Welcome to Workshop 01!

The first topic in this workshop covers some valuable hints and tips that will help you get started.

All our meetings are conducted over Zoom with people from all parts of the world.

Zoom is rapidly becoming the new face-to-face, and as with any meeting, attention is the currency of relationship.

In other words, be present – multi-tasking & Zoom simply don’t mix!. Those you are interacting with know when you are only half present.

By all means, be relaxed, take notes and deal with the kids and other distractions. Everyone understands that. What doesn’t work is focusing on other projects and pretending you are paying attention.

Another great key to success is taking advantage of weekly onboarding sessions with your Connector. 

Although you may not initially realise it, your best chance of meeting relevant others in the CC is through your Connector.

During your onboarding sessions, your Connector will not only help you learn the system, but they will also build trust with you so that they can easily advocate you to others in their team and the wider CC.

It is vital to set up weekly meetings with your Connector to help you work through our Syllabus and, in the process, get to know you better.

Our workshops are designed to help you amplify what you learn as you progress through the Syllabus with your Connector.

Our Workshops have 2 formats.

In the first workshop of the month, we split everyone into small random groups to meet others in the CC and find out how to best advocate for one another.

For all workshops apart from the first of the month, you choose the workshop you want to attend.

Start with workshop number 1, and each week progress to the next workshop until you reach Workshop number 5.

Here is a brief overview of workshops 1 to 5.

• Workshop 1 is Welcome and Orientation
• Workshop 2 is simply titled “Why”. This workshop helps you better understand the value of building your network. Don’t skip this one. It’s pretty eye-opening, and you must know what your new team members will learn when they attend this workshop.
• Workshop 3 helps you think about who you know that may be interested in building their relationship based network as part of your team, using the CC system.
• Workshop 4 explains the process we have developed to help you quickly find great network-building partners.
• Workshop 5 explains how to find great network-building candidates on LinkedIn using the MyMostTrusted Chrome extension.

Once you have completed Workshop 5, we have Workshops 5a & 5b designed to help you overcome any obstacles and become more efficient and effective with the process.

Workshop 5a is appropriately named “Help”, and Workshop 5b is called “Let’s Play”.

You can hang around workshops 5a & 5b as much as you like to learn how to get better results and interact with others to learn great hints and tips or simply resolve any problems you may have.

Workshop 6 addresses one of the biggest challenges that most people face – becoming consistent. Yet, intuitively most people realise this is one of the biggest barriers to achieving the success they desire. 

Experiencing workshop six may help you or your team members become more consistent in network building as well as other activities that are important to them.

Workshop 7 is about onboarding new members into your team. There is a lot to cover, so we have broken this workshop into 4 sessions. Each week, the facilitator of this session will give a quick overview of the process and then focus on one of the sessions. The focus session for the week will be included in the name of this Zoom breakout session—for example, W07 dash Session 1.

Workshop 8 is designed to help you improve your team building and leadership skills. Again there is a lot to cover, so this workshop has 4 sessions. Each week the focus will be on a different session.

Most people struggle with how best to invest their time. 

Workshop 9 helps you work out how best to allocate the time you have set aside to build your network.

We all want to figure out how to be most productive. Workshop 10 covers tools and tips that will help you become more productive. This is invaluable. Just imagine if what you (or your team members) learned in this one workshop saved you time in all your other endeavours. It’s possible that this could save you more time than the entire time you invest in network-building.

Workshop 11 is called Professional and Personal Development.

This is one of our most popular workshops. 

Each week we have an expert in their field delivering inspiring information and hints and tips that will help you in a wide variety of areas.

OK, before moving forward, let’s just do a quick review of Workshop 01.

If you haven’t had a chance yet, it’s worth taking the time to complete the Workshop 01 Quiz. You can easily access it from the mindmap in Workshop 02.

In Workshop 01, we asked you to prepare for Workshop 02 by thinking about some personal End Goals you’d like to achieve and some of the Means goals that would enable you to progress toward those End goals.

Let’s look at some example End goals.

Create more memories with my loved ones and close friends
Strengthen relationships with those close to me
Have more adventurous experiences – especially around travel
Make a greater difference in the lives of others

Now, let’s look at some example Means goals.

Discover more ways to increase my recurring income while decreasing the time required to earn that income

How important is it for you to clarify your End goals & your Means goals?

It’s always good to pause and set aside a small amount of time to think about where you are currently at and what you’d like your future to look like.

It’s great to let your Connector know what’s important to you. One of the best ways to do this is to complete the “Scale of 1 to 10” exercise. This exercise will help you also think about what really inspires and motivates you. You can also access this through mindmap Topic 01.

