Your Support Network

You will have many people in your personal network and they will serve different purposes.  One of the types of network that you should build up is your Support Network. Your Support Network will be a smaller group of people who will help you deal with certain issues or specific problems that you might meet in your business or profession.

Internal Support Network

Often your own Internal Network will be a great part of your professional Support Network.

Your internal contacts can help you deal with work-related issues. This might be your boss and senior staff and support staff with assigned roles that are designed to provide support to all employees and deal with specific issues.

This might also be people you have personal professional relationships with – this might be your boss or line manager, your buddy or peer mentor, your mentor, or someone you have a good rapport with.

You might also have personal internal friends that you talk to about more personal stuff.

Professional Support Network

Of course it is not always possible to fulfil all support needs internally and most people will also look outwards for support as well. This could be friends and contacts that are in the same business / profession that you met at university, in a previous job or even through networking.

These people can also provide valuable support as sources of information, mentors, friends and sometime just as a second opinon or confidence boost. Certain networking groups and organisations can also fulfil the role of a support function particularly if the group is made up of people “just like you” .

Mentor

Mentoring is an effective way of helping people to progress in their careers. A mentor is a guide who can help the mentee to find the right direction and who can help them to develop solutions to career issues. A mentor should help the mentee to believe in themselves and boost their confidence and help them take responsibility and direct their life in the direction they want to go. Therefore they are an important source of support.

Coaching

The final cog I’ll mention as part of your Support Network are people who are professional coaches and their job is to help and support people like you and me. This might be a general life or career coach. It might be someone who coaches in specific skills such as a leadership coach or a confidence coach. Whatever it is that they do it is important to have a few of these people in your network so that you can call on the support if you need it.

If you are lacking in a specific area you need to know in advance whom to contact and where you can go to get the support you need.

Identify the people in your network that make up your Support Network.