#420 Leadership, Networking, Recruiting – Opportunities, Limitations and Risks - article by Niels Brabandt
Leadership, Networking, Recruiting – Opportunities, Limitations and Risks
an article by Niels Brabandt
Leadership is omnipresent.
Leadership shapes the image of your organisation. When people ask what you think of your employer, you don't start talking about the nice canteen or the lovely view. You talk about organisational culture, leadership behaviour and colleagues. If the sentence begins with 'Great colleagues, but...', then everyone knows that nothing good will follow from this point onwards. Leadership has outreach, both online and offline. Focus on people, the sustainability of your network and the quality of leadership – these factors significantly influence the success of your recruiting.
How can you optimally position your organisation and yourself?
Networking
Networks are based on relationships of trust, known as bidirectional-transitive relationships of trust. A practical example: You want to contact Ms. Müller for sales, recruiting or to gain access to her resources. Unfortunately, you don't know Ms. Müller at all. However, you know Ms. Helpalot. You have known Ms. Helpalot for years. You worked together before your professional paths diverged. You, therefore, have a mutual relationship of trust, known as a bidirectional relationship of trust. Ms. Hilfgerne now works with Ms. Müller, and the two have got on excellently for years, so there is also a bidirectional relationship of trust here. If you can convince Ms. Hilgerne to put you in touch with Ms. Müller, Ms. Müller will trust you more from the outset because you were introduced by someone she knows. This moment is the transition of trust from which you benefit. This moment demonstrates how bidirectional-transitive trust relationships are created. These are important from an operational, tactical and strategic point of view, so they must always be part of your work.
Risks
Risks arise when you grant people access to your network not based on quality, competence, skills or experience but through so-called "old-boy networks", cronyism or nepotism. Whether it is because someone was born into a family that is important to you, because someone has gained power through birth privileges, or because someone asks for a favour. If you grant such favours, that person is a ticking time bomb in your network. You grant a favour, presumably expecting to receive one in return later. This game of give and take ends when the person expects a favour from you that you cannot grant, often because you think that the consequences for you would be too severe. This moment is where the relationship of trust breaks down, frequently affecting other contacts and, in some cases, leading to open retaliation and damage to reputation. The damage here is severe and can only be repaired with great effort. A perfect example of such a situation is the current escalation between Donald Trump and Elon Musk.
Your relationships of trust, your network and your contacts are valuable for leadership, recruiting and developing a positive image of the organisation, both internally and externally. Do not succumb to the temptation to include people unsuitable for tasks in your circle of contacts, no matter how tempting the short-term benefits may seem.
Recruiting
Your positive leadership image requires proactive communication. It is excellent, if you created a fantastic culture and high internal satisfaction. However, if no one knows about this, you will not have any advantages in recruiting. Actively encourage people to post positive reviews on Glassdoor and Kununu. Never provide text modules or force people to write about aspects they would not have mentioned themselves. Readers on these websites immediately notice which reviews are honest and which have been artificially generated using marketing language. Also, offer a bonus when people make referrals, and positions can be filled permanently, i.e. after the probationary period. Note: low bonuses for doing so have the opposite of the desired effect. Employees know what costs are involved in recruiting, and offering a significant portion of this amount as a bonus is not only common practice but absolutely necessary.
When filling positions, suitability, qualifications, and experience must always precede arbitrary factors such as cronyism, favours or nepotism. Employees quickly notice when recruitment is unfair, and people are appointed to positions for which they are unsuitable. If this happens in your company, the entire management team loses credibility. Knowledge, experience, and qualifications – these three aspects must be considered and actively communicated when a decision has been made. To put it bluntly, employees have a right to know why person A was chosen over person B.
When it comes to implementation, the key is focus, focus, focus. Everyday life and omnipresent stress can quickly lead to a situation where neither a network is strategically and purposefully established and maintained, nor is work done on organisational culture or leadership quality. The excuse is that there is always no time for this. Such excuses cost the organisation a lot of money, a lot of talent and the ability to attract talent in the future. It is, therefore, essential for you to implement a proactive approach to the matter immediately.