Following are some examples of the “Scale of 1 to 10” exercise:

Travel & Adventure
Being involved with projects that are exciting because they make a difference
Remaining free of toxic work environments
Being around like-minded others who inspire you
Having more time and money to invest in creating memories, relationships & experiences
Making a difference in the lives of others
Becoming a better version of you – developing your skills, posture & attitude – more confidence, less procrastination, leadership, etc
Financial Freedom
Income security (because job security really doesn’t exist, does it?)
Belonging and contributing to a community you respect
Decreasing the hours required to earn increasing income
Earning the same income with 1 or 2 days less work per week
Earning more income
Having more free time available outside work
Freeing yourself from the feeling of always being too busy
Setting up a better future for yourself and your loved ones
Digging the well before you need the water

Also, if you haven’t had a chance yet, it’s definitely worth watching the following videos accessible via Topic 01

End Goals vs Means Goals by Vishen Lakliani
Multiply your time by Rory Vaden
It starts with Why by Simon Sinek

As you begin to gain more confidence in the CC process and the other people building their teams in the CC, it’s great to start thinking about others you know who may be interested in building their networks.

At the same time, use the CC syllabus and workshops to learn how to build your team by creating filtered lists of people you have not yet met on LinkedIn and invite them to connect with you.

Start by making a list of current and past work associates.
Put everyone you can think of on your list and keep adding to the list as the names pop into your head.
The reason for putting all names on your list is that one name reminds you of another.

Next, start making a shortlist of people that you think you’d like to have as part of your team and who you believe could be interested in building their networks.

Today, most people realise the value of having an extensive network of people they trust and who will advocate for them. Moreover, most people are beginning to realise that building their networks is no longer an optional extra. And since video-conferencing has become the default way of meeting face-to-face, network building has never been more accessible or powerful.

It’s important to realise:

1. The CC culture and system is precisely what many people are looking for, and you may be able to do them a huge favour by onboarding them into your team.

2. You only need a few like-minded people to come into your team. You don’t need to sell people on the CC. When you have discovery conversations with many people, you will discover a few who want to join your team and will be grateful for your help to build their team.

3. You are looking for people who are prepared to consistently devote a small amount of time to build their team of team building advocates.

4. You are looking for people who see the value in building their network rather than just networking with others in the CC.

5. You only need a few builders to create an exponentially growing team. When you have 5 builders in your team who onboard 5 builders, it’s easy to see how rapidly exponential growth can occur.

6. Take people through a Discovery Zoom and a CC Intro Zoom and then let them decide. Many people are looking for a different approach.
Many people want to build relationships rather than hunt for immediate transactions.
Many people will love and benefit from building their team within the CC ecosystem.

What’s the Process?

In this topic, we start by explaining the process of proactively meeting people who could be a great part of your team.

However, before reaching out to others on LinkedIn, it helps to understand the power of weak links.
And primarily, that the secret to great opportunities lies in the people you have not yet met.

We cover these concepts with a great article by Ian Leslie and a classic talk by professor Tanya Menon.

It’s vital to know that consistently making an effort to meet others on LinkedIn is so valuable.

It’s also important to know that you are potentially doing those that become part of your team a huge favour because you can help them meet so many others and help them build their networks.

We then cover the process of finding great people on LinkedIn and inviting them to meet you on Zoom for a “Discovery Call”.

Following your “Discovery” call, you may want to suggest your new contact attend a CC Intro session to meet others who are also building their networks using the tools & culture provided by the CC.

After the Intro call, they may want to become part of your team of team building advocates and register for a trial of our Network Building System.

MyMostTrusted is a chrome extension that has become an incredibly powerful and time-saving tool that helps you interact with LinkedIn. It is entirely safe to use because it only does what you would be doing manually. MyMostTrusted acts as your personal assistant.

However, the first question is: Why would I want to reach out to others on LinkedIn?

Let’s start by reinforcing that the primary purpose of the Connect Collaborative is to help you build your team of team-building advocates. In other words, our primary purpose is to facilitate network-building rather than networking so that you can have a large and increasing number of others advocating for you.

If you had a large, rapidly growing team advocating for you along with people in other CC teams also advocating for you, wouldn’t that solve most of your problems?

Once again, however, we emphasise that you are welcome to participate in the CC environment without building your network if you see other value in simply participating in a positive environment.

When you reach out to others on LinkedIn, will they believe you are reaching out to them because you want something from them? It’s a common belief that the main reason others reach out to you is that they hope they will do business with you directly.

So, a good question is, how can you clearly show others that the reason you are reaching out to them is so that you can build trust with them?

1. When you reach out to others, suggest meeting face-to-face on Zoom because you are impressed with their profile and may have some contacts that could be good for them. When they see this message, there is a very good chance that they will look at your profile to see what you are about and ensure that you are genuinely interested in helping them rather than selling them something.

2. Tweak the summary section of your LinkedIn profile so that the first paragraph has words to the effect; although you and I may not be able to do business together directly, it is highly likely that I will know others who will be good contacts for you. I’m always happy to help like-minded others who also have a pay-it-forward attitude.

When you use a message suggesting meeting face-to-face beyond LinkedIn, it shows you believe it will be a worthwhile investment of your time.

When your profile informs them that you are keen to help others meet relevant contacts because you believe in establishing trust, why wouldn’t they want to connect with you?

If you are currently using LinkedIn for customer outreach, will this strategy dilute what you are currently doing? Not necessarily. If you are dealing with this issue, speak with others in the CC who have solved this dilemma.

