The old adage, “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know”, still holds true, even in this hooked-up-to-everyone-I’ve-ever-known age. But now that we can have thousands of ‘friends’ and be ‘liked’ by people we’ve never met, how can we ensure our personal network is working for us?

Here are some tips for nurturing your personal network:

• Remember it’s about give as well as take. Who values your opinion and advice, or just some time to talk? Ask people how you can help them.
• What do you lack or need, or want help with? Get really clear on how your network can help you and you’ll simplify matters for everyone.
• No-one in your network got what you need? Ask around. Other people have different networks. My friend Andie’s network has provided help on expat induction, employee engagement, hotel recommendations and much more.
• How do you keep in touch with your personal network? I use online very sparingly and carefully, preferring face-to-face; other people are different. I’ve found facilitated network meetings over the phone to be hugely useful. Aim for a mix to maximize appeal.
• Never forget the power of ye olde post. A ‘thank you’ note or postcard is a very personalized way of showing you’re thinking of someone.
• Introduce people to each other. Whenever you meet someone new, think about who you can introduce them to for mutual benefit.
• Ask for introductions. This can be a very powerful way to extend your network. Just don’t overdo it.
• Systematize if necessary. If you’re finding people fall out of your orbit because you’re just too swamped with work, commitments, life and watching telly, create a reminder system to make contact.
• Send birthday cards.
• Send relevant stuff, as in, “I read this and thought of you” .

No-one likes a grandiose self-promoter; but everyone’s got time for the employee who genuinely makes a contribution to the organisation. How can you make a contribution?

• Make your team the most successful. You can only achieve this with, and through, all your team members. So empower people, recognise and reward effort. Other employees will want to be part of your team.
• Make your team the one that has the most fun. Subject to being successful of course. Again, this will make your team the talent magnet.
• Solve your employer’s problems. Whether that’s getting the right system in place, moving office, or making small but significant efficiencies. Find out what’s keeping the senior management awake at night and brainstorm with your team to come up with ideas to improve things.
• Blow your employer’s trumpet. Write articles on and offline about your organisation’s successes and brilliant ways of doing things (getting the requisite approvals before submission of course) .
• Get external recognition for results. This might mean an 'employer/boss/team' of the year award from a sector/professional/industry body, or recognition for a case study of a project that you have managed.

If no-one knows who you are, what you’re good at and what you’re like to work with, your chances of promotion won’t be all that great. You may already have a fantastic network that’s working well for you. Well done. But if all you have are website friends who thought your stunt with the vodka luge was the best photo they’d seen, then you may want to get a network. How to do it? Try these 6 tips:

1. Get to know your employer’s organisation. Who’s who? Who’s been there longest, who got promoted fastest, whose team has produced the most talent, whose team delivers the best results, whose team has the highest employee turnover? Quietly and subtly find this stuff out.
2. Invest time and effort in your most important professional relationship: the one you have with your boss. Have frequent, honest conversations about what you both want to achieve from your current roles and your careers as a whole. Ask your boss for advice and feedback, and ask them to tell you honestly how you can most effectively work with them. Every boss is different: learn what works best with yours.
3. Build authentic relationships with colleagues. We all have very effective antennae for a sharp, self-centred political player, so tread carefully and with integrity as you build your network. Rather than ingratiating yourself only on the top brass, build relationships in all departments and at all levels. Don’t approach others only when you want something; offer to help. If someone does you a favour, you will need to return it. Connect people when you have nothing to gain from it other than the pleasure of introducing people who might help each other.
4. Help your colleagues to progress. If you manage a team of people, you will create a loyal following if you are able to help them grow, get noticed and get promoted with you. One of the most effective ways to promote yourself is to encourage and empower the talent on your team.
5. Network beyond your organisation. Build relationships with people you meet at conferences, on training workshops, at customers and suppliers. Keep in touch with where they’re working, what they’re working on and how you may be able to help them.
6. Nurture your non-work network. It’s all too easy for non-work relationships to wither on the vine when we’re flat-out busy. Use evenings and weekends to attend to your non-work relationships: these are the people who will keep you grounded when you get too full of yourself, help you recover perspective when work takes over, and pick you up when you are down.

Speaking as a Brit, feedback is something that can make the toes curl. Those from other countries and cultures may indeed smile. Here we can talk a good game but, when it comes to the crunch, I suspect many people would rather do public speaking than give or get feedback on how they’re doing. We really need to get over ourselves here. Little and often is good with feedback, whether you are the giver or receiver (and if you’re a regular reader of my blog you’ll know my views on 'feedback sandwiches' to use the polite term: intelligent people don’t need to be fed them). What you learn from feedback could make the difference between staying stuck and getting promoted. So how to go about it?

First of all, brainstorm a list of people to ask for feedback. Make sure you have a mix of people from other departments as well as colleagues from your own team, and a good mix of representatives from different levels of the organisational hierarchy. If you can, add some people from beyond the organisation to your list. They may be clients or suppliers.