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More on this topic in this week's podcast: Videocast / Apple Podcasts / Spotify
For the videocast’s and podcast’s transcript, read below this article.
Is excellent leadership important to you?
Let's have a chat: NB@NB-Networks.com
Contact: Niels Brabandt on LinkedIn
Website: www.NB-Networks.biz
Niels Brabandt is an expert in sustainable leadership with more than 20 years of experience in practice and science.
Niels Brabandt: Professional Training, Speaking, Coaching, Consulting, Mentoring, Project & Interim Management. Event host, MC, moderator.
Podcast Transcript
Niels Brabandt
Do you think your network is important? Most people will now say, yeah, of course my network is important. What do you think? And that's exactly what we're going to talk about today. Why do you see some organisations, some leaders, some people where networking works so well and networking is a crucial part of my business as well. However, why do so many fail delivering on the promise of network and also what are the opportunities and what are the risks of networking? When you now say there are risks of networking, what kind of risk you will see in a minute.
So when we talk about networking, very important here is that I will give examples as usual and all of these examples are based on quotes I do. So they're all fully protected with the Fair and Free Use act, which I'm going to refer to fair dealing here in the uk. So that's about the disclaimer. When we now talk about leading, networking and recruiting. First, leadership goes a long way as I give you a very simple example. And that's why leadership stays always at number one no matter what you do. When you, for example, talk to someone who you know they work for Company X and you want to work for Company X, so they say, hey, do you have any job openings?
And they say yeah, we do, it's a good fit. What about this one? You say oh yeah, great, that's exactly what I'm looking for. And then you say, so how is it working for you? People don't say oh yeah, we have this very modern office with these parking spaces and we know that's not what they say either. They say it's a really great corporate culture. Our leaders walk the talk, they are always very down to earth, they are very approachable, etc.
Or they say, well I can tell you we have an amazing team, great people and we all know how this phrase then goes on. We have an amazing team, great people, but you know, the leaders are just, you simply have to endure what they do, you know, it's not great, but they're there so we can't get rid of them. And that's exactly the problem leadership has. The so called omnipresence. Omnipresent means you can see it absolutely anywhere. There's not a single area of the business where leadership does not have an impact. And when you say your leadership isn't great, you must be aware of the fact that the people focus you want to have or pretend to have is simply not there.
And that's how it ends very quickly, extremely mediocre on either Kununu, which is the German version for rating employers or glassdoor.com, which is the more English speaking version of it. The people focus is what you need to deliver first and that is where everything starts. Because leadership has the highest amount of outreach. And when you now say, how can I get outreach? How can I get outreach to get access to certain resources, access to certain people, access to certain job openings, access to certain areas of expertise, that is where the networking kicks in. So when we talk about networking and networking, by the way, often people say, look, I'm more of an introvert. This is not for me.
I, I am born and bred northern German. Believe me, when I moved to the UK and they told me about networking, entering a room of complete strangers and then talk to them is as far out of my comfort zone as it could possibly be. So it is very obvious that I am not a born and bred, I'm not a natural networker, not at all. I learned networking and networking is crucially important because networking gives you trust. We talk about the so called bilateral transitive trusts and some people might now say, what exactly? Bilateral transitive trust. And when you now say buy something, can you explain?
Yeah, of course, of course I'm going to explain that. So when you, for example, let's say you are person X and you want to approach Mrs. Miller, the problem is Mrs. Miller doesn't know you. So of course you can now do cold calling. And there's of course scientific evidence that cold calling works to a certain extent. However, when you want to approach Mrs.
Miller to for example, sell a product or you want to get in touch for a job opening and you do not know Mrs. Miller, you will quickly end up with the assistant's assistant. Assistant say yeah, send a slide deck, send an email, leave a message, give me your business card. Thank you. I get back to you and as you know, they never do. So you need to build this trust. The question is, how do you do that?
