navy seals navy seals get embedded with army rangers and he said
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yeah at first there was a little friction but after a while things started jiving and they're all on the
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same page and they're all working towards the same goal and things became much more effective and efficient
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yeah that's exactly right in fact one of the things I think is interesting is the roles
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to some extent already existed there were these things called liaison officers but they were almost
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considered to be sort of like punishment like you're getting kicked out of your unit and that's
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why you're the liaison officer and so he did a what he basically did to signal that this is actually an
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honor and that we need these people is he took like the cream of the crop the top officers in certain
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squads and said no you're going to be the liaison it's not the guy that's about to retire it's not the
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one who got in trouble I'm trusting my most important people for this job and that they're very quickly
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signaled to the whole community okay he's taking this seriously and over time it wasn't wasn't that
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everybody got to know everybody but everybody could look at another team or another branch of
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the military and know that okay I have a friend over there and those they're good people he's a
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good person she's a good person so I know that I can trust this whole unit and he built what I mean
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he calls it it's the title of the book team of teams and I really love kind of that concept that
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there's an importance to your team but you also need to be connected to other ones as well
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so another counterintuitive point you make in the book about networks and networking is
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that silos are can be a good thing because I mean you often hear this stuff you know like you know
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silos there's filter bubbles you're exposed to less information you you know etc etc and that you
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should avoid that and just branch out and you know create as much diversity as possible but you
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highlight research that suggests that if we want to get stuff done we need silos so talk about why silos
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can be good yeah so this is really one of the hardest concepts to kind of explain inside of just a
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couple chapters in friend of a friend you know we were just talking about building structural holes
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and breaking people out of silos and being less politics and turf war but the truth is that over
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time as we see sort of information flow if we had a completely egalitarian network where everybody
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talks to everybody in fact information wouldn't flow as much we actually do need clusters to share
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ideas and share information and you know yeah I'm a writer you've written you're a writer we've
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written several books we know that that sort of community of writers is really important on the other
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hand if you just do that and you don't actually get out and engage with readers and engage and send
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your message out there you end up you know not actually being able to build a career so that the
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trick is to be able to balance that in fact we see this in organizations as well with those
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organizational misfits the the best analogy I've thought of and I actually thought of it after
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I wrote the book which is a shame is that I think about clusters and teams like a harbor it's a great
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place for a ship to be it's a place where it can get restocked and repaired and get ready for the sea
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but it can't stay there it eventually has to get out and begin to connect other harbors through its
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trade routes etc yeah there's a we know some other research kind of similar to this about extroversion
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and introversion where extroverts like their career advances right faster because they're making all
