During a panel discussion called “Start Now: Building a Career at a Fortune 500 Company”, Susan Keppelman offered one strategy for meeting top leaders. A senior associate at AES Corp, a global power company headquartered in Washington, DC, Keppelman was one of five MBAs who started at the company around the same time.
One of the cohorts “had the brilliant idea that would we all collectively contact the CEO” and invite him to lunch, she recalled. He agreed. “And then we did it with the CFO and the COO and just kind of went down the line.” The group approach allowed her to get to know top leaders while forming a bond with the four other MBAs. She soon noticed that people in upper management recognised her and began to greet her by name in the hallway. The group approach “worked super-well”, she said.
Group lunches aren’t the only way Keppelman leveraged crowds for relationship-building. On business trips, she consistently prioritizes group activities over alone-time, forgoing gym workouts to go out with co-workers instead. The socialising gives her the chance to get to know the co-workers who might normally rush home to be with their families. “I feel that all the meaningful relationships I’ve formed with people have been on work trips,” she said. “Whenever I’m traveling, I’ve decided that whenever anything is happening, I’ll just join in.”
Looking for opportunities to work with new people is another way to forge a common connection and build long-lasting contacts, noted panellist Anne Hewitt Fischer, a senior manager of commercial trial development with Janssen Healthcare Innovation, an entrepreneurial team within Johnson & Johnson.
“Networking isn’t just coffee chats and phone calls and emails,” said Hewitt Fischer, who suggested that volunteering to work on a project could be a good way to make connections in a new group. At Johnson & Johnson, she participated in a rotation program, which allowed her to rotate through several teams in a short amount of time.
“Sometimes people think that networking in a big company is going to get the job you want, but I have found that actually working for the group that you want to be in is the strongest way to be on their list … when a job comes up,” she said. “You’re not only building a new network [and] building a new skill set, but you’re also showing that team your personality and your work product.”
Small change, big impact
Another way to cultivate connections is to tap into an existing network and improve the relationships that already exist. Panellist Heather Aspras, a brand manager at GlaxoSmithKline, said she relies on her boss as a mentor to improve her relationships within the company. “In addition to doing my actual work, my boss and I often strategise about how to get me more visibility in the organisation, how to help me navigate the matrix better.”