And let's say you are person X and you want to approach Mrs. Miller for a job opening or you need some of her expertise, you need her as a resource or you want to sell a product to her. And now you know, okay, direct way to Mrs. Miller not really there.
But wait, wait, wait. I know this person. Mrs. Helpful. Mrs. Helpful, I met on this convention. We know each other for years.
We worked back in the days at uni together and at our first employer after uni, we were still in touch. I know that Mrs.
Helpful knows Mrs. Miller and they like each other and they trust each other and that is where the bilateral bidirectional, sorry, bi directional, the bi directional trust comes in. You have a bi directional trust with Mrs. Helpful. You have no connection to Mrs. Miller. The good thing now is there is a bidirectional trust between Mrs.
Miller and Mrs. Helpful and this trust now shifts to you as long as Mrs. Helpful gives you an introduction to Mrs. Miller. That is the so called bi directional. That's the so called bi directional transitive trust. That is why people network.
And that is, by the way, when you for example, are looking for certain services, maybe a plumber or Eloy or whatnot, you can of course just google around or you can go to any kind of online resource or you just ask around your neighbourhood and say, hey, do you know someone who can? And then they will tell you, these people are probably the good ones and these people are the ones to be avoided. So gaining this trust is crucial because you get access to resources, you get access to people, you get access to job openings, you get access to a lot of things that you had no access to before. However, there is a risk to networking and many people now say, where on earth could there be a risk to networking?
Well, sometimes you have. And that is what networking really is. Networking means you refer qualified people. When people sometimes say, hey, do you have an expert lawyer on xyz? I refer people who I personally do not even like that much. Of course it's nice when you have some sort of good feeling with them. However, when you know someone is the subject matter expert, I don't like them personally, but they are the subject matter expert.
I rather recommend them over someone who I like more and has less competence because that's called networking. Networking is based, proper networking, real networking is based on skill set, based on qualifications, could be degrees, could be anything else, but it's based on what people can actually do. And here comes the risk. Quite a high number of networking. It's not networking, it's not networking, it's an insider deal. It's nepotism, it's cronyism, it's corrupting the system, it's pushing people into positions where they shouldn't be. Someone approaches you and say, hey, I really need this job, you know, and then you are the decision maker and we know each other, you know, from uni and I don't have the experience yet, but you could put in a good word for me.
So you what, what you do is you call it doing them a favour. And this favour means you put someone in the position where they shouldn't be. Why did you do that? Because you will sooner or later say, hey mate, look, I did you this favourite and guess what I need now, I need a favour back. And then you very quickly are in a so called tit for tat system. As they say, a bit of a mediocre middle aged English.
This for that. If you translate that to modern day English, it means you're only based on favours, it's not based on skill. First employees immediately get that people immediately. See when some people enter the system from above due to personal connections, not due to skill set, not due to what they've achieved, not due to experience or anything of a track record, just by who they were born with, the family they grew up in, birthright, privilege. And immediately people will not follow these people and there's no trust. It's the opposite of trust. And also when you are based solely and only on favours, sooner or later there will be the point where you suddenly say, look, I, I, I, I really can't do you this favour, this just pushes too far.
I, I, I really can't do that because the risk for me is just too high or it simply doesn't follow your agenda and you say, no, sorry, this is something I don't like, so I'm not going to do you the favour. And the other person will say, how do you dare? Okay, that was it. And then they will make you fall or they want to make you fall. And when you say, hey, don't we have something like that right now? Yes, exactly, we have something like that on the highest level on this planet.
Donald Trump and Elon Musk. Donald Trump and Elon Musk. So first you see that Donald Trump has a tax package. Elon Musk is unhappy about that. Also, Elon Musk isn't happy about the EV mandate, the electronic vehicle mandate coming to an end, where Donald Trump says the electronic vehicle mandate forced people to buy electric cars, which is of course utter nonsense. No one was forced to buy any car in the US and especially not forced to buy electronic vehicles or electric vehicles. And of course not having the EV mandate harms Tesla.