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those connections but the introverts are the ones who actually gain mastery in the the domain that
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they're in right because that's all they spend more time you know fine-tuning that so like the
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introverts could learn from the extroverts by being a little okay you need to get out there a little bit
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more if you want to advance your career but the extroverts people are always out there pressing
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flesh could learn from the introverts say I need to make time for I just focus on my craft or whatever
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work it is that I'm doing no no that's exactly right and you know an extrovert will feel energized
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in an event with you know a hundred people and an introvert is like well I just want the six or so
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people that I really trust and you know you've talked about this on on the blog but also on the
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podcast in general especially for men like you you need both of those things you need that community
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of people and that's probably the more overlooked one for men but you also need to kind of be out
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there and you know what I think is interesting in the research on this it isn't it isn't that
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introverts hate people it isn't that extroverts love people it just has to do with where your energy
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comes from where you recharge either you recharge in a big group of people that's exciting or you're
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recharge in a smaller group or by yourself but you're recharging for a reason you're recharging
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to get out there and do the activity that you don't do like it's no point being fully charged
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all the time you can't just leave your iphone in the dock a hundred percent of the time you
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eventually have to unplug it and use it and that's a signal right there that we need to be doing both
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so how do you how do you find that balance I mean are there any tactics or brass tack things people
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can do like okay I I know I've got I'm hitting the sweet spot with with being siloed and but also
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reaching out and connecting different clusters you know I think it's really a question of taking a
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deep dive on your calendar and looking at where you're spending your time and are you having
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are you just having all of your meetings with the same like two dozen people or is there a healthy
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balance like I encourage our coach a lot of people to hey look at the last you know 25 meetings that
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you were in was it all the same people all the time or was there this healthy balance of okay
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there's about five or six people that seems like I talk to all the time and then the rest of the
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people on these meeting rosters are new folks I think it's a good way to signal what your balance
00:21:03.940
is you're you know you're already in a world of electronic invitations you're already kind of
00:21:08.720
keeping track of who you're talking to so just go back and audit it to see if you're doing a good
00:21:13.580
enough job and if not I mean you might have to be a little weird and start inviting yourself
00:21:17.440
to meetings just so you can be around kind of other people in the community whether that be the
00:21:21.520
organization or etc but really how you spend your time is going to determine how you're building
00:21:26.640
these relationships so another aspect of networks are there there are these individuals that are
00:21:32.380
called super connectors what what makes a super connector a super connector so this was a really
00:21:38.900
interesting discovery for me when I'm looking at network science because I had read you know if you
00:21:43.220
link back all the way to like Malcolm Gladwell and the tipping point he writes about Dunbar's number
00:21:47.460
this idea that all of us on average have an average number of relationships right and over time what you
00:21:55.440
start to see is it's not actually just one number 150 which is known as Dunbar's number it's actually
00:22:02.660
it doesn't even look like an average in the sense that an average is an inverted u it actually looks
00:22:07.340
like a power law a Pareto principle an 80 20 type principle and there are some people that really do
00:22:12.260
