Episode #125 - Mastering the Art of Networking in Packaging and Processing Jobs

Transcription:

Stephanie Neil:

So welcome. Thank you so much for being here with us today.

Melanie Denny:

Absolutely. I'm very excited for this today.

Nancy Wilson:

Thanks, Stephanie. And to all of you, I'm really, really happy to be here.

Stephanie Neil:

I do want to start with you, Nancy, because you have referred to networking as building a community, and I like that. I feel like it gives it a little bit more of a personalized touch. But can you explain what you mean by that, especially when you're talking about your own organization?

Nancy Wilson:

Absolutely. I guess I talk about networking as a community because really it's what you do and it's who you are and the people that you have. And I have many communities that I work in, I live in here at Morrison, as well as through PMMI, where I work with the Future Workforce Committee and I'm on the board, but also in my local communities here with the Southland Development Authority and other manufacturing associations.

So with those communities, you have a lot of opportunity not just to connect yourself, but to connect with others and connect other people to other people, to help everyone stop and get ahead. And that's what I really like about this, is the opportunity to help other people reach out and grow and ask a lot of questions and be curious.

And what I would say about networking, just a little bit more on that, is networking is work. It's not just getting together. And although you can have enjoyable things like a glass of wine when you're networking, it is work. But it doesn't have to be hard work and it doesn't have to be not fun. Network can be very fun. It's how you choose to represent it and how you choose to go about figuring out what's right for you.

Stephanie Neil:

Well, I like that you said that it is work, but it can be fun and it should be fun. But what do you mean by it's work? Do you have to have some sort of strategic plan in place to-

Nancy Wilson:

You do. You really have to decide what's important to you. You have to do your own assessment of, "What do I need? Where am I going? What are my goals?" And once you have your goals, then it's to figure out, "What do I need to get there and who can help me? And it's not just about me. Who can I help along the way as well?"

One of the most important things I learned in my years at Ford, I've been around this for a long time, so figuring out within an organization, especially a large organization where's the power? Where does that lie? Who's making the decisions? Who has the ability to give knowledge to you? Who can you go learn from? And so it's about learning, it's about being open, but it's about also positioning yourself to be with the people so that they can help bring you along, but you can also learn from them. And they know who you are. In some big organizations, just being known, who you are, is important. So it's about being thoughtful in this process of figuring out... You can't just sit at a desk and wait for somebody to tap you on your shoulder and say, "Here, I have this big opportunity for you." You have to go make those opportunities.

Stephanie Neil:

And I'm going to circle back with you on that, because it's a really important point. And how you do that, I want to explore a little bit more. But I want to turn the conversation over to Melanie, because you've built a business on helping people with their personal brand. And Nancy just said you can't just sit at a desk and wait for people to come to you. So how do you build your personal brand and how do you create that presence within your organization?

Melanie Denny:

Yeah, I think it boils down to visibility, right? Like Nancy said, who knows you? You know how they always used to say, "It's about who you know."? It's really about who knows you, right? Because there may be people batting for you because they've heard of some things you've done or someone else brought you to their attention. And you may not know them, but if they know you and they're in a good position of decision, they could potentially tap you on the shoulder.

So it boils back down to how visible are you in the workplace, right? It's not about sitting at the desk, getting your work done. That's wonderful, but it's not enough when it comes to your taking control of your career. You really have to, like we keep saying, be strategic, intentional, really pinpoint, "Okay, who do I want to align myself with?," and going both ways, right? Up, down, and across. So your colleagues as well, because you guys can learn from each other's experiences as well.

And so it's about going to lunch with your colleagues, going across departments and seeing how you can add value or help out, asking people straight out, "Hey, will you be my mentor? Hey, will you be my sponsor?," and being proactive about talking to people, not just about work, but just getting to know folks, getting to like them and them getting to like you, because at the end of the day, we're all just people. I always used to say, "Find people, not jobs."

Stephanie Neil:

Right.

Melanie Denny:

So if you want to rise up in the organization, again, who are the people that you really want to connect with?

Stephanie Neil:

When you talk about it being visible at work, sometimes we get into little cliques. Sometimes, we're in our own little group. How do you break out of that?

