I’ve been wrestling with this book for a week or two. It’s a book I hate to love. As part of my new responsibilities within Campus Crusade, I’ll need to grow in “networking.” I’m suppose to help connect African campus leaders with American campus leaders and that requires some “relational skills.” I know that I don’t have the highest social intelligence quotient. I remember ideas, but I’m terrible at names and faces. I have a few friends, but not many. So as I read one of the subtitles of this book, “How to Build a Lifelong Community of Colleagues, Contacts, Friends and Mentors,” I thought this was a book for me. It will help me “win friends and influence people” and be a better networker. Actually the book started out strong with the following quote:
Relationships are all there is. Everything in the universe only exists because it is in relationship to everything else. Nothing exists in isolation. We have to stop pretending we are individuals that can go it alone. — Margaret Wheatley
Now, I like Margaret Wheatley’s book Leadership and the New Science and its conclusions that the latest and best studies of evolution, biology, physics, nature, etc., [show] that the world is a lot more interested in cooperation, connections, synergy, alliances, freedom, etc., than we thought. Shared information is what defines who we are, what we can become, what we can perceive, and what we are capable of achieving. Blocking or controlling information flows stunts growth and virtually assures defeat if not death. It is the optimization of listening–being open to *all* information–which enables us to adjust, evolve, and grow. Such conclusions have applications to the free flow of information and relationships necessary to “movement building”–a highly organic process.
But I digress.
Anyway, Ferrazzi believes that “highly successful people . . . use the power of relationships–so that everyone wins.”
His basic argument is that these successful people do three things:
First, they find what their mission is–the “blue flame” intersection where passion and ability come together. Successful people “follow their bliss.”
Second, once they’ve figured out what their mission is, successful people identify the people who can help them get there.
And third, they purposely build a community of “colleagues, contacts, friends, and mentors” to help them achieve their mission. It is the symbiotic relationship between mission-driven goal setting and “reaching out to the people who can help achieve those goals” that makes a person successful.
I guess I’m ok with his three points. But as I read on, I began to “hate to love” this book. Mainly, I struggled with his methods of “reaching out” to people, of ensuring that one “never eats alone”–because in networking “invisibility is a fate worse than failure.” For example, in his chapter on being a conference commando, he suggests that you make sure and “stake out the right place…Determine where most people will gather, or at least pass, and station yourself there. This might be near the food table, the bar, or the reception area.” He quotes Kissinger’s advice: “Enter the room. Step to the right. Survey the room. See who is there. You want other people to see you. . . Remember to look sharp.”
Or in his chapter on “The Art of Small Talk,” he says you must “maintain a good balance of eye contact. If you maintain an unblinking stare 100 percent of the time, that qualifies as leering. That’s plain scary. If you keep eye contact less than 70 percent of the time, you’ll seem disinterested and rude. Somewhere in between is the balance you’re looking for.”
I could go on with more of Fezzarri’s practical skills in learning to connect with others. As I re-read them now, I’m still disturbed by them.
Yet, having seen the power of relationships in my study of movements, I wonder if he is on to something. I wonder if Ferrazzi has captured some of the reasons why Jesus praised the dishonest manager of Luke 16:1-7 who “made friends for himself by unrighteous means.” As Jesus said, maybe the sons of this world are still more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light.
Now, Jesus was talking about being faithful with what God has entrusted to us. Yet could it be that our relationships–the community of colleagues, contacts, friends and mentors–are the what which God entrusts to us? And maybe we should grow and foster those relationships “shrewdly.” Relationships are certainly critical to building movements everywhere. So, if I need to “remember to look sharp or be interesting to others or look people in the eye 83.5 percent of the time,” maybe that’s ok.
Still, it’s a book I hate to love. And it’s a book I hate to find myself recommending to movement builders, but I do.
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