have a disproportionate number of contacts so even if the average is 150 it's actually not it's 661
00:22:18.780
there are some people who have thousands right and I think these are important for two reasons
00:22:23.180
the first is that these people are generally what kind of keep a community connected the other thing
00:22:28.920
is that the presence of these people skews the average and for a lot of people when they think
00:22:32.820
about networking they think like oh I'm not good at that this other person is so good at it etc we're
00:22:37.840
looking at a skewed average like everyone's gonna look a little bit more popular than you because
00:22:41.880
you've got these super connectors in the network that are hugely popular and then the other thing that
00:22:46.620
happens is as you start to approach that curve that 80 20 principle it's almost like a flywheel effect
00:22:52.000
that eventually just natural introductions that come up organically grow your your section of the
00:22:57.020
network faster than anybody else's because you're so connected I think a lot of people get down on
00:23:01.740
themselves about you know not no I'm not all that connected so clearly I'm not good at this thing
00:23:07.060
it's really a function of just how much are you willing to put in the work and for how long
00:23:11.200
because there's a compound interest effect to it all well so how do you do that how do you become
00:23:15.160
a super connector and like and do you need to become a super connector I mean that's a that's
00:23:19.580
a thing like is that something you have to do or what what's your what do you what's your approach
00:23:22.360
to that so so I mean here's the other thing quite frankly no you know we we think about like
00:23:26.420
like the one of the favorite stories or myths I like to debunk in this book is is Kevin Bacon
00:23:31.280
right maybe you played the game six degrees of Kevin Bacon we think like oh he's been in such a
00:23:35.260
diversity of movies and he's so connected he's actually the 669th most connected person in Hollywood
00:23:41.180
so he's he's not he doesn't actually have this amazing network and this amazing connections it's
00:23:45.380
just that the network itself is so interconnected that you can have you can be as low on the charts
00:23:50.600
as Kevin Bacon and still kind of connect everyone and that's the case inside of any industry in any
00:23:55.100
network you you really don't you probably have everyone you need to meet for your own professional
00:23:59.580
success within one or two introductions for yourself now so you don't on the other hand like if you do
00:24:05.560
then one of the first things that you can do is start to be really really generous with your
00:24:10.040
introductions so in the book we talk about my my friend another awesome podcaster Jordan Harbinger
00:24:15.020
who is a super connector who has been over the 10 years of of running his show but one of the things
00:24:19.780
that he does is he makes a habit whenever he's talking to someone he's not just thinking about what
00:24:24.240
he's going to say next and he's not thinking like okay I need to be active listening he's actually
00:24:28.160
thinking who do I currently have in my network that I could introduce this person that would
00:24:32.260
help me it's probably not me that can help them the odds that I can provide value for everyone
00:24:36.160
is really slim but if I can introduce you to someone who does then I'm signaling that I'm
00:24:40.860
generous I'm taking care of the network as a whole and over time it will take care of me and I'll grow
00:24:45.120
to become that super connector type person right and that has helped him out recently because he's
00:24:49.860
started a new show we had him on the show to talk about that yeah I actually so I actually hate this
00:24:53.820
I finished the book and we went to print uh before that whole thing happened so even on the back
00:24:58.180
cover of the book it lists him as art of charm and I'm thinking his story got so much cooler when all
00:25:03.060
that happened because he's you know basically kicked off his show he starts a new one all he
00:25:07.000
has is his recording equipment and his network and that's all he needed yeah so yeah as you mentioned
00:25:12.040
as you become a super connector you start making these introductions you mentioned that it becomes
00:25:16.400
sort of a flywheel effect because because you are heavily connected people are naturally drawn to you
00:25:21.960
because they want to be drawn to the guy who's got the connections so it's sort of like the
00:25:26.020
Matthew effect right too much is given much will be added on to I think Gladwell talks about that
00:25:32.100
but that becomes that can become a problem because you'll have more and more people asking for your
00:25:36.780
time and intention so as you become more connected how do you manage managing your network
00:25:42.980
yeah so this is this is one of the things that I really I wanted to solve right off the bat and I
00:25:48.080
call it in my mind I call it the Jason Gaynard problem Jason is a is an incredible connector he runs
00:25:52.840
an event for entrepreneurs he's very well connected now and he he will say this thing where he says the
00:25:57.680
key to a good network is subtraction not addition and you're like well that's easy for you to say
00:26:02.000