So more taxes, less EV mandate. Elon Musk unhappy. And they were good friends, you know, by a favour. Because Elon Musk has zero experience in public administration. His doge track record, as they call it, is questionable at best. And suddenly Donald Trump says, look Elon, you did what you did and goodbye from here. And what Elon Musk just did, he went on X, which is still a large platform, and just posted on X saying you know why Donald Trump didn't publish the Epstein files?
Because he's in it. Have a good day. Donald J. Trump. That's what he posted. Epstein. If you haven't followed that case, Epstein is connected with paedophilia crime, ended up in jail, but then killed himself there. Suicide. That's at least what we know as of now.
There are a lot of things going on around that, but genuinely a person you do not want to. Want to be connected with, especially not in these files. You do not want to appear. And it's extremely important here that this is. And it immediately escalated. Donald J. Trump then said, we're going to cut funding for SpaceX.
And then Elon Musk said, okay, when you cut my funding, I'm going to decommission the Dragon missile, which the US desperately needs by SpaceX. Back forth, back forth. It went for hours. The Tesla stock went in free fall, lost almost 15%. 14.7, I think it was at the end of day one of the whole drama. And then the weekend came and that's the end of trade at least. So what you.
And by the way, I'm in Washington D.C. right now for World Pride. So this was topic number one during that evening. Someone said, this is the Real Housewives of the White House. When you see how two men argue and you still have people saying women are too emotional to lead, look at what these people like Donald J.
Trump and Elon Musk have done. And then look at what Ursula von der Leyen or Angela Merkel have done, or what Ruth Ginsburg has done, or Theresa May. And then I have a question, who's too emotional here? Maybe it's the men, just by scientific evidence in this case, or at least empirical evidence. So when we look at this scenario, this is a typical case of how networking carries a risk. When you have a network based on favours, you will end up in an endless network of favour for favour for favour for favour. And either you will be called out, or someone will quit the network and call you out, or someone will make you fall and then there is nothing that can save you because there is no scientific backing, no factual backing that keeps you in place.
And it gets even worse from there. When networking goes wrong, your recruiting is immediately affected. When you say, hey, these are our leaders and people who are talented, people who have qualifications, look at your company and say, I have quite, quite a number of big question marks. How do these leaders go to their position? Because they are not qualified for the job. And when you, for example, look at stock exchange listed companies. Unlike in, for example the UK where you have a monistic system where the board of directors can act pretty freely.
In Germany, for example, you have a dualistic system. So you have a board and then you have a supervisory board that controls the board. And when you look at who sits in these supervisory boards, you think these must be the number one experts. Well, some of them are, but sometimes you really have the feeling saying, okay look, we have these professorships and after a certain reform a couple of years ago, professorships aren't that well paid anymore in Germany as they tend to be before. And as a thank you note, they gave him one of these supervisory positions. And then you wonder, so how wrong can it go? Just give you an example.
When board level members, so for example C level people want to have their bonuses agreed, the supervisory board needs to agree on the contract and on the goals connected with the bonus. And the Deutsche Bahn, the German train system, the main German train provider last year paid significant bonuses to their managers, although they were not performing well. And then it came to public because someone leaked the document that two aspects were not part of their bonification, not part of the bonus. And these two aspects were customer satisfaction and punctuality. What on earth is going on? What do these boards do for a living? What's their main job?
Because it can't be, it can't be expertise on logistics. It can't be. You don't need to be an expert on train logistics to know that customer satisfaction and punctuality when you, when you transfer people from A to B is a pretty crucial aspect. Even when you transport goods. Punctuality and customer satisfaction is the key aspect of having repeat business or one off business and never again. But here we go again. Once more we see that leadership went wrong.