If you want your employer to invest in you, by giving you the promotion you want (and the package that comes with it), it’s worth thinking about what investment you’re prepared to make in yourself to boost your prospects. Here are five ideas:

1. Seek opportunities to gain experience. This may be on a particular project that offers a chance for you to fill a skills gap, try out some new tools or techniques, or work with different people. If you can find a project that gives you the chance to learn a skill needed for the next level up, then grab it with both hands.

People who get promoted ahead of the pack are usually very well informed.  They often have expertise that marks them out.  The excellent John Lees, in books such as ‘Take Control Of Your Career’ and ‘How To Find A Job You Love’, talks about the need to know the organisation.  One thing it’s worth finding out is what kind of expertise your employer really values.  Then once you know, you can acquire or develop that expertise.  How to figure this out?

You’ll find some clues in the organisation’s Mission, Vision, and Values – the big, sweeping statements that many organisations make about why they are here and what they do.  You’ll also find some clues in the functions that are most represented at the very senior level.  Marketing not on the executive board?  Well, there’s a clue.  Eccentric innovators disproportionately represented?  Tells you something.  Finance Director a sure-fire route to CEO?  You get the idea.

Once you’ve identified the areas of expertise that will get you noticed – in a good way – then you can set about developing them.  You may need to read up on your customers’ business, their share price, their competition, the overall outlook for their sector.  You may need to learn more about your own organisation’s competition, sector and outlook.  You may need to develop expertise in a system, process or set of tools.  And it always helps if you’re up to date on the more general news, both local and international.  We’re spoilt for choice of where we look for information, so ask around about what others use for source material.  Keep your expertise up to date: it might well be money in the bank.

It’s not a trick question: what are you actually doing?  Often, at work and in our beyond-work lives, we do that which we most want to do and the other stuff, well, er... The same job will be done differently by different people (to a greater or lesser extent, depending on factors like health and safety, law and compliance, size and scope of organisation, etc.).  Two people doing the same job, both wanting promotion; who will get the next rung up the ladder?

Many factors come into play; one of them is, “Are they actually doing what we pay them to?”  We’ve probably all experienced someone who plays politics, angling for promotion before they’ve mastered the basics of their current job.  OK, confession time: on one memorable occasion, I WAS that someone!  My boss handled my endless whingeing really well.  He sat me down and showed me the job description of the role to which I thought I should be promoted, and asked me which areas I was doing.  You could hear the sound of my jaw dropping. Next, and worse, he then showed me the job description for my role at the time and again asked me which areas I was doing.  Sure enough, there were areas where I scored high, and they were the tasks I loved to do; others were being sorely neglected.  That conversation really put me in my place, yet at the same time was a hugely valuable learning experience.

Fast forward to now, and we’re finding fewer workplaces with detailed job descriptions - the job has invariably changed by the time they’ve been written.  What many organisations now have instead are core values with competencies and/or capabilities that demonstrate those values in action.  Appraisals, and other performance management and career development processes, are used on an on-going basis to help everyone stay on track.  So even though things have changed, there’s no excuse: somewhere in your organisation, what they are paying you for is written down.

To enhance your chances of getting promoted, ensure you are prioritising the job you are being paid to do.  Take responsibility for making this the stuff you get done first, on time and on budget.  If you need to, get some help on your project management skills.  Demonstrate a ‘can-do’ attitude - and reputation - and focus on results as much as the “I like doing this” parts of your role.  This may sound astonishingly basic, but it’s (still) astonishing how often people demand the next job up when they’re not really doing the one they’re currently paid for.

Hurrah, it’s February.  So you’ve got all your goals and objectives, personal and professional, all written up, Key Result Indicators all identified and you’re on your way.  Aren’t you?  Well, that depends.

Stop and think: if you’re working in the same way as you did last year, it’s unlikely you’ll get huge change.  Fine, if that’s what you want, but how does your behaviour relate to your goals and objectives? It’s not enough to write them, we have to DO them, and now is a really good time to start.  So dust off your goals and objectives, and identify areas where you are already making progress.  You may be pleasantly surprised.  And when you have identified achievements, make sure that people know about them.  This isn’t an instruction to blow your own trumpet; think about how you can subtly convey the achievement in the conversations you have anyway.  Focus on results achieved, the impact made, and what you have learned.

What if there are still gaps in your achievements?  Calm down, it’s still February. Identify the gaps and prioritise them.  Prioritising may mean you need to enlist some help.  You may want to use some tools and techniques.  For example, create two axes of easy/difficult and short-/long-term to help you identify the ‘easy wins’ and the areas that will take more time and effort.  Identify specific actions to take next to start the journey towards your goals.  You may also want to talk your priorities through with someone.  Who can you trust to be objective, positive and discreet?  Discuss your priorities to improve and reach your goals with someone, and in the process you can start to formulate your plan.  You may want several people to give you feedback; that’s the subject of a future post, so come back soon.