LEADERSHIP
Building Beneficial Social
Networks
By George Mbithi
T
ry to talk with leaders and
managers about whether the
relationships they have are
important for their job. They most likely
will look at you as if you asked whether air
to breathe is important for human beings.
However, if you ask them about social
networks, one of two things are likely
to happen. Either they will think you
are asking them about the social media
strategy that their organization has, or
they will think that you are asking about
whether they use Facebook or LinkedIn!
In other words, a common preconception
these days is that when we hear social
networks, we immediately think of social
networking tools, like LinkedIn and
Facebook.
Even though these tools can be very useful
to manage a leader’s network, the term
social networks is used to refer to the set of
real-world relationships that professionals meaning that leaders rely on those
have, and how they come into play in their relationships with others for them to
actually make those inputs. That is why
day-to-day work life.
social networks are so important for all
As a professional, did you know that you leaders, because they have to tap into those
have the opportunity to systematically and resources of others.
deliberately create sets of relationships
with you or with your followers, your peers, Now, the first step to being mindful about
your professional networks is actually
subordinates, and your stakeholders?
to have a better understanding of what
One reason to be mindful about managing networks are like.
your social networks is that we all rely on
inputs from others, and that is why we rely Composition Of Networks
on relationships. The sets of professional
relationships that we have are a form of Networks are composed of nodes, the
capital that we use. This capital is different people in your network. You need to think
from financial capital, the money that you about what these nodes are like. Are your
have in your pocket or intellectual capital, entire contexts the same? Do they have the
the brainpower that you have between same sort of knowledge, the same sort of
your ears; it is a form of social capital.
access to resources, or are they diverse? This
knowledge helps you to tackle different
One thing that needs no debate is that problems, because you can get input from
leaders depend on input from others, people with different views, different
resources that they can bring to the table.
One reason to be mindful about managing your
social networks is that we all rely on inputs from
others, and that is why we rely on relationships.
The sets of professional relationships that we
have are a form of capital that we use. This capital
is dif ferent from financial capital, the money that
you have in your pocket or intellectual capital,
the brainpower that you have between your ears;
it is a form of social capital.
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The second element in a network you
want to understand is the ties, the kind of
relationships that you have. These include
the “Content” and the “Quality” of a tie.
The Content or type of relationship would
include things like friendship, advice,
communication, etc.; while the Quality
of tie includes how nodes are connected -
positive/negative, strong or weak, reciprocal
or non-reciprocal, simple or multiplex (co-
workers + drinking buddies) connections.
The last element is the structure of the