The value of consistency is often greatly underestimated.

You can accomplish anything you want in life if you have the right strategies and take the right actions consistently.

When you accept consistency is an important habit, you can use it to your advantage.

When you become consistent, you will improve how you feel and the results you create.

If you don’t develop consistency, the chances of achieving what you want, when you want, are very small!

People value consistency in their leaders.

Consistency removes uncertainty and leads to trust. Trust leads to influence.

Have you worked with people who were hot & cold?
One day they were one way & the next another.

Chances are you didn’t feel secure in their leadership because you didn’t know who they were.

Your team respects you when you are doing what you are asking them to do.
In other words, leading by example creates great duplication in your team.
Set the example you want your team to follow.
Duplicating consistency will result in an ever-expanding team of team building advocates.

How are you doing in this regard?

Your team pays much more attention to what you do than what you say.
It’s often said that actions speak louder than words – and it’s so true!

The purpose of workshop 7 – session 1, is to help you accomplish the following with a new team member:

1. To help you cast the vision to your new member that, although there is effort involved in building a team, they are building an asset. And, in fact, this asset is likely to be the greatest asset they ever build. In other words, it’s definitely worth the effort.

2. To help you explain to your new team member why building a team of team building advocates results in such a great asset.

3. To help you explain to your new team member the value of carefully selecting network building partners.

4. To help you explain to your new member the importance of the onboarding process. Onboarding goes beyond merely teaching new members about the system. It allows you to build trusted relationships, enable duplication and discover great leaders who will develop and lead their own teams.

5. To help you to show your new member how to register new members. These registration steps are well documented. However, make sure to help your new member register others if they are not yet confident of registering a new member on their own.

There is quite a bit to cover in Session 2, of Workshop 7..

You will be showing the attendees how to take their new members through the syllabus starting from the option in the Builders menu entitled, “Our Syllabus”.

From there you will be showing your attendees how to guide their new members through the network-building journey diagram; explaining the difference between the full syllabus, and the fast track, and going through the first steps of their fast track.

As you go through this, your attendees may realise they need to spend quite a bit of time onboarding their new team members. So, it is important that you explain to your workshop attendees that Workshop 7, Session 1, is all about the value of making the effort to onboard new members. In other words, the onboarding process will help them build great relationships with their new team members as well as creating a duplicating team of team building advocates.

Session 04 is the final session in Workshop 07.

In the first session of Workshop 07, we reinforce the value of building a network before outlining the work to be done to on-board new team members.

In the second session of this workshop, we show you how to take new members through the Syllabus, the fast track, and make a start on their “Homework”.

In the third session, we show you how to help your new members start conversations with people they already know, to determine if the concept of network building (in addition to networking) is important to them.

You’ll also learn how to help your new members book into CC Intro sessions and make the best use of them.

In Session 04 (this session), we cover how you can explain to your new members how they can make the best use of LinkedIn to find a few great network-building partners.

This involves creating filtered lists from both 1st and 2nd level connections using Boolean Searches, and showing new team members how to examine these lists further to determine which of them they want to meet on Zoom for a Discovery call.

Do you see yourself as a leader?

Workshop 08 is about building your team of team-building advocates.
In essence, this comes down to leadership.

So the first question is: Do you see yourself as a leader?

Before answering that question, it is important to understand what we mean by a leader.

We see a leader as someone who set’s the example by working towards Core-5 and, in the process, finds others who understand the value of building their networks, and helps their team members to develop their teams.

Note that Core-5 is simply where you have a team of at least 5 people, of which you have introduced a minimum of 3.

A good question to ask yourself is: why would I want to become such a leader and develop team-building advocates? As you have probably already realised, one of the main benefits of leading an exponentially growing team of team-building advocates is that leading such a team, produces far greater results than simple one-dimensional networking.

As a leader, you are looking for other leaders who want to build their teams. In the process, you will find others willing to introduce others into their networks but have yet to decide to step up to leadership. In essence, they act more like talent scouts than leaders.

Assuming you see the value of leading a team of team-building advocates, the first step is to lead by example by working towards Core-5.

An important question to ask here is:

Does it matter if you are not proactively working towards Core-5? Are you still a valued member of the CC if you currently have no intention of introducing others?

Absolutely!

There are many benefits of participating in the CC, apart from building a team of team-building advocates.

However, the primary purpose of the CC is to help members build their teams and facilitate advocacy between team members. As such, our syllabus and workshops focus on network building rather than networking.

This means those not yet engaged in building their networks may find some material and discussion, boring and repetitive.

If you are keen to build your network and lead a team, ask for your Connectors to guide you through the syllabus steps.

If your connector is unable to devote the time to lead you through the steps of the syllabus at the moment, ask them if they could recommend someone who may be able to help you.

Network building boils down to a 2 part process:

1. Achieve Core-5.
2. Help others in your team achieve Core-5.

Achieving Core-5 is not a major task.
You should be able to achieve Core-5 within several months of setting this goal.

