How to Network and Be a Good Colleague

Abstract

Learning the skills and habits to network well and be a good colleague holds immense potential to improve the quality of our lives as well as our connections to one another. Networks—whether defined as one’s network of friends, family, colleagues, or permutations and combinations of all three—can serve to support and promote our personal and professional needs, while fostering a greater sense of connectedness and responsibility within our community. Moreover, these networks are strongly associated with scientific creativity, job performance, findings new jobs, and promotion. In addition to driving individual development and success, social networks are also associated with departmental and even organizational success. Despite the large impact of social networks, many in academic medicine feel uncomfortable with “networking.” This is unfortunate, because those who are uncomfortable with networking and developing the power of their network may be missing out on important opportunities. Social network scholars view an individual as embedded in a larger web of relationships. Ideally, to expand one’s network, one should look for those who are “similar enough” to meet and talk to, but who are also “different enough” to develop new ideas and ways of working together that leverage these differences. To increase the diversity of one’s network, we offer single overarching piece of advice: Be authentically curious about others. Finally, in order to be a good colleague, the academic must know oneself, know one’s limits and traits, and develop techniques for working with these optimally, with appropriate boundaries, in one’s interactions with colleagues.