TEDxUniversitasBrawijaya 2015: why do we actually need to socialize? By Anindya Putri

Socializing and Networking has a big and tight bond, because behind our success, there are many people behind us that may help us along the way. What comes through your mind when you hear the word ‘networking’? Is it working men and women strolling around together with their suits and satchels? Or is it corporate workers having a meeting with their well-dressed clients? But there are more to networking that that statement. Before we dive deeper to talk about the realm of networking and how to build on it, we first need to understand the importance of networking.

Anindya Kusuma Putri, TEDxUniversitasBrawijaya

There are a lot of examples to describe the importance of networking, and one of them is the famously named lady called Merry Riana, the woman who struggled, and finally found success out abroad, the inspiring thing about her is the way she worked hard to find a job whereas she was in Singapore at that time and couldn’t find any help with the condition that she is alone and expected to hustle on her own with no friends and family around a little to none of money to spend, and she starts building a social connection with people she assumed that one day could help her in return. Until one day she stumbled upon a lady struggling with her groceries that Merry helped wholeheartedly, the reward she was hoping for doesn’t come that instance of a moment, but after a few years where Merry was already a worker in an insurance office in Singapore, she stumble upon this lady one more time and little did she know, the lady who she helped a long time ago is actually a very rich lady who wanted to invest her assets to Merry’s insurance office and hoped that Merry can use that money for her living and probably pay her loafing student loans at the university Merry attended. The moral of this story is ‘every people we meet is important’ don’t ever underestimate the people we meet now, for we don’t know what random act of kindness they could give us in the upcoming future.

Another example is an experience by ‘Putri Indonesia’ Anindya Kusuma Putri when she attended an international conference in Vietnam when she was an active AIESEC member, at the conference she saw a delegate from Japan’s AIESEC, a man, who didn’t talk much, and does very little, so she approached him and found out the reason why he’s so quite is actually he has low self-confidence on public speaking for his English is not that great of a listen, so she started to chit-chat and small talk and got really close as a friend, as the conference ended, moments passes and there comes a time where she must go to Japan, and amazingly, this man still remembers her, and now he’s quite successful and she got treated really well when she was in Japan that she didn’t even spend her money at all for all have been paid by this man, even when he had a meeting that can’t be postponed he called a friend to be an escort and took her around Japan, this shows us that social connections are like planting, we plant seeds and nurture them and they’ll grow beautifully, by that means, if we planted good deeds and nurture them with our kindness they might be a use of a help for us then.

And if we talk about the Importance of Networking, Why networking? The simplest answer might be, networking will help you in the future, we might meet a person today as strangers but we will never know what they can do for us moments and moments later even if it’s not that instant, and if you ask, What is Networking? And why does it bring that big of an impact, networking is an ongoing relationship, why? Because when you start to socialize with someone there’s a big chance that it will just end there, we are sure that you will meet again in a whole different circumstances. As an analogy, it’s like dating, in dating we started with introduction then we move to the closure phase where we would know each other better and then we approach the last phase where we’re in a relationship and goes on and on, same like networking, networking starts with the Build-up or the forming of the network, then we move to the second phase where we maintain that bond and finally we collaborate to work in something based on the network we started, because we want to be able to make that bond create something good and helpful for both of the party, and it’s important for everyone from salesmen to university attendant but the most important thing about networking, it’s not about how many people that you know, it’s how many people that knows you.

Here are some tips, in networking, positive attitude is everything, how we treat people is very important because people, they don’t really care about looks, it’s what your attitude and kindness could bring that they’re interested in. The second thing is to be different, be unique and just be you, you’ll have to find a way for people to see you as a different and unique entity in a good way, and being you? That’s just the golden key so you don’t have something to hide and people will know the real you, cause you wouldn’t enjoy a second being someone else. The next thing is to minimize the use of electronic devise because the real networking we need is actually outside the technological world and in the real life for networking is just a split second chance.

On maintaining networking, communicating well is quite a steal, it’s not how well you talk, it’s the little things like making them comfortable talking to you and so on, another thing is be a reliable person because people wants to build and maintain a relationship with someone they can rely and depend on, and from that is where the collaboration begins, if you do it right, it’ll be easy, easy lemon squeezy. Don’t forget to widen your network from your activities, the more activities you do, the more people you know, so don’t belittle any activities or communities.

With that being said, networking is not only about securing business opportunities but it should be about inspiring ideas, information sharing and collaboration.

#TED #TEDx #universitasbrawijaya #malang