you already know everybody right so I wanted to figure that out like how can he say that but then
00:26:06.140
other people are like well I can't subtract if I subtracted it'd be me and like my wife that's it
00:26:09.980
and so I started looking into all of the science of this and there really is a principle it's like a
00:26:14.140
Matthew effect that the fancy 12 dollar word in network science is preferential attachment but it
00:26:18.620
basically says exactly that if you're the if you're one of the more connected people in a network
00:26:22.260
any new person to enter that industry that sector that that network the likelihood that they'll get
00:26:27.500
introduced to you is really really high so you start kind of like a gravitational pull thing you
00:26:32.180
start eventually accumulating more and more mass and now you draw more and more to you and that
00:26:37.060
becomes a problem because eventually you only have enough time I was talking to someone yesterday who's
00:26:41.900
a who's a writer and a speaker etc and he's like I get a thousand manuscripts a month from people
00:26:46.740
that are begging me to read their their potential book idea etc and I just can't handle it one of the
00:26:51.180
things that Jason does that I think is really smart is he now basically connects almost exclusively
00:26:55.540
through community he'll do individual dinners most of the time but if he's in a city and he has a lot
00:26:59.800
of people he needs to connect with he makes a point to plan a lunch or dinner or something that'll draw
00:27:03.780
about 12 people at a time together it's really it's a time management strategy but then his other
00:27:09.420
strategy is he's very intentional about how often do I need to check in with certain people he's
00:27:14.560
managing a network in the thousands if not the tens of thousands and so he has to be intentional
00:27:19.560
about what the right frequency of interacting with every single person is and you know I think this
00:27:24.300
is actually a really interesting point we get to the point where we feel like you know we know we
00:27:28.600
need to be intentional with our spouse and our close friends etc but we want everything else to be
00:27:32.900
organic we would just want to run into them naturally we end up neglecting a lot of people
00:27:36.720
you know you can't just plan on spontaneity and an organic relationship with someone close to you
00:27:42.400
because they would feel offended well everyone's kind of that way you've got to be intentional with
00:27:45.880
everyone it's but it's okay to say I am intentionally only interacting with them every
00:27:50.980
six months or a year or so because that's where our relationship is gotcha so another thing that
00:27:56.840
came out of the network research is that diversity is good so we've talked about clusters that we need
00:28:01.080
clusters to or silos because that allows us to get stuff done but we need people to connect those
00:28:06.860
silos and there's a you can fill those fill those holes and you can provide value to the network by doing
00:28:12.360
that but even within those clusters themselves even within those silos like it's good to have
00:28:17.880
diversity so what does the research say about about that so this is a really interesting thing that I
00:28:24.060
found so we all know like you know the way that I say it is it's 2018 if you don't already know that
00:28:28.740
you need a diversity of opinions you need you know ethnic racial gender ideological diversity in your
00:28:34.600
life to to give you more information and be able to make better decisions and just to be a good
00:28:38.840
human being if you don't already know that I can't help you the challenge is that most people know
00:28:43.280
that and yet we still kind of are clustered in a lot of around a lot of people that are self-similar
00:28:48.440
to us and it's it's not actually necessarily our fault so we explore this idea of homophily which
00:28:53.860
is a fancy another $12 word for love of same and the truth is that it's actually a network effect
00:28:59.520
so what happens is those people who are close to us they all know people who are similar to they all
00:29:04.620
think similar to us they all know each other they're very sort of self-similar and so when
00:29:08.940
they are the only people that are introducing you to new people you're going to get served up more of
00:29:13.320
the same and you can actually think that oh I'm meeting lots of new people so I'm going to get a
00:29:17.360
more diverse network and in reality you're just getting more of the same you know history is full
00:29:21.780
of people who thought they had accurate information to make a decision and then made the decision and turned
00:29:27.340
out they didn't see something because they didn't have the right network I mean we can go back to the
00:29:30.320
Cuban Missile Crisis and and the Bay of Pigs fiasco and all sorts of stuff to think about examples of
00:29:35.460
people making bad decisions because they had limited information from too many self-similar people
00:29:39.740
the the real lesson is that we've got to be very intentional about our actual network so earlier
00:29:44.380
we were talking about you know doing an audit of maybe the last two dozen people that we talked to
00:29:49.040
if they're all very very similar to us that's a really bad thing my chances are you do an audit of
00:29:54.060
