In his seminal book The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell talked about “connectors,” an elite breed of super-networkers with big Rolodexes. But nearly 15 years later, as the Internet era has taken hold, the concept may need an update. “I believe that everyone today is a connector,” says Erica Dhawan, the co-author (with Saj-Nicole Joni) of Get Big Things Done - The Power of Connectional Intelligence. “They may be connecting ideas. They may be connecting people. They may be connecting networks, assets, resources. The question is not who you're connecting or what you're connecting, it's how you're connecting in today's world to get big things done.”
This ability is what Dhawan calls “connectional intelligence,” a unique skillset that she says is different than networking, which too often plays the numbers game. “A lot of the way that we think about measuring relationships in today's hyper-connected world is often through quantity of connections,” she says. “With connectional intelligence, it’s not just how many Twitter followers you have or Facebook likes or YouTube subscribers.”
Instead, she says, it’s about harnessing the power of your connections to accomplish important goals. “I would describe the visual [representation] of someone who uses connectional intelligence almost as a snowflake. You're not just networking [directly] with many connections; you're allowing for the interweaving of those connections. That might mean starting a LinkedIn community around a specific topic and allowing people in your network to come together to forge relationships, to share ideas, to share resources around that specific idea.”
She cites the example of Ron Wallace, a championship pumpkin farmer who succeeded in growing the world’s largest pumpkin, clocking in at an astonishing 2000 pounds. “Over 20 years,” Dhawan recounts, “he’d been reaching out to scientists all over the world to help test new innovations around soil science. At first, these scientists laughed at him. But then, through his persistence, they started to engage with him and he discovered a fungus that radically grew the pumpkins. Today, that discovery by Ron Wallace, in connection with the scientists, is now being used by small scale farmers in places like India and throughout Africa where they can't afford chemical fertilizers. In essence, Ron Wallace is playing a role in big agriculture in today's world. But that only really started when he took his passion and he opened it up to a lot of different people.”
So how can individuals build more connectional intelligence into their own lives? Dhawan has three suggestions. “One is to open yourself up to new ideas and people, spending 10 minutes a day reaching out,” she says, “whether it's listening to a TED talk or asking someone to help you solve a problem who thinks very differently from you. If you're a businessperson, maybe ask a scientist or an engineer or an artist.” She’s applying this in her own life by spending 10 minutes per day “broadening my perspective through a new source of news that I don't typically look at. If you’re a Wall Street Journal reader, maybe it's following three new hashtags. That's actually something I'm doing - one of my favorite ones right now is the #LikeAGirl hashtag, which came out during Super Bowl 2015.”
Second, says Dhawan, is “to invest in creating connections around issues you really care about. If you're a marathon runner, you might create meaningful connections with those who have passions and interests like you, and that could turn into business relationships.” She frequently asks herself, “How am I bringing my communities together?" She adds, “Whether it's through hosting small dinners or finding ways to make connections of individuals, I try to intentionally do that every week.”
Finally, she suggests leveraging what you already know, and thinking about “how other people can use it in a completely different way. Oftentimes, we have skills that we think are really mainstream in our industry, but that can be used in a profound way for an entirely different industry.” She cites one struggle of Colgate’s. “They were trying to get a new fluoride in their toothpaste and something was wrong with the mechanical flows,” says Dhawan. “They got all their best chemists working on it. No one could figure it out.” The problem, which they eventually solved through the website Innocentive, was ultimately solved by a physicist. “They thought it was a chemistry problem, but the reason the solution remained elusive was that it was a physics problem.” Sometimes bringing in an outside perspective is exactly what’s needed.
How are you creating connectional intelligence in your own life?
Dorie Clark is a marketing strategist who teaches at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. She is the author of Reinventing You and Stand Out, and you can receive her free Stand Out Self-Assessment Workbook.
