The first step of Networlding is to choose your top four values and then prioritize them? For example, our values are: 1) making a difference,  2) integrity, 3) collaboration, 4) innovation. What are you top values? What drives you each day?

Take about a week or two to figure out your value priorities. Then, a good tip would be to go on LinkedIn and search on the Advanced People Search Page (hint: that link to the far right at the top of your HOME page on LinkedIn). Here, you can search keyword terms  such as “integrity” and “innovation.” You will find like-valued people this way–people who you can partner with to build your respective networks and realize better opportunities faster.

Step #2: Figure Out Who You Already Know Who Could be a Primary Circle Partner

Pick the current people you know–up to five, whom you think would have similar or complementary values. Then, set up times to meet these people. If they are unavailable for the longer term, put them into what we call your “Secondary Circle” where you can connect with them, perhaps, every three months.

Carol had an informal primary circle before she became involved with Networlding. However, when she decided to leave her job to attend graduate school she felt little support from her colleagues or her boss. Additionally, many of those she had in her professional network prior to her transition did not share her values nor did they understand why a successful woman would want to return to school later in life.

Carol decided to develop a new primary circle. To do this, she surrounded herself with friends and colleagues who shared her values. Her new primary circle included personal friends who had also experienced recent career changes and newly made friends who were her grad school peers. Carol was able to find the Networlding Seven Levels of Support (see Step #4) in her personal friends, her peers and her professors. Carol is fortunate enough to see many of these friends daily but she keeps in contact at least weekly with everyone in her primary circle.

1. Determine your Value Priorities.

Values are the principles that guide your actions on a daily basis. Becoming strongly aware of your values and creating goals that reflect those values builds a foundation for success. Living your personal and work lives according to those values creates a feeling of authenticity in the way you present yourself. Authenticity inspires trust and confidence and leads to credibility.

Values clarification is both the first and final step in laying that foundation for success. If you understand what is important to you and what drives you, you can align your work to your values and increase your level of passion and satisfaction in your life and work.

Question: What are your value priorities?

Carol knows that she is in an evolutionary stage of Networlding. Her primary circle will change as she transitions as her abilities and needs change. By re-evaluating her Networld every six months or so, Carol will make sure she is getting the support she needs as well as offering the support people in her primary circle need.

Just as many opportunities have been created for Carol by her professional friends, Carol will create and assist in finding opportunities and good job matches for people in her circle. When Carol starts her own psychology practice she will require support from her circle but at the same time she will be creating opportunities for them as well.

Weekly phone calls and occasional meetings ensure that Carol is staying connected with her primary circle. Depending on her network and making a commitment to keeping current with friends strengthen her bond with her network. In fact the level of support Carol feels has morphed business relationships into professional friendships. The primary circle has made the world of business more intimate.

Here, you’ll find seven different types or levels of support you can offer and request. Your optimum goal is to create vibrant exchanges where both parties involved exchange in ways that are powerful, directive, accelerative and dramatically more effectively than traditional networking offers.

Here, Carol makes sure that her relationships are mutually beneficial. She provides support to everyone in her circle; sometimes by offering advice, providing knowledge or sometimes by simply listening. Since Carol is supported on all seven levels by the people in her primary circle she is more energized to reciprocate support. She finds herself able to create ongoing exchanges that hold more and more potential with goals achieve faster as she and her partners now know how to promote one another much more effectively.

This means that you will focus strongly on the quality of those with whom you put in the circle that you literally take your networking and relationship building skills to the next level. At this level you have people who will give you such support (and you them) that you find yourself with opportunities that are "possibility expansive" versus limiting which is what happens with traditional networking.

In defining her larger circle of ten, Carol was better able to define her relationship within her primary circle and outside circles (secondary and tertiary) as well. To have genuinely beneficial relationships with people Carol had to focus her attention towards people in her life who were her closest support network. Unlike baseline networking, Carol was not concerned about how many connections she could develop, but instead she spent her time nurturing her connections. Since the relationships she formed were quality friendships based on mutual support, Carol’s circle provided her with the Networlding Seven Levels of Support (See Step #4).