your network the people that are closest to you and you'll find the majority of them are really
00:29:57.960
similar to you and a couple of them are not and so you need to spend a disproportionate amount of
00:30:02.540
time with those people who are not to learn more from them but also to to signal that you are open
00:30:06.920
to introductions from them because they're the ones that are most likely to serve you introductions and
00:30:11.260
new potential connections that are different than you you can't just sort of rely on whoever whoever
00:30:15.780
gets introduced to me is whoever gets introduced me that's not going to build the level of diversity
00:30:19.840
that you need you need to be very intentional about where those introductions are coming from
00:30:23.800
yeah and you highlight the research that we're even like clustering ourselves off based on political
00:30:29.940
ideology more and more which is weird because you know you don't go around asking people their
00:30:35.100
politics but the research is showing that some counties are becoming more blue other counties
00:30:40.600
are becoming more red and it's just happening i guess because someone sees you know someone driving
00:30:46.520
a certain kind of car and they're like that they associate that with being a democrat or a republican
00:30:51.060
like well these are my people and they end up sort of just self-filtering that way no it's exactly
00:30:56.480
right and and you know you said it you said it best it's actually at the county level like we have a
00:31:00.600
tendency to think red state blue state but there's actually i mean there there are counties in california
00:31:05.300
that are getting redder over time and it's exactly that it's these subtle little signals that people with
00:31:10.960
certain political ideologies also have a shared ideology about other stuff so we don't run around asking
00:31:15.740
people who they voted for i mean we we kind of do because it's sort of a tense time in our country but
00:31:20.060
mostly we usually don't but we can kind of pick it up like oh you drive a sob i can if you drive a sob
00:31:25.140
i can make a pretty educated guess about who you voted for right oh you drive an f-150 i can make a
00:31:30.140
pretty educated guess about who you voted for and the data shows that over the last like 40 years
00:31:35.520
we have they call it the big sort we have sort of naturally gravitated to want to live closer to
00:31:40.680
these people so even certain neighborhoods and definitely certain counties become deeper red or deeper
00:31:46.220
blue and then then you throw sort of the internet onto that and it spirals out of control right because
00:31:50.760
you've got these filter bubbles and algorithms that are trained to serve you more of what you click like
00:31:54.600
on and eventually i mean what amazes me is whenever some big thing happens and someone you thought was
00:32:00.560
in one political ideology steps up and says something different right how how shocked everybody is right
00:32:06.900
because we're so in our filter bubble that when information from the other side penetrates it we get like
00:32:12.280
shocked and that's a really strong signal that maybe maybe we're we're not being intentional enough
00:32:18.020
and who we're connecting to and who we're having conversations with and who we're meeting right so
00:32:22.240
yeah maybe just be yeah be intentional about that and be aware that that that's happening so let's talk
00:32:28.140
about this idea of multiplexity which is people in our network can be both maybe like i don't know
00:32:35.600
business associates but also friends so talk a little flesh that out a bit for us yeah so one of the
00:32:41.540
things that i think is most interesting i mean we know people are multifaceted right and yet when we
00:32:46.780
think about our network and the people that we know etc we kind of sort them into buckets right there's
00:32:51.160
our our work friends and our you know our close friends and our friends whose kids play the same
00:32:56.400
sport maybe our church friends and that sort of thing and in reality i mean people are multifaceted and
00:33:01.200
it turns out that we use this term a uniplex tie is a connection to someone that only has one
00:33:06.920
context so maybe you're only a work friend and a multiplex tie is someone that you have
00:33:11.620
multiple sort of contexts with what i think is interesting about this is that the research is
00:33:16.300
strongly supportive that you will build a deeper relationship faster with someone if you explore
00:33:21.720
kind of the the multiple facets of them and you can build a far a far better one and we you know
00:33:26.880
sometimes that the person you put in the friend bucket ends up being a strong professional contact in
00:33:31.560
the book we talk about whitney johnson who's a good friend of mine who basically got a job managing an
00:33:36.660
investment a hedge fund because of someone she went to church with which is not what you would think
00:33:41.120
in the world of wall street you wouldn't think that's what's serving people connections but it
00:33:44.740
happens the the other reason i think it's so important to think through this multiplexity lens
00:33:48.780
is that even when we're trying to understand someone i mean let's say you actually do work up the courage
00:33:53.140
