X is for… eXamples

Keep Evidence, Records and Examples

Why are you networking? Are you meeting your networking goals? What are you delivering? If you are networking for business development purposes, you need to be measuring what you are doing and know what you are getting out of your networking efforts. Therefore you should develop skills in keeping good evidence and records of your activity and analyse it as well as putting together examples of your work.

This can then be part of your evidence for your appraisal, pay-rise or promotion if you work for someone else, or just purely for tracking and monitoring your own progress from a personal perspective.

Depending on your job it may be appropriate to take along examples of your work with you to any appraisal/performance meeting.

Skills Development Plan

Any examples should include:

• detail of what you did,
• what you accomplished,
• how it meets that particular competency or goal and
• any feedback you received from someone you’ve worked with about what you’ve contributed.

Any record-keeping and evidence processes should reflect your goals/objectives and what you need to/want to record.

Action Point: Review your Networking Goals. What does success look like? How will you know and what records / information do you need to measure and evidence it?

WFH Action Point: Write up some examples of your networking activities and what you have achieved.

Further Reading:

• Business Development – What are your Goals?
• Write Goals and Objectives for Specific Networking Events
• How to demonstrate that you have potential for winning work