Achieving Core-5 is easy because most people you meet who are keen to get ahead understand the value of having a trusted and expanding network of others who will advocate for them.

You may know such people already, and they may also know several such people.

Also, our syllabus and workshops will show you how to construct searches on LinkedIn, which are designed to find others who are also likely to want to build their networks.

It’s exciting how quickly your network can grow when you find a few people who go Core-5 and duplicate Core-5’s in their teams.

Grow your Team by inspiring your team members to achieve Core Levels!

Core-5 is easy to achieve.

You are recognised as a Core-5 when you have a team of 5 and a minimum of 3 of them have been introduced by you. As an example, if you introduced 3 people and 2 of those onboarded 1 person to their team, you would have a total of 5 in your team and be recognised as Core-5.

The people you personally introduce could be:

1. People you already know who would like your help to learn how to expand their networks via the CC.

2. People who are already connected with you on LinkedIn.

3. People you send a request to connect with on LinkedIn (or who send you a connection request)

4. People you meet in other networking forums.

Many people are increasingly seeing the value in expanding their networks with like-minded others. This means there’s an abundance of people who will be interested in checking out a fresh approach to networking.

Even when your main source of candidates is second-level connections on LinkedIn, according to our experience, you would only need to send out about 200 invitations to connect to introduce 5 people personally. This means it would only take you a maximum of 2-3 months to achieve Core-5.

The real key to growing a large exponentially growing team of team building advocates is to find others who are also keen to build their networks.

In essence, the first step is to show yourself and others how easy it is to go Core-5. All you need to do is to establish some small predictable daily habits.

The second step is to find others and help them do the same.

What are the benefits of achieving Core-5?

All the other Core members are informed when you achieve Core-5 and they will be keen to connect with you more closely and help you in any way they can.

Here are some powerful reasons to go Core-5:

1. Other achievers in the CC know you are willing to contribute to their success by building a team of team building advocates.

2. There is a good chance that you will be leading a growing team and therefore be able to help them meet many others. And they will be willing to reciprocate by introducing you and your team members to people they know.

3. You earn the trust and respect of other leaders in the CC.

4. In the process of building your team, you develop great leadership skills.

5. You are eligible to participate in the Core meetings where you learn more and meet other Core members.

6. An icon appears on your CC profile showing your Core level. That means others viewing your profile know you are a valuable contributor worth getting to know.

Core-5 is the building block that helps you easily achieve higher levels of Core.

Let’s look at Core-10 as an example.

Core-10 is where you have 10 people in your team of which you have personally introduced 5.

So, if you introduced 5 people and just one of them achieved Core-5, you would be Core-10.

The next step we recognise after Core-10 is Core-20.

Core-20 is where you have 20 people in your team of which you have personally introduced 5.

So, if you introduced 5 people and just one of them achieved Core-10 and another of your team achieved Core-5, you would be Core-20.

The next and final Core level we recognise is Core-50

To be recognised as Core-50, you must have at least 50 people in your team and have 4 teams with a minimum of 10 in each.

A team of 50 advocating for you and others in your team is a very powerful asset. And that is particularly your team of team building advocates continues to grow.

A team of 50 may sound like a long way off. However, when you realise that it only takes 4 leaders with a team of 10, it seems more doable doesn’t it?

As you can see the real key is to find leaders who will take responsibility for developing their own teams.
You are then in the happy position of being edified by those leaders to their team members because you have achieved Core-50.

Core-50 gives you the power to help your leaders – their team members will listen to you because they can see you clearly know how to build a team of team building advocates.

Also by the time you reach Core-50, you will then have many great stories to tell about the results that you have achieved (and seen others achieve).

The real key to building your team is to find others who will form consistent daily habits of reaching out to others on LinkedIn and set goals for achieving the next Core level.

Setting goals is very powerful. A goal is really a number to be achieved by a date.

For example, I’ll be Core-5 by the 30th of June (2 months from now).

A good question to ask is: What’s the difference between working with a goal and working without a goal?

The answer is results.

For example, when you set a goal to be Core-5 say 2 months from now, apart from performing consistent daily LinkedIn outreach, you start to think of others you already know that could be interested in building their networks and who you’d like to have as part of your team.

In setting a goal to achieve Core-5, it’s essential to be selective. The last thing you want is to have the wrong person as part of your team.

You are looking for people who see the value of building their network instead of networking. There is a big difference between building a network and networking. You are looking for people who understand that difference and are excited about that difference.

You are also looking for people that you believe will be a good fit for your team and with whom you look forward to developing a trusted relationship.

The more great candidates you speak with, the more options you have to find great partners for your team. The sooner you find others that are committed to building their networks, the sooner you reach higher levels of Core.

When you onboard someone, they have a 30-day free trial to check everything out. However, prior to onboarding, you should confirm that your potential new team member is willing to commit to building their network. In particular that they are prepared to put aside a small amount of time each day for network-building activities.

Asking the 5 Golden Questions is an ideal way of determining if it’s worth investing time with a candidate. That way you won’t waste your time onboarding someone who is merely curious to take a look at what we do in the CC.