Melanie Denny:

I like to use the comparison between when you're a kid at the lunch table at school, right? Do you always sit with the same people? That's okay. But you want to try to see who else you can sit with today, right? Who else can I sit with? And sometimes, it's literally the lunch at work, the lunch table, the cafeteria or whatnot, and you find someone and say, "Hey, can I sit with you today?"

Stephanie Neil:

Sure.

Melanie Denny:

They may or may not say yes, but hopefully they say yes. And you just spark up a conversation, "How do you like your meal?," simple things. Doesn't have to be earth-shattering questions.

Stephanie Neil:

Yeah. Well, so that's a good segue back to Nancy, because, Nancy, you talked about thinking about who can you learn from or is there a manager that you feel like you should get to know more? But is it okay for somebody who's maybe at an assistant level to sit at the lunch table with a manager that they don't know? How do you approach people that have more of a leadership role that you think could help you and you want to get to know?

Nancy Wilson:

I think you all have a responsibility. When we talked about sitting at your desk, it's not just about networking as well. Doing your job and doing your job well is the price of entry. And so once you do that, then I think the networking has to happen above and beyond that.

And when you're trying to sit at the lunch table with the higher ranking person, most people are more than willing to share and to talk about their life experiences. Be curious and then listen to what they have to say. Talk to them about, "If you had this situation, what would you do?," or, "Can you tell me about how you got in this business?," or, "Talk to me about the product." You need to understand your products and the business that you're in and be an expert on that.

And I often have invited people to figure out how to go to lunch with the lunch bunch. There's always a power lunch bunch. Figure out how to be invited. Figure out how to go. And sometimes, you might even be as bold as ask if you can go along. And it isn't comfortable necessarily at first. It really isn't. And one of the mantras that I've said for many years, and I had to learn it over time, is feel your fear, but do it anyway. Acknowledge it's there, "Yep, this is really uncomfortable, but this is what I'm going to do."

And you'll be surprised if you're curious, if you ask questions, and you figure out who to be with and tag along, and then be grateful for the information. But most people, if you get them talking about themselves or what they've done and you really listened and you're not thinking about what you're going to say next, but you really listen, they pick up on that and it becomes very genuine.

The other thing I would say as far as asking for mentors, that really works when you've built a relationship with someone. I actually believe that a strategy might be to have more than one go-to person. And this is one of the things I did many, many years ago at Ford. I didn't ask them to be my mentor. I just said, "What do you do? How does it work?," and really understand, "If you were me, how would it happen?"

And there's always a bunch of... For me, at that time, they were all guys, a bunch of old guys that were willing to say, "This is how it really works. This is what happens. This is what you need to know." And so it's not any one formal mentor, because if I would've gone to them and said, "Would you be my mentor?," I think they would've jumped back and said, "I don't know how to do that."

Stephanie Neil:

Right.

Nancy Wilson:

But, "Would you just give me some advice on this?," or, "How would you handle this?," or, "How would you do that?," I think people are very receptive to helping that. And you can learn a lot from people. There's a lot of experience around all of us in our organizations, the people that have been around that are more than willing to share that, because they want to be heard as well.

Stephanie Neil:

Yeah. Just came in there and they're similar, so I want to address them now. And it has to do with maybe working in a very individual based job. Maybe you don't have a lot of colleagues. It's a small group or small team. Maybe they travel a lot, or we're all working remotely now. So how do you network when you're working remotely? You're not in the same office with your colleagues. Nancy, do you want to try to tackle that first or-

Nancy Wilson:

Well, I do think remote work is brought in a new set of challenges. There's no doubt about that. But we also are all much more accustomed to having conversations like this over Teams. And you can reach out and we can use those groups. You can choose to create after hours or a cocktail thing or whatever you want to... I have this drink thing going. A luncheon maybe is what I should say with colleagues or with others.

And also, for the person that is talking about in a small office, you can feel free to reach out to other people in industry. It's one of the main reasons why we created this group. Truthfully, after one of the PMMI meetings, there were a handful of women there. And we were all together after hours and we talked about, "What can we do to create a group for women?" And that's how this whole organization was born, as a way for us to create a networking organization within the industry and use groups like this.

But again, I would emphasize understand your product, know where it is, and reach out to others that are there that can help you understand and can connect you with people that are also within that industry, especially if you have some goals of where you want to get to. I guess those are what I would say about it.