to go to that event and you're pressed in flesh and you're meeting new people what's the most common
00:33:57.360
question people ask when they're meeting a new person what do you do what do you do right which is a huge
00:34:02.760
signal that like i would like to have a work context only conversation with you
00:34:06.460
right and especially i mean you can trust that eventually the conversation will get back to
00:34:11.160
there so why not open with something else you know where did you grow up what are you really
00:34:14.780
excited about right now i i sometimes ask people who's your favorite superhero just because i want
00:34:18.940
to know a little bit more about them in a different context so that i'm exploring other ways that i
00:34:24.100
can connect with them and build a multiplex relationship with them right from the start
00:34:27.320
but so yeah so friends can turn into business partners and work friends can turn into
00:34:32.780
friends friends but like you know the whole friends turning into business partners or you know
00:34:37.780
potential economic relationships like how do you walk that fine line without turning your friendship
00:34:43.460
into a purely transactional relationship and i'm thinking here of multi-level marketing because like
00:34:49.080
that's an example of like taking it to the extreme where you have some friend or weak tie out of the
00:34:54.780
blue says hey i've got an amazing opportunity for you and like at that moment you're just like
00:35:00.300
no i don't want anything to do with you anymore because you've just turned this into a completely
00:35:04.660
like transactional mercenary relationship yeah i mean i agree with you so in my my experience is
00:35:10.760
it's easier to turn a work friend into a real friend than a real friend and work friend even
00:35:14.720
though the other way going around tends to happen more often i i think it really takes a sensitivity to
00:35:19.200
the other person i mean not everyone wants to get to know their work friends on a personal
00:35:24.440
level and not everybody wants to be a business partner with their friend friends right so i think
00:35:28.740
you i don't think you jump right to that idea of let's go into business together i've got this
00:35:32.740
amazing opportunity i want to recruit you for i think you start to just sort of feel people out
00:35:36.220
and really the best way to do it is with signaling your own openness to the conversation so you're in
00:35:41.580
the conversation and it's if it's just work related now you're dropping hints about your personal life
00:35:46.020
i mean not in a not a weird like way or you're talking with a friend and you talk a little bit more
00:35:50.420
about what you do in that opportunity and you kind of gauge are they are they excited and receptive
00:35:54.340
to this idea and willing to disclose other information i mean trust is and this is something
00:35:58.640
we don't look at in the book but something i've looked at in prior articles i've written trust is
00:36:02.420
actually something that's reciprocal and multiplex trust is the same way you get it because of a
00:36:06.840
back and forth of disclosures and willingness to be vulnerable so i think you you don't start
00:36:10.600
by pushing anything on someone you start by being vulnerable and willing to disclose what you're
00:36:15.520
up to and then the people that respond to that you can go a little bit deeper with
00:36:18.860
gotcha i like how you said don't be weird about it i think it should be like the guiding
00:36:21.920
principle of network it's like don't be weird like if you'd follow that here's what i think is
00:36:26.960
here's what i think is so interesting so i i you know distill 60 years of network science research
00:36:31.700
and i can boil it all down into be a good human right like you would think it'd be more complicated
00:36:37.180
than that but it's not just be cool man just be cool i mean another interesting thing research you
00:36:42.700
highlight because i've been thinking about this a lot is this idea that things people or ideas or
00:36:50.020
concepts can seem bigger or more popular than they really are because of the way networks
00:36:56.100
are connected can you talk about that a bit yeah so the the interesting thing we call it the majority
00:37:01.340
illusion because that's what the scientists call it but it's it's something we've known for a long
00:37:05.380
time some marketers will talk about cluster marketing where you go after a certain city and
00:37:09.660
you just sort of penetrate it with tons of ads all in a short burst right and so we've known about
00:37:14.840
this idea and in fact in the book we talk about tim ferris who you know another person i'm sure
00:37:18.960
there's a lot of overlap between your your two audiences is for a time you had to be an 18 to 35
00:37:25.040
year old tech savvy male to know who he was it seems weird now because like everybody knows him
00:37:29.120
but there was a time where you had to be that and nobody else kind of knew he existed because
00:37:33.620
he was very deliberately trying to figure out who are the most connected people the most uh sought
00:37:39.440
after sources of information and he was building relationships basically only with tech bloggers the
00:37:43.780
people that were speaking to this community the most often we call this the the majority
00:37:48.000
illusion because you can literally look more popular than you are if the right people the most