Here are the 5 Golden Questions:

1. Do you feel you would be more successful (both as an individual and as a business) if you built a strong network?

2. Do you have an interest in building your network?

3. Would you be prepared to set aside some time each week to learn the skills of building a team of team building advocates on the one hand, and leveraging commercial value from your network on the other?

4. Would you be prepared to dedicate some time each week to put what you have learned into practice by, proactively reaching out to those you have not yet met via Social Media?

5. Are you prepared to invest some time each week interacting with, and advocating for, others?

It’s also important to be clear with your candidates that you are not selling them anything. You only want people on board that want to be on board. They have 30 days to verify that your team and the CC is a good fit for them. After that, they can easily cancel their subscription at any time. So, really, it’s a no brainer for someone who wants to build their network to give it a try.

What holds your team members back, and what can you do about it?

A well-known leadership principle is that you should spend roughly 80% of your time with 20% of your team.

When you build a team of team building advocates, you are looking to find and develop leaders who will grow their teams. This means you should attempt to identify those who are willing (and ideally also capable) and invest time encouraging, coaching and equipping them.

Having regular accountability and coaching sessions with people in your team who are willing to take consistent action makes a huge difference.

In general, most people appreciate someone holding them accountable for doing what they know they should.

It’s a bit like the difference between relying on your own motivation to go to the gym. Many people find it initially more effective to engage a personal trainer. When you are paying money and have a regular session with a professional, it’s more likely that you will turn up.

Establishing consistent mini-habits is one of the biggest keys to achieving any goal. Habits take deliberate action to develop. However, after a couple of months, the habit has become so ingrained, it has become much easier to stick with.

In general, most of us struggle with how to allocate our time best. This becomes even more of a challenge when we add deliberate network-building to an already busy schedule.

So, it is highly beneficial to evaluate where and how we invest our time. There are so many great helpful talks that have been delivered on the subject of time allocation, and it is worth continually encouraging your team members to listen to such great resources.

For the moment, it’s worth revisiting the Important versus the Urgent in terms of allocating time to network building.

Building a network means investing time in developing an asset that will predictably yield great results in the longer term. Of course, building a network may also deliver results in the short term. However, this is more likely good luck than good management.

It is very easy to fall into “I will when” thinking. I’ll get around to building my network when I overcome my latest crisis. The problem with this thinking is that there is always a looming crisis, isn’t there?

The problem with not establishing mini-habits to build long-term assets is that you never break out of the vicious cycle of being stressed by the ever-present things that you feel must be urgently done.

Let’s take a look at some of the things that your team members are likely to struggle with and that you, as their leader, may be able to help them with.

1. Has your team member has clarified their end goals?

Many people start businesses that either fail or discover that their business owns them rather than the other way around.

Many people “go networking” as a way of generating more leads or as a way of increasing their business.

Do these people consider what will be the result if this strategy is highly successful?
The elation associated with a huge increase in business may be short-lived.

Will this put them in the position they would really like to be in?

Many people would answer that question by saying that’s just over-thinking it. In other words, let’s just bite off as much as we can chew and worry about how we deal with it later.

Instead of building a network to support a business, what if you created a network to support the life you truly desire?

In other words, what if you said: I’m going to build a network to support how I want to live rather than building a network to make a particular business successful.

So, let’s start with my End goals. How do I want to live? Is it important for me to have increasing amounts of secure income with decreasing amounts of time required to earn that income? What would that allow me to do? Should I be building a network to support a means goal or my end goals?

If you detect that your team member has not clarified the End goals that building their network may make possible for them, there are some great resources you can suggest they listen to, read or watch.

2. Is your team member prioritising pleasing experiences over pleasing results?

Time flies when you are having a great time, doesn’t it?

Conversely, time drags when you are engaged in boring activities, doesn’t it?

What if a minimal amount of time spent on boring activities produces far greater results than a much larger amount of time spent on pleasing activities?

It’s worth helping your team members identify how much of their time they are spending where and which activities are likely to contribute most to their highly desired end goals.

In particular, it often helps to help your team member balance the amount of time they are spending on networking versus the amount of time they are spending on network building.

Investing time in lively one-on-one Zooms can be very inspiring and can really help build valuable, trusted relationships.

However, searching on LinkedIn for those who could become great network builders, thus multiplying your time, could be a much less immediately inspiring activity.

Help your team members determine if where they are currently spending their time is likely to be the best use of their time to achieve their most strongly desired end goals.

3. Does your team member habitually prioritise doing urgent tasks before important but less urgent tasks

There has been some excellent research done that shows that if you deliberately set aside time for important activities, you will complete more of the urgent tasks on your list than you will if you start work on all the things in your inbox that you know have to be done.

In other words, you can get more done in your day, depending on the order in which you do things.

Those of you familiar with the Rock-Sand-Water experiment know, that this experiment was set up to visually demonstrate just how important it is to structure the order in which you do things in your day.

4. Does your team member understand the difference between intensity and consistency?

Have you noticed how many people are briefly excited about a new idea?

For example, we have all seen people get excited about a “New Year’s” resolution and yet not stick with it.