It is definitely different now. It's harder to have those water fountain conversations when there's nobody in the office.

Stephanie Neil:

Right.

Nancy Wilson:

So you have to be a little more creative in how you get them out. But I think you can be done. And I also see that mentors and people giving advice, they can be at all levels. They do not have to be somebody that's higher or can help you, maybe pull you up. But they can give you information, and information is so important. And they can help lead you if you choose to take that information. But I always say, "Listen. You get the two ears. Listen to what they're really telling you, and then do your own evaluations."

Stephanie Neil:

Well, and you answered a question that came in, which was would you recommend a mentor needs to be in a higher position than you or even at your same company? So you just basically answered that. And the answer is it could be anyone, right?

Nancy Wilson:

Yeah.

Stephanie Neil:

And-

Nancy Wilson:

You can get information from anyone and you can understand how the organization works from the people that have been around a long time and what they've seen happen. I still will go back to the figure out where the power is in the organization and align yourself with that power.

Stephanie Neil:

And Melanie, thinking about the remote work, there's a lot of online tools that we're all using now to communicate and collaborate. I know you're an expert with LinkedIn. Are there things that we can use to connect us to peers in our industry?

Melanie Denny:

Absolutely. Absolutely. LinkedIn for sure. Zoom, right? Zoom meetings. I know we're probably Zoomed out, but sometimes it's a very simple thing. That's the standard now, right? So if there's a virtual event or something like that at work, you go to the event and you participate and you mingle. And then afterwards, you contact the people you spoke with and say, "Hey, we had a great time at that event. Love to chat with you more. Here's my link or here's some availability. I would love to do a virtual coffee chat or something like that."

The sky's the limit, really. It's just a matter of being imaginative and being creative and just creating opportunities for yourself. LinkedIn is one of my favorite, favorite tools, and a lot of people are on LinkedIn. A lot of them are not as active, though. So messaging folks on LinkedIn may not necessarily yield a lot of results, but it definitely is a point of contact that you can move some of these relationships from the Zoom to the LinkedIn and interconnect them in that way.

Stephanie Neil:

Yeah. Are there things you should never do when networking?

Melanie Denny:

Yes.

Stephanie Neil:

Well, I ask this because when we were talking once, Melanie, you talked about the same thing that Nancy talked about. Try to figure out a way to get invited to that lunch, but don't cross boundaries. So you have to be able to take social cues, right? Like, "They don't want me here."

Melanie Denny:

Yeah. You have to be emotionally intelligent and read the room, definitely for sure. But I think that you can definitely still do it without being pushy or disrespectful or just annoying, right? If someone blows you off three or four times, maybe you're barking up the wrong tree. And now, who else can I connect with? So you definitely have to read the room.

Stephanie Neil:

Yeah.

Nancy Wilson:

I guess what I would say is you always have to be genuine. You always have to be yourself and be true to who you are and what your beliefs are. And I would say never cross that line. If it just feels yucky in your gut, don't do it. You got to listen to what your values are and where you are and what you're doing.

So other than that, I think Melanie's right. Read the room, figure out how you can be there. If the guys want to go out and go play golf, learn to play golf. You can do things like that. You can choose to do things like that. Go take golf lessons. Go learn how to be a part of that.

But the single biggest thing before you do any of those other tricks is know your business, know your product, be a professional, understand, be valuable at your workplace, and they'll seek to have you be a part of it. And that's the secret, is always look to be helpful.

Stephanie Neil:

So a big question is how do we find the time to do all this? I know that Melanie mentioned virtual coffee date. Does that happen during work hours? Where do you find the time to do that? And Nancy mentioned learn how to play golf. Well, if you've got a busy life with things happening on the weekend, where do we find time to do that?

Melanie Denny:

Yeah. I would say we prioritize whatever we want. If you look at where we spend our time, that's our priority. So if we're not finding deliberate, intentional networking, then clearly that's not our priority, right? So it's a matter of, "Okay, well maybe I need to shuffle some things around to put this ahead of some other things for now as I continue with this desire to grow in my field." So like you said, it's a personal thing, but there's always time for the things we want to make time for.

Nancy Wilson:

I agree with Melanie. You prioritize what's important. And if golf doesn't fit in your schedule, then you figure out what does. And the other thing I would challenge everyone is when you're there, be present. Be in the meeting, be in the room, be there. Put the phones down. Put the phones away. I'm probably as guilty as everyone else in that I get distracted. But you need to be present and you need to be heard and be curious and ask questions. And you'll make a name for yourself and you'll end up being heard.

Melanie Denny:

One other thing I want to add very quickly is don't expect just to go to lunch tomorrow and then have a full-blown promotion, right?

Stephanie Neil:

Right. Right.

Melanie Denny:

It's a long game. This is a long game. This is about building and nurturing genuine relationships over time. So when you think about networking, people are impatient [inaudible 00:17:18] real quick. But it takes time to build those relationships and for people to figure out, "Oh, you would fit great in this type of role," or whatnot, or advocate for you and trust you enough to recommend you and things like that. So don't be impatient. Think about it for six months, nine months, 12 months out, how you can strategically move when you're trying to network.

Stephanie Neil:

It's an investment, right? One technique I've learned is that we could treat networking as part of our work, like 5% of your work time instead of adding on to outside of work. So that's a good mindset, too. It's like it's part of your work environment to reach out and create a community of people.

I want to switch gears really quickly because we don't have much more time left. But I want to talk about networking outside of the organization in the more traditional sense. We've got our big breakfast coming up at PACK EXPO Las Vegas in September, and it can be intimidating to walk into a room of 900 people that you don't know. And sometimes people are there with their groups, and sometimes they're by themselves. So do you have any sort of practical advice for maybe somebody who's a little more introverted to walk into that room and break the ice for themselves and figure out how to mingle and network with people at their table or in the room?

Melanie Denny:

A trick I heard about years ago, mostly for introverts who don't want to be the first to... is wear something unique. And this may be not comfortable either, because now you're drawing attention to yourself, right?

But what I found is this works for some of my clients, because someone approaches them and say, "Oh my goodness, look at your dress," or, "Look at your earrings," or, "I love your...," whatever, your frames, your glasses, whatever, or shoes. And then you could say, "Oh, well thank you. I got it from blah, blah, blah." And then now, all of a sudden, you're in a conversation. You didn't have to be the first.

Stephanie Neil:

You both have talked about having the conversation and being knowledgeable. But I think, too, we walk in and a room of strangers, and the first thing you say is, "The weather's great, isn't it?"

Melanie Denny:

Right.

Stephanie Neil:

That's a good one, but we've got to come in there armed with information or knowing something about the speaker or whatever it might be. Do you agree, Nancy, or do you have other tactics that you would-

Nancy Wilson:

I think, well, first, probably the single biggest thing that you can do is smile. Force yourself to smile, because you'll look more fun to talk to, more comfortable. It'll help you exude confidence and it'll raise your mood. So smile when you walk into the room.

And the other thing that I find that the easiest thing to do is, "So what brings you here? What intrigued you about being here?" Again, get people to talk about themselves or why they're here or what they're expecting to learn. And then just let the conversation roll from there. I try not to talk about the weather, but sometimes I do. If you just need to, that helps. And you can move on. Or you can go around the table and, "Oh, are you all here together?," and, "Did you know each other?," and try to make, again, the community. Try to make the connections, "Oh, you're from there? Oh, I used to work with somebody who was at that company. Do you know?" And again, just trying to get people to talk about themselves, what they do and their role.

And the other thing you got to put in the back of your mind is they're the same people that walked into the room with 900 people and they're probably looking for somebody to talk to.

Stephanie Neil:

Right.

Nancy Wilson:

So they're there because it's a networking event. And so it makes it a little bit easier, I think, to start some of those conversations. And you'll also, again, observe, be aware of what's going on. If it's a table of everybody dressed alike and they're sitting down and they're by themselves and they're all from a company, probably not the best table to sit down with and try to mingle in with. You want to look for the people that are either by themselves or standing so that you can read the room and feel who looks like they want to share something.

Stephanie Neil:

Right. Well, I want to thank both of you so much. We're going to have to conclude this discussion. I know we could do this for hours and hours, but people have work to do. So I think this has been a really valuable discussion.