One of my uncle is a hardcore foodie. Once he overate this tasty snack of South India called “kodubale“. He developed severe gastritis and he had to be taken to a doctor. The doctor knew him and asked him in a very friendly way – “Mr. Rao, when you knew you were overeating, you could have popped an antacid tablet and things would not have been this worse”. To that, my uncle, who is full of life and wit even in such circumstance quipped, “Doc! If my stomach would allow me to take that antacid tablet, I would have gulped one more ‘kodubale’!!”
Most of us have hectic Monday to Friday schedules with meetings, emails, tele-conferences, customer meetings, reviews and this list does not end. If we happen to get some free time, we can’t keep our hands off our laptop. How many of us are tempted to check work emails and respond on holidays? Sometimes, we are also like Mr. Rao, but at work. If we had one more extra hour in a day, we would rather clear 10 more emails or squeeze in one more meeting, than consider investing that time in something else.
While spending time with family is definitely a priority, I wonder if we can invest a small percentage of our time from our daily grind in our professional development. Professional development can be anything from learning new skills, to building your networks etc. This post is about why we should invest our time in professional communities and peer groups and how that is going to help us. Expanding professional network does not just mean, adding few more connections on LinkedIn. Adding LinkedIn connections is just the means, not the end. It is the start of building your professional network.
A great way to build such network is to get involved in professional communities. Involving yourself in professional communities will help you grow. In the last two years, I have started involving myself more in the professional communities like my local PMI Chapter and more recently, with my MBA cohort group. The benefits I find are really exciting and I only wish I had done it long back.
Communities can be a class, or a conference, or any professional group that will help you interact with your peers from across the industry. One thought though, while involving actively in an online community is useful, subscribing to a community page in social network and silently watch it fill your inbox with ‘gyan’ is probably not the same as participation in a community. I think it is time to keep the smart phones & laptop away, equip yourself with a cool notepad, and somepersonal business cards and meet real people.
Let’s look at 3 key benefits of involving yourself in a professional community
Discovering Self
One of the biggest advantage of such interaction is that we will get to know a lot about ourselves than anything else. During the course of these conversations, we start articulating problems and concerns in ways so different from what we have been thinking that it will bring out perspectives from within, we haven’t been able to see till now. This leads to getting to know your personal depth. So never miss out this opportunity. It can be life changing ones.
Enriching Conversations
When we talk to people from diverse background, we essentially get out of the confines of the tools, people, process, culture of the organization we are part of and open ourselves up to the practices of other similar organizations. What I realized when I speak to my peers was that most of the times, we are solving similar problems in our own ways – when we interact about the problems in communities we gain insights to how else a problem can be solved, be it issues of process, people, or tools. Newer concepts and ideas emerge enriching not just the individuals but the entire ecosystem.
Opportunities Galore
Opportunities are not just job postings in social networks. Opportunities can be anything. As Tom Peters say, career is now a checker board or even a maze which can go diagonal, sideways, or even backward sometimes. So opportunities can be anything from an offer to teach students, as a consultant, as a guide/mentor or a speaker – why limit it to just jobs?
Opportunity does not come knocking your door. You have to go in search of opportunities. When you meet more people, chances of opportunities also increase. So it is prudent to get out of the ivory towers now and start meeting people.
“It’s over. No more vertical. No more ladder. That’s not the way careers work anymore. Linearity is out. A career is now a checkerboard. Or even a maze. It’s full of moves that go sideways, forward, slide on the diagonal, even go backward when that makes sense. (It often does.)” – Tom Peters (Link)
When you venture out and talk to more people in your peer groups, you will develop new associations, meeting interesting people and have conversations like never before. Moreover it can be a great stress reliever. So, whatever role you are playing, start finding a great professional community near you, get in touch with people and discover a new world out there.