There are many reasons for this. One of them is that they put a massive (intense) effort in at the beginning only to discover that they cannot sustain that level of activity.

Encourage team members you are coaching not to fall into this trap.

The answer is to achieving success in anything is forming consistent, sustainable mini-habits. There are some brilliant resources on this subject. For example, Mini-Habits by Stephen Guise, the Slight Edge by Jeff Olsen and Intensity vs Consistency by Simon Sinek.

5. Is your team member prone to be distracted by “shiny new objects”

Have you noticed that great ideas are not in short supply?

However, how many genuinely outstanding ideas have you seen fail?
Equally, how many pretty mediocre ideas have you seen succeed?
What’s the difference?

In general, it’s consistent, persistent and often tedious habits that are essential to success.

Often, team members will tell you about a shiny new object that they are excited about.

If they are genuinely asking for your opinion about this shiny new object, give them some perspective by asking questions that may lead them to think carefully about how much time they will be devoting to this shiny new object.

In particular, ask where will the time come from to invest in this new thing. Will it distract from the established habits that will predictably yield results?

Are they bored with the consistent activities they are currently engaged with, hoping something new and exciting will come along?

Do they lack patience?

6. Is your team member constantly expressing feelings of being overwhelmed?

Have you met people who live their life constantly saying: I’m too busy. Some even seem to wear “being too busy” as a badge of honour.

The real question is: when does your team member see this changing?

What steps are they taking to set up the future they’d prefer? A future where they are not constantly struggling for time.

Are they the only ones that have a lot on their plates?

What can they take off their plate to focus more time on setting up the future they truly desire?

Sometimes, your team member needs to just press the “pause button” and re-think the ideal future they desire and what they could do to progress towards that future.

7. Is your team member a victim of “I will when”

Some of your team members will believe that when they get over their current crisis, they will be able to commit to building their networks. They are looking forward to it and, in due course, start putting in the effort.

However, it’s not long before the next crisis emerges in their life, and they once again need to put network building (along with several other important activities in their life) on hold while they deal with the crisis at hand.

Every time they pick up network-building again, it takes time to get their head around the process and build momentum.

They fail to understand that everyone has the same crises – some just continue to take consistent action despite the current crisis. In general, they manage to achieve this because they have established consistent mini-habits.

Like any habit, such as cleaning one’s teeth, a small enough habit is something that can be done while dealing with the crisis at hand.

8. Does your team member realise that it’s not what happens to them that counts. Instead, it’s how they choose to react to what happens to them?

Achieving your ultimate end goals depends mainly on how you view and react to what happens to you.

People often react to the same event in very different ways.

Two people go through the same event (a minor traffic accident, perhaps).

One emerges from his vehicle wielding an iron bar, frothing at the mouth, screaming obscenities and threatening violence. At the same time, the other calmly searches for a pen and paper to exchange insurance details.

The psycho gets arrested for attempted assault and battery with a weapon, while Mr Calm drives home with a small scratch on his car, kisses his wife and kids and carries on with his happy life.

In another example, one person receives a considerable amount of additional business due to their network-building activities and decides they must stop network building so they can absorb all this extra work.

Another person who has also received considerable additional business due to their network-building activities decides that network-building is the goose that lays the golden egg.

So, they decide that they will consistently maintain their network-building activities despite having temporarily won additional business.

The same event results in entirely different responses and completely predictable future consequences.

9. Do you and your team members truly understand the power that habits can have to solve many problems?

You are not a counsellor or psychotherapist and even if you were, if you want to build an extensive network, in general, your time is not best invested in providing counselling services to your team members.

Rather than trying to examine and solve particular problems, learn how to become effective at persuading your team (individually and in team meetings) to form valuable network-building mini-habits.

In particular, one not-negotiable mini-habit should be listening to CC playlists. These playlists will help overcome many of the issues we have been discussing in this podcast episode.

It will save you a great deal of time and help create more energised, enthusiastic, hopeful, personally developed team members if you can persuade them to listen to our Podcasts.

In other words, let the Podcasts do the heavy lifting for you!

Being aware of some of the common things holding your team members back means you may be able to help them with resources.

Also, it’s worth deciding to become good at asking great questions that may help your team members become more self-aware and inspired to find better solutions.

How can you become a more effective leader?

It has been said that everything rises and falls on leadership.

When you lead an effective team of team-building advocates, you can accomplish incredible results.

However, as there is effort involved in leading a team, it’s essential that you see the value of building what could be your greatest asset.

Controlling your own emotions and dynamically changing how much time you invest with whom can be challenging.

Following are some things that may help you on your leadership journey:

1. Finding leaders who will follow your example can dramatically reduce your workload.

Working with great leaders in your team is like pushing a hot knife through butter. Likewise, working with people that are not yet ready to lead is like trying to jackhammer through granite.

2. Keep reminding yourself that you are in a leadership search and development process and that you only need a very few leaders to create a huge, influential, growing team.

For example, when you find a leader in 5 different teams, it’s easy to see those leaders finding other leaders who will decide to build their teams with or without you. You can add value to such leaders and their teams, but you don’t have to do it for them.

