Common Mistakes

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From the course by University of Pennsylvania

Influence

113 ratings

University of Pennsylvania

Influence

113 ratings

Course 4 of 4 in the Specialization Achieving Personal and Professional Success

What does it mean to be influential? How does one persuade others to pursue a unified goal? How does one leverage power? In this course, you’ll learn how to develop influence and to become more effective in achieving your organizational goals. Professor Cade Massey of the Wharton School has designed this course to help you understand the framework of power and influence and the dynamics of effective networks, and shows you how to develop your skills of persuasion and leverage. By the end of this course, you’ll know your own strengths and how to use them to get what you need, how to gain power and influence, and how to leverage relationships and alliances to achieve your goals in both business and in life.

From the lesson

Module 2

In this module, you’ll examine social networks and relationships, and learn how they can help you accomplish your organizational goals. You’ll be able to differentiate between dense and disconnected networks, and weigh the benefits and costs of diversification within your networks. Then you’ll learn about both successful strategies and common pitfalls in cultivating a network, and see how authentic generosity will build reciprocity in your networks and vice versa. You’ll also explore coalitions and how alliances between parties with different perspectives can be very effective and efficient in achieving mutual goals. By the end of this module, you’ll learn effective strategies for networking, coalition-building, and leveraging, and will be able to form strong alliances and relationships both inside and outside your organization.

Module Introduction- Relationships1:10

Seating Chart Exercise3:56

Resource Dependence and Social Capital3:29

Network Structure15:06

Applications9:15

Cultivating Networks11:27

Organizational Perspective5:15

Common Mistakes3:07

Closing Thoughts on Social Networks2:52

Introduction to Coalitions4:08

Types of Coalitions11:58

Coalition Examples3:14

Prescriptions for Coalitions8:52

Case: Washington Square6:28

Meet the Instructors

Cade Massey
Practice Professor
The Wharton School

In this lecture, we'll talk about a few common mistakes that people make as they

build a network and cultivate relationships.

The first and probably most important is

the mistake of waiting to network until you have an objective.

The ideas we've been talking about today are much more about a way of life.

It is a means rather than an end.

You should think in terms of social capital.

You should think about your informal networks as social capital you build and

cultivate, just as you might build your human capital.

Your network is something you bring to any situation, just like your education and

it's something you should grow in and of for itself incrementally over time.

Second common mistake, focusing on networking up.

It's appealing, alluring even, to try to get to know those who're all

ready in positions of power but there are few problems with this.

One, there's more competition, it's a scarce resource and the folks in those

positions of power have even less time to give then those at lower levels.

It also puts an undue focus on formal hierarchy and

you forget if you're only looking at those in positions of power,

you forget the informal sources of power as well.

Finally, a very practical consideration is one of the greatest sources of your

network is going to be who you know now and how they evolve over time.

The folks you were going to school with, the folks you're starting organizations

with, will move into positions of influence over time.

If you've neglected them along the way, then you won't have those networks

when they're actually in the positions where they can really make a difference.

Third common mistake,

thinking that your formal position is unrelated to the informal network.

We've spent so much time talking about informal network,

we don't want to neglect that there are relationship consequences,

network consequences, that come along with your formal position.

The job itself can drive the network, in fact, it's going to put you in proximity,

it's going to give you regular interaction with a distinct set of people.

It's an important way to think about that job, actually.

What is the informal network that's going to be impaired or

facilitated by the formal position?

It also takes a little bit of pressure off of the need to do the informal networking,

because you know that some of it's going to come from the formal side.

Finally, some folks make the mistake of thinking of a tie as an endpoint, they

want to get to know a person, they neglect the network that, that person sits.

Everybody you meet is embedded in their own network.

Hopefully, one of the things you carry away from this discussion is

how everybody is influenced and everybody brings a resource and

everybody brings the constraints of their networks.

When you're getting to know people, it's not just that person,

you're getting to know the social context that they live and work in.

It helps better understand them, it also helps you better understand

opportunities that might exist, also the constraints that exist.

One caveat here is the danger of

treating people as a means to get to their network, though.

You're on thin ice, in many ways,

when you start thinking about people as a means to your end.

Even though we want you to think about them in the context of their network,

we don't want you to think about them only because of their network.

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