00:37:53.280
connected people in network are strongly signaling you right and this is something you know it's not
00:37:58.040
it's not something everybody can do but as you're building those relationships and you know that i want
00:38:02.200
to go after and raise awareness on a certain issue so this isn't just like a self-promotional thing you
00:38:06.860
could do this for a charity issue as well i want to raise awareness on this who i can't just go mass
00:38:12.520
audience all at once tell you who is my demographic who specifically am i going after and then who are
00:38:17.920
the most connected people in that industry that can make me look everywhere because those couple of
00:38:23.440
people are talking about it humans are a herd creatures we're tribal creatures we look to the
00:38:27.400
left and to the right to get a gauge on how popular something is and we look more often to the people
00:38:32.200
that are those super connectors so if you start to look active and popular with them you look more
00:38:36.860
popular than you really are yeah i call it the don't believe the hype principle oh no totally i mean
00:38:41.280
there's another huge lesson in that right which is that great this amazing this small community of
00:38:45.740
people is super excited about you on the other hand most people in the world still don't know you
00:38:50.340
exist right so don't believe the hype don't believe that yeah i mean my my benchmarker of
00:38:54.860
whether you're like you're the mainstream and everyone knows about you is if my parents
00:38:58.820
like my 60 to 70 they're almost 70 now 70 year old parents like know that you exist if that's
00:39:05.840
the case then like you you've you've you've hit the mainstream but like my parents still don't
00:39:09.060
know who tim ferris is yeah no no very true and you know i mean to to a lesser extent you and i are
00:39:13.760
actually both examples of this so so we live in the exact same city but both of our target audiences
00:39:17.720
are not that well represented in the city so very few people even know we're here right but then
00:39:22.260
there's the the actual audience of people in that community everybody knows about your work you know
00:39:27.380
in the exact community you're talking about art of manliness is one of the few podcasts that comes
00:39:31.740
up consistently when i when i talk to people about that specific ideas this specific sort of man
00:39:36.560
audience etc but then you know you can you can walk around the the street and we walk around
00:39:41.520
basically this the same areas you know with our kids and stuff and nobody knows who we are and it's
00:39:45.320
kind of great because it's a reminder don't believe the hype don't believe you're not as yeah
00:39:49.500
that's a good reminder like don't never uh never think your poop smell what's the great
00:39:54.740
oh no totally i mean i i literally had that my when my first book came out i got this amazing
00:40:00.020
invitation to be on cbs this morning and so i did this interview and then i flew immediately after
00:40:05.060
the interview i flew home i arrived home i went to go pick my son who was like 18 months old at the
00:40:09.460
time i went to go pick him up from his grandparents where he was staying because it was such a last
00:40:14.100
minute thing we had to scramble for child care and he goes daddy i saw you on tv and i pooped
00:40:18.240
and so it was immediately like hey welcome back change my diaper you're not as cool as you think you
00:40:21.740
are no one cares all right don't believe the hype well uh david this has been a great conversation
00:40:26.180
where can people go to learn more about the book and your work so the best place is probably
00:40:30.180
davidberkus.com b-u-r-k-u-s is really actually let me correct that the best place is probably the
00:40:34.960
show notes for this episode because you actually run really awesome show notes i know you're going
00:40:37.880
to link it all and if you're listening you should go there brett wants you to go there so go there
00:40:41.140
first but i'm sure you'll link to davidberkus.com and from there you can check out the book find out
00:40:45.700
a bunch of other resources around this idea a bunch of other activities and exercises around
00:40:49.840
networking to try so it's all there davidberkus thank you for your time it's been a pleasure
00:40:53.680
thank you thank you so much for having me my guest day was davidberkus he's the author of the book
00:40:57.280
friend of a friend understanding the hidden networks that can transform your life and your
00:41:00.620
career you can find that on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere you also find out more information about
00:41:04.560
his work at davidberkus.com also check out our show notes at aom.is slash friend of a friend
00:41:09.740
where you can find links to resources where you delve deeper into this topic
00:41:12.480
well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice
00:41:28.720
make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com and if you enjoy
00:41:32.280
the podcast i've gotten something out of it i'd appreciate if you take one minute to give us a
00:41:35.680
review on itunes or stitcher helps out a lot as always thank you for your continued support until
00:41:39.460
next time this is brett mckay telling you to stay manly