How to find a balance of give-and-take in building professional connections

Have you ever wondered how people can reach out to someone in their professional network and the person on the other end selflessly grants them a favour? Or maybe you have asked someone for something, and you were surprisingly denied in your request with very little feedback as to why? The key difference between these two scenarios is indicative that a stronger connection was formed in the first scenario.

Why is this important? Well in everyday life, actively learning what promotes a balanced approach of give and take in interpersonal interactions can help deepen existing connections and help grow your personal network – which in turn is undeniably beneficial if you want or need to grow your professional network as well. Now we understand that an invisible boundary exists that separates the personal and professional worlds, but some foundational strategies that help build initial connections are fluid across each world.

This article revisits some basic strategies that you can actively implement in your everyday life, with a particular focus on how they can play a role in building professional connections.

• Why is it important to build professional connections?

• Who are professional connections?

• What does it mean to form a connection?

• What is the give and take approach?

• It's all about boundaries

• Getting comfortable with asking for things and showing gratitude in return

• Little things make a big difference when taking initiative

• Learn how to be more affable, even if you must fake it for a while

• Conclusion

Why is it important to build professional connections?

Before we get into the strategies, let’s go over some of the reasons why it is important for people to continually improve on their skills for building professional connections. Here are some instances when having the right connection in your network could prove important.

·         You might be looking for a promotion within their current organization

·         You might be looking for a new opportunity within the wider industry

·         You might want to change career paths entirely

·         You might want to turn a passion into a career

Even if you aren’t in a space where any of these are immediately relevant to you, there will be a time where one of these reasons may creep in as a “what if moment.”

The first step in building professional connections is to strip back the categories people fall into and re-posit them to be represented in a more personal way. 

Who are professional connections?

The traditional forms of professional connections include:

·         Employer/employee connections

·         Coworking connections

·         Client connections

·         Mentor/mentee connections

·         Targeted or tentative connections

What people tend to forget is that outside of these roles, professional connections are also people, who have their own personal and professional network. When you start removing a category someone fits into, you are instantly removing a potential barrier that can affect your capacity in building a good connection in the first place.

What does it mean to form a connection?

For a connection to exist, either personally or professionally, it is implied that there is some form of an interpersonal association between one or many people. In the professional context, this can be professionals inside or outside a person’s professional field.

If a positive connection exists, it means that there is a certain level of trust, respect, self-awareness, and open communication between the parties involved. If there is a deficit in any of these characteristics, then the prospects of building or maintaining a lasting professional connection diminishes substantially, aka closing doors to potential opportunities now or in the future.

As you can see, these characteristics are important and essentially the foundational assumptions that support positive interactions. How does one build these characteristics in all their interactions? Well, that’s where recognising how to take active steps to steer an interaction through reciprocal hints of give and take.  

What is the give and take approach?

The give and take approach for building connections in any context is like entering into a negotiation. The best outcome is when both parties leave an interaction and feel they have received something of value from the interaction. Each time a balanced interaction occurs, it fosters a greater connection based on trust, respect, and the ability to communicate openly.

This is an idealist view of the approach, as interactions that archetype this perfect balance of give and take requires an active effort of contribution from both people in any given interaction. This is easier said than done, as each person has an innate disposition towards either end of the give and take spectrum in how they naturally interact.

Adam Grant, a leading researcher and writer of the book, “The Revolutionary Approach to Success” perfectly pinpoints that people are either givers, takers or matchers when interacting with another. He defines a taker as someone who tilts reciprocity in their favour and tends to get more than they ever give, commonly attributed to an attitude of looking out for oneself over anyone else.

A giver is the opposite where they value others and the prospect of providing value to another more highly over the costs that they may incur upon themselves. While the remainder, those who do not fit within these two categories, have been labelled by Grant as matchers. Principle and fairness based, these individuals will more commonly try and mitigate interactions to balance give and take cues, much like a negotiation.

Of course, most of the time not everyone fits perfectly as one of these categories and can shift between the three depending on who they are interacting with. What is important to notice if you are seriously looking to build deeper connections, whether with a potential professional, personal, or romantic connection, is to identify the cues of when conflicts arise. This is the first indication that the effort to mitigate the extremes of give and take in your interactions with a connection has diminished. 

Personality also plays a major role in how people interact and understand each other, but negative traits that lead to extremes in give and take interacting styles can be offset with a bit of effort. We will go through a few strategies that can help anyone start seeing some improvements in how they form and build connections with anyone. Three of which require a little bit of insight, intuition and everyday effort, while the fourth will best benefit those who struggle in social settings.

It's all about boundaries

Understanding personal boundaries in all their forms is important when applying the give and take approach in building professional connections. One must get to know your own boundaries and what you’re comfortable with so that you can learn where you can become more open to change.

By having this insight about oneself means having a level of greater self-awareness – and will posit you to be better prepared in identifying cues of discomfort in others. This stands for identifying comfort cues as well. In respect to the give and take approach, if you don’t know or have clear boundaries set, this opens you up for someone to take more from you then you maybe are willing to give, whether in the form of information, time, or your own resources.

Getting comfortable with asking for things and showing gratitude in return

No one likes to feel like they have been taken advantage of, and unfortunately this world is full of people who are willing to step on others to get what they want – and showing very little gratitude when they step. This approach is far from sustainable, even for the person doing the stepping. Evidently, someone like this exemplifies an extreme taker approach when interacting with people. Empathy, and the ability to empathise with whom one interacts with plays a role in being able to tip an interaction back towards balanced reciprocity.

Therefore, if you ever need to ask for something from someone or want someone to do something for you – especially in a professional context, you need to take on a more empathetic approach when asking. The point here is to not expect from someone, what you wouldn’t be willing to give or do yourself in return. The best way to develop your skills in this way is learning how to show gratitude to people who do or give you something, whether you asked for it or not.

Showing gratitude in an interaction is a symbolic form of giving. Gratitude driven by genuine empathy from a person on receiving end, in this case the “taker,” means they understand that the other person has gone out of their way and used up their own resources to cater to their needs. Showing gratitude is important for nurturing trust and respect when forming connections.

Little things make a big difference when taking initiative

We hear and see the phrase “take initiative” used quite liberally throughout professional contexts, especially as a sought-out skill someone must have to be successful in any job role. It is also an important skill to be able to build deeper connections when interacting with people, whether professional or personal. This is because “taking initiative” has inherent ties to productivity, helpfulness, and proactivity across any context.

Taking initiative, is essentially helping people in some shape or another without being asked. It’s also linked with acceptance, inclusion, and comfort in communicative forms. When someone takes initiative, it fosters a sense of trust in other people. As another clear example of giving behaviour, taking the initiative to help someone out does not have to be attributed with a grand gesture, but is better received through little gestures. To foster an ability to have more opportunities to take initiative and build deeper professional connections can be from learning some active listening techniques. The ability to help someone in a meaningful way is through getting to know them and where exactly you can help. People recognise initiative and appreciate it more when it is matched to selflessness in an action, rather than with an underlying conditional requirement of reciprocity.

Learn how to be more affable, even if you must fake it for a while

You don’t have to be naturally extroverted to start forming new connections with others, although it does make it easier. One important trait that many extroverted people are blessed with is appearing affable to other people – or more approachable. Some ways you can promote a more affable persona through your body language includes:

·         Smiling more

·         Relax your stance and use open body language

·         Make eye contact

·         Avoid nervous habits (this goes back to our point on self-awareness)

People are naturally drawn to those that look easy to talk as they promote a feeling of comfort, and comfort and trust share similar properties. Now it’s time to look at some ways can seem affable in how you engage in conversation:

·         Speak with positivity

·         Take initiative in starting conversations

·         Ask questions

·         Mirror the other person’s body language

·         Listen and remain focused in the conversation

We have only scraped the surface, but that’s where one needs to begin if they are looking to recognise and change how they can interact with people for the better. Learning what it takes to establish solid foundations to build both personal and professional connections is how you can ensure you have more leeway to use latter strategies of give and take to attain your personal and professional goals.

Conclusion

The few tactics that we have covered here might seem like common sense to some, but in most cases, people generally fall short when executing the basics. Just to recap – building good connections across personal and professional contexts requires an underlying sense of and self-awareness, trust, and respect to promote open communication in future contexts. To build these characteristics into new or existing connections requires reciprocal interactions that are balanced in give and take.

The first strategy outlines the importance of personal boundaries, which directly interlinks with an individual’s level of self-awareness. The second strategy places an importance on empathy and showing gratitude in give and take interactions. The third tactic highlights how taking initiative can impact upon fostering trust in connections. Finally, for those who struggle in social settings in even getting a connection started, we have outlined some key behaviours that can promote a new level of sociability, so connections can be made. 

If you are interested in learning further strategies for building professional connections or dig deeper into some of the mechanisms that drive many of the strategies, you can check out our “For You Program.”