And the reason for that was simply that some people got a favour. And we see this way too often. You need to lead your network based on knowledge, qualification and expertise. And very important here it could be degrees, but it do not necessarily need to have degrees, need to be degrees.
I'm in Washington D.C. right now, as I said, and just yesterday I saw an amazing ad by Google saying break the paper ceiling. I don't know if you're aware of what the paper ceiling is. The paper ceiling is where people say, I can't get a certain job because I don't have a bachelor's degree. And of course the usual German reaction is, well then get a bachelor's degree. Right? That's one side, but that's one point.
Of view, if you have absolutely no idea about the us, you say something like that. The question is, are you aware of tuition fees here? Because very quickly these bachelor degrees cost five or six digit amount of money and you can default on student loans. It means you can go bankrupt on student loans, lose everything you have based on student loans. And that already affects quite a number of people in the us. So it's not that easy to just say, hey, get a bachelor's degree and what Google advertise, break the paper ceiling with a link where on Coursera or edX, depending on what kind of qualification you're looking for. They have certificates, certificates including exams, they take months and months and months to fulfil.
So it's not something you do in an afternoon. And when you have these certificates, they give you an entry role, they give you an entry to Google. And that's where some people know how to build a network, a network based on skill and knowledge, not based on nepotism, cronyism, insider deals, which we see way too often in different parts of free enterprise, public service, politics, anywhere. Because nepotism, cronyism and insider deals only favours one group, birthright privileged people. And that usually means male, white, straight, cisgender people. I know that some people go wild when I say that, but that's just scientific evidence. When you are born privileged, in a rich family, you're white cisgender.
So you basically live in the heteronormativity, people open your doors, people give you networks just because you're born in the so called right family, that's not achievement, that's not networking, it is nothing else than nepotism, cronyism and insiderism. And that harms organisations massively. And that's why for example, some people do not just hand over their businesses. I give you a very simple example. One owner led business, one of my clients, where the owner who is a couple and they said to their children, well first you do vocational training because you need to know the trade, you need to know what our people do here when they work with their hands, how we produce items. So they had to do vocational training, not in the parents business, they had to learn how to work somewhere else where they are just no one. And then they had to go through all the qualification phases and then start at the junior position and work their way up.
And now when the children took over the business, they are highly respected by anyone, but absolutely anyone in the business because they said you earned this position, you weren't gifted this position. What you now need to Know when you say, hey, how do I know?
How do I now make this work? It's focus, focus, focus. And I can tell you what the main problems here are. Often people say, yeah, I want to have a network, you know, but I just don' like LinkedIn. It's not for me, but, nah, not for me. I don't like LinkedIn and in Germany, this zing n. I just don't like networking online.
Oh, and these networking meetings in the evening after work. No, I think I work enough so I don't go to these networking meetings. No, no, I just hold no interest in that because I think I work so much, I don't want to put in additional hours.
That's your problem then. You need to focus, focus, focus on getting your leadership skills, your networking skills and because as soon as you, your recruiting will become immediately better as well, you will attract more talent, you will know more people. When you know more people in the industry, it will be quicker and easier for you to fill certain roles. That's just one out of many examples. So now, after what you heard here, look at your calendar and say, when do you start with your journey of networking and doing it the proper way? Not based on favours, where you say, I'm giving a favour to a position or to someone where I know they're not really up to the game, but I still put them in there. No, proper networking is based on skill set, on qualifications, on people actually getting the job done.
I wish you all the best putting your focus in place as soon as you start that everything will become better from there. And I wish you all the best doing that. When you now say that sounds like a lot of work, can we have a chat about that? Yes, of course we can. So by the way, when you now listen on YouTube and please leave a like here, please subscribe to this channel. Put the little bell in as well, so you don't miss future episodes. Feel free to leave a comment as well.
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I'm looking forward to hearing from you about what you put in place. Feel free to contact me anytime answering any message within 24 hours or less. And at the end of this podcast and at the end of this video cast, there's only one thing left for me to say. Thank you very much for your time.