Each leader can easily find 5 other leaders. So, it is easy to visualise each leader having 100 team members, of which only 20% are leaders or potential leaders. This just follows the well known 80/20 rule.

When you find 5 leaders who develop a team of 100, you will have created a team of 500.

Many people that become part of your team will see the value of leading a team of team-building advocates. However, it can be frustrating when such people don’t do what they genuinely believe they should.

However, it helps to know that most people become briefly excited about new things.

We only need to look at how many people stick with their New Year’s resolutions to understand that this is just normal human behaviour.

It really helps when you know that you only need a few leaders in each team to create massive growth and results. You will find some people who are ready to go now and some that will be ready to go later.

3. You can’t push spaghetti. But you can pull it. People are the same.

It pays to immerse people in the CC environment and process. In particular, do everything you can to get them listening to the podcasts.

When people listen to podcasts, in general, you will find they are much easier to work with.

Let the system do the heavy lifting for you. It really helps when you can have your team engaged in workshops where they will benefit by hearing from different facilitators, learning from the Quizzes and interacting with other facilitators.

4. Make sure you use the onboarding process well

A weekly onboarding session during which you take a new team member through the steps of the syllabus works incredibly well.

This onboarding session is your chance to build a relationship while using the system to help explain important concepts and details to your new team member. When the information comes from the system and your team members understand that this will help them onboard others, they are generally more willing to follow the process.

As you build the relationship with your team members through the onboarding process, ask them to think of others they already know who may also be interested in building their network.

You can fast-track finding the leaders you seek by encouraging your team members to make a list of the people they know who may be interested in building their networks.

5. Those that are not ready for leadership can introduce you to others that are

You can personally find leaders in various ways – such as by consistently reaching out to others on LinkedIn.

However, the process of finding leaders is far more leveraged when others introduce you to people they know.

It is often a pleasant surprise to discover how many people will introduce people they believe will be good candidates to you. Often they are right. The people they introduce are looking for exactly what you and the CC system can provide.

It is essential to understand that those team members who may be not yet ready to step up to higher commitment levels know others who may be more prepared to take leadership.

6. Momentum is your friend

Initially, when you are the only person onboarding people to your team, it will grow very slowly.

However, let’s say you find just one other person who works at the same pace as you. Now you have literally doubled the rate at which your team can grow.

When your team is multiplying, it creates excitement and provides an example for others to follow. It creates an expectation that team-building is not difficult.

7. Work to create a generally positive atmosphere in your team and as much team member engagement as possible

Although you may spend most of your time looking for and developing leaders, it is vital to recognise the contribution made by all team members.

Everyone loves to belong to an encouraging, positive, uplifting team.

Encourage Good News Stories that relate to advocacy as well as network building.

Team meetings are a great way to keep everyone together and encourage the less active network builders in your team.

8. Continually work on your own personal development

In general, the more self-aware you become, the greater the leader you become.

The more great podcasts you listen to, the more you learn and are inspired. When you listen to podcasts, you are more likely to excitedly recommend those podcasts to your team members, knowing how much it will benefit them.

In particular, it’s great to work on your people skills.

Knowing your own personality type and how others perceive you allows you to become more effective in relating to others.

Knowing how to influence others for their benefit is very exciting.

Helping others to create positive habits and encouraging them on their personal development journey is also very exciting.

Knowing you can make a difference in the lives of your team members is very fulfilling.

It’s easy to get distracted, become impatient or frustrated. Learning emotional control makes a huge difference to your results and happiness – especially in the longer term.

9. Become more strategic, personally organised and productive.

We all struggle with how best to invest our time.

Among other things, making better use of our time comes down to being more effective and more efficient.

First, let’s think about increased personal effectiveness. Where will your time be most effectively invested?

Sometimes, you can spend a long-time in an enjoyable conversation. But what was the outcome of that conversation? Could you have ended the conversation sooner and still had the same result? Instead, could you have allocated some of that time to be spent with family and loved ones?

On the other hand, you may choose to block time out in your calendar to develop a mini-habit that you have strategically determined will produce the predictable results you seek. For example, this could be reaching out to a filtered list of others on LinkedIn.

Being more effective mostly comes down to deliberately and strategically spending time on activities or building relationships to produce more of the results you want.

What if you could save several hours per day simply by becoming more efficient?

Let’s look at the simple task of booking a time for a Zoom with those that you have contacted. If you attempt to accomplish this manually, it takes a lot of time and energy to find a time that works for you, and the person you are attempting to book a time with.

Booking systems like Calendly make this process so easy. You simply send the other person a link to book one of the free times in your calendar that works for them.

One of the significant advantages of tools like Calendly is that you can block time out for other activities.

Also, when using a booking system, you can pre-set an expectation for the length of the meeting. For example, the person you are Zooming with may only be able to choose a 15-minute time slot.

Such booking systems have many other great features, such as the ability to send SMS reminders and the ability for your guests to reschedule on their own. This reduces your chances of no-shows.

Let’s look at another example. Let’s say you are spending a great deal of time typing the same or similar messages to those you are reaching out to on platforms like LinkedIn.

You can save an enormous amount of time, thinking up creative responses, typing those responses and correcting typos when using simple and powerful tools such a TextBlaze.

We cover some great recommended tools in subsequent workshops.

If you find yourself complaining about a lack of time, think about:

1. How am I currently investing my time? Could I invest my time better to achieve the results I am looking for?
2. What if I could save significant amounts of time by investing a small amount of time in learning about and making habitual use of some tremendous time-saving productivity tools?
3. How can I multiply my time as well as doing a better job of how I invest my personal time?

Personal time allocation is of vital interest to most busy people. That’s why we have set up and continue to add to a Podcast of great talks that will help you and your team members gain perspective on how best to allocate and protect your time.

You can easily access that Podcast from the builder’s menu. Look for a Podcast title on the Builders menu called: “How to best allocate your time”.

Your highest priority – Networking or Network Building?

If, you have decided that building your network is important, it makes sense to decide how much time you will devote to your network building activities.

We have observed that people tend to invest more time building their networks as they see the value of building a team of team building advocates.

It is interesting that before COVID, networking activities tended to be relatively limited and inefficient. People often spent significant amounts of time travelling to local networking events. Then the people they were able to network with were confined to other local attendees.

Yet, even before COVID, many people recognised the importance of networking and were, therefore, prepared to invest significantly more time in networking than they need to today, when our networking meetings are held by Zoom.

After deciding how much time you are going to invest in building your network, it is then necessary to decide how best to allocate your time over the following possible activities:

Network Building
Networking
Continual Learning

The Connect Collaborative exists to help people build their teams of team building advocates. This is what we mean by network building.

In other words, we suggest adding people to your network with a view to empowering, them, to add people to their networks.

Personally advocating for others is powerful and builds trust.

However, building a team of team building advocates is infinitely more powerful than merely increasing your personal advocacy for trusted others. It’s far better to have many others in addition to you practising advocacy.

So, we believe you will achieve the greatest results by setting aside a consistent amount of time each day, to expand your business relationships, to see if they could become network building partners in your team.

We also believe that you should set aside time to help your team members onboard others and work through our syllabus.

There is ample opportunity to network with others in the Connect Collaborative. This naturally happens as a consequence of meeting others in the small break-out groups conducted by the CC. However, it also occurs as others want to set up meetings with you to learn more about what you do and how they may help you.

It’s almost automatic to set aside time for networking! Networking will occur simply by attending CC Zooms. After that, networking will take care of itself.

This means you need to be very deliberate about forming daily network building habits. The same applies to advocacy. When you see the opportunity to valuably advocate for someone in your team or another member of the CC, be deliberate about making it happen!

When you are so busy attending meetings, reaching out to others you have not yet met on LinkedIn, helping your new members onboard their new team members, advocating for others, and so on, it is easy for continual learning to take a backseat. However, to ignore the power of learning provided by the CC would be a big mistake. Learning is vital. Knowledge can save you a lot of time and money and can help you earn more of the right type of income.

As with all of us, you only have a limited amount of time. So you need to become deliberate about where you invest your time.

Following are examples of how you may be able to use your network building and learning time more effectively:

When you onboard a new team member, don’t just see it as an exercise of equipping them by taking them through the syllabus. Realise that at the same time, you are also building a relationship with them and thinking about how you may be able to advocate for them to others.
When you learn to do better Boolean searches and use tools such as MyMostTrusted, you become more effective and efficient with your LinkedIn outreach.
You can listen to podcasts while doing other activities (such as driving, exercising or rocking the baby).
You can learn how to limit the time you spend in Zoom conversations by careful scheduling.

In summary, our message is that Network Building is your highest priority. You need to make time for your network building activities deliberately. Getting to know and advocate for others will typically automatically occur as a consequence of attending CC Zoom meetings. As such, these activities do not require as much deliberate focus as network building and continual learning.

The secret to allocating time to network building and continual learning is to determine how much time you plan to invest in these activities, then, deliberately focusing on them until they become automatic habits.

Overview of tools & Tips + Your Questions

This is the final workshop before you go into the leadership and personal development series.

Although we encourage you to repeat any of these workshops to get a refresher, now is an excellent time to ask any questions you may have about anything that has been covered in the workshops so far.

Typically, we learn something that we are not yet ready to put into practice as we progress. It, therefore, makes sense to revisit the relevant workshop(s), ask your connector or attend fast-track Zoom sessions to gain greater clarity.

This session covers additional tools and tips to save time. Although these tips and tools will typically help you in many aspects of your daily activities, they are specifically designed to help you with your consistent network-building activities.

We believe that consistent activity is critical for success in most endeavours.

So, now is an excellent time to revisit how you are going with your consistency.

Have you managed to establish consistent mini-habits?

Forming consistent mini-habits is something that most people know they need to do, yet they struggle with it. So, if you have had some breakthroughs that you feel others may benefit from, please feel free to volunteer them during this or other workshops.