Make Networking Feel Less Dirty—David Burkus (Ep 30)

David Burkus is on a mission to make the experience of work suck a little less. One of the world’s leading business thinkers, David joins me to talk about strategies to make networking part of your everyday life, finding the cause that you will fight for and the value of putting your employees first.

David is an acclaimed author, speaker and researcher. His TEDx talk has been viewed over 2 million times, because we can all relate to that networking experience we’ve had that didn’t leave us feeling great. David has a special talent in taking organizational research and making it both accessible and applicable, so that we can use it to thrive in both life and work.

Episode Highlights

We start off by discussing why people hate networking so much and go on to discuss:

• 6:16 Dormant vs weak ties 
• 10:33 The stop-watch of awkwardness
• 13:30 How to frame conversations with an ask
• 19:35 What he’d do differently with his next book
• 28:25 Lasting content versus short-term content
• 41:25 How you can create revolutionary crusades 

Key Points

• 32:00 Put employees first so that they can then put customers first in their own roles 
• 10:33 Develop a system to keep in touch with dormant/weak ties 
• 41:25 Know what you’re fighting for and when you find it, grow it 

Mentioned in this Episode

• David Burkus
• Pick a Fight (book) 
• Friend of a Friend (book) 
• How to Hack Networking TEDx Talk with David Burkus 
• David’s YouTube channel 
• Malcolm Gladwell’s Talking to Strangers 
• Caffeine Audible Original by Michael Pollen

Related Episodes

• The Power of Facebook Communities—Unstarving Musician (E30)
• Using Video for LinkedIn—David Kilkelly (E12)