March 2002 - NeXtworking: Elevating Your Network to the NeXt Level

By Anne Mazurowski, 3M & Michelle Sheire, CVC

Arlene Vernon, of Human Resource Xcellence, drew a full house to this special CVC professional development session on March 26. Attendees enthusiastically participated in the hands-on activities, which resulted in many new connections and at least one new friendship! You may even want to invite Arlene to sing and inspire at your upcoming event. For more information about Arlene, check out her Web site, http://www.hrxcellence.com

Arlene offered the following networking tips:

• Identify your unique networking objectives
• Define your network
• Create your networking action plan (see below)
• Live your plan
• Follow through
• Network to success

To develop your networking action plan, define your networking objectives -- to recruit volunteers, meet new friends, find a job, make business contacts, etc. Once your objective is defined think about people who can help you meet those objectives. Next think about the places you would meet those people. For example:

• Objective -- learn about best practices of employee volunteer management
• People -- Fellow CVC members
• Places -- CVC program meetings -- find contacts through the CVC roster
  

Then go live your plan and network to success!

Arlene also reminded attendees, that it is not the quantity of contacts that you make, but the quality. Networking is not about racing around collecting business cards, but finding common ground and connecting with an individual.

Thanks to Kay Baker of HealthEast and St. John's Hospital for hosting the luncheon.

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