Struggling to make room for networking in your everyday working life? The expert technologists at our ‘2017 everywoman Forum: Advancing Women in Technology’ share their surprising tips for making sure you stay connected without breaking the time bank…
#1 Own your moment in the spotlight
Delivering a presentation to a large audience can be panic inducing to the novice public speaker. But as you become more adept on stage, the focus can shift from nerves and onto the opportunity before you: to really connect with an audience of potential collaborators, sponsors and promoters.
I Like Mondays’ Director, Richard Davies says that when you allow yourself that moment to shine, your more relaxed state is more likely to draw others towards you. “It’s an important psychological state, [to believe] that if you’re standing in front of an audience, that is your moment,” he says.
“It can feel that you’re stalking others’ time. So you race to the end, desperate to end your slot. But being comfortable in front of an audience is about owning the time, owning the space, being prepared to pause, and speak at a rate that’s comfortable for people to listen to.
“That relaxes your audience and makes you feel more relaxed. And it reinforces your self worth. If you feel you are being really listened to it can be so empowering.”
#2 KNOW YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA ‘WHY’
Your smartphone’s memory is choc full of social sharing apps you never have time to fully engage with; your LinkedIn profile is three years out of date; you’re pretty sure your fledgling spare bedroom business is supposed to be on Snapchat, but you’re not sure why or where to start. Sound familiar?
With every passing month the tech world unveils a hot new way to communicate your personal brand to the masses. But while it’s important to be an active participant in those you adopt, you have to take a strategic view or you run the risk of hamster-wheeling your multiple profiles into stagnation.
“It does require time to update all those channels and you can’t do it all,” says Anna Lawler, UK&I Marketing Director at VMware. She advocates asking, “What’s the business objective?” for any social media activity you spend time on in a professional capacity.
“Have a strategy and pick the channels most relevant to you or your business, and invest in just two or three.”
Above all else, she says, when it comes to how you communicate online, “Be yourself; the best version of your strengths. While it’s critical to engage in your network and share valuable content online, [remember that] anything you post is a direct reflection of you.”
#3 Do one thing at a time
If you already practise mindfulness, you’ll be familiar with the concept of consciously being in the present moment, focussing entirely on the task before you. But with deadlines lying in wait and emails flying at a rate of knots, applying this concept to your working life can feel like an impossible challenge.
If daily meditations aren’t your thing, make room for some real focus and self-connection by setting yourself regular single-tasking challenges. That is, consciously deciding to work on one action point at a time, to the detriment of all distractions.
“Multitasking is a word I feel uncomfortable with,” says I Like Mondays’ Director, Richard Davies. “It encourages some behaviours that can be very damaging, which is not being fully present.
“My children tell me they’re expert multi-taskers because they can watch TV, monitor Snapchat and do their homework at the same time… and you can be sure the thing that suffers is the homework.”
#4 SWITCH OFF, UNPLUG, TALK
In today’s hyper-connected world, sometimes the thing that keeps us most connected to ourselves is switching off completely and just doing nothing. That was one of the surprising themes that emerged from the chatter among our panel of technologists at the ‘2017 everywoman Forum: Advancing Women in Technology’.
“There is a real danger you can overuse what’s available to us,” said ARM’s Senior Director of Technical Communications, Niki Dow, reflecting on the potential for overkill in online communications. As well as the wellbeing dangers of being ever connected, she also drew attention to the potential for social media communication to lose authenticity. “Embrace the technology, but keep it real… don’t let it make you fake,” she urges.
VMware’s Anna Lawler agrees that it’s important to embrace the “human side of communication”. “People you might first connect with on LinkedIn [are people] you then have the opportunity to create a face-to-face relationship with. [If you only ever connect online] you’re never going to get to know someone in a real capacity.”
