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What is a connector? It’s somebody who is relationship focused in their interactions and in their approach to life, to people, to business. What is the connector’s advantage? Very simple. Faster, easier, better. Whatever you’re working on, whatever your goals are, getting there faster, easier, and better. That’s the connector’s advantage.
But you’re not a connector or not a connector. There’s an entire spectrum. There’s very few people out there that are non-connectors, true non-connectors, people who don’t believe in the value of relationships and are so socially adverse that they really are not out there making connections. Most of us are at least emerging connectors. Emerging connectors are people who are starting to embody the mindsets, the behaviors, the attributes of connectors.
When we think about the way a connector does things, what they’re doing is enabling connection to form, strengthen, and last. They’re doing some of it, but they’re in a kind of really testing out, trying out. It’s not coming naturally to them, but they recognize the value and they’re building a skill in it. Actually, I always think about my husband. He might kill me for this. But when I first met him in his mid twenties, he was an emerging connector. He went to business school and wasn’t starting conversations, wasn’t initiating conversations in those environments. He was relying on all those around him to keep a conversation going, and he was physically present, but not really present. But he was emerging. He was there. Right? He was being social and curious, which is one of the mindsets. He was putting himself in a position to connect.
As he grew in his career, he became a responsive connector. A responsive connector is somebody who starts, to respond to requests to connect. They respond to requests for favors or assistance. They’re happy to do it and see the value in it, but they’re not initiating it. And we think about coming up the connector spectrum, there’s two criteria. One is our likelihood to initiate or respond to these connection requests and these favor requests, and the other is our breadth and depth of connection. So when we kind of increase those things, we’re moving our way up.
Once we get to the place of an acting connector, we are regularly incorporating these aspects. We’re regularly maybe initiating a little bit, responding a little bit. We’re doing both. We just haven’t maybe gotten the breadth and depth of our connections, but we’re acting. And you know what? This could be all you need to do. This is as far as maybe a lot of people need to get on that spectrum. But the higher up on the spectrum you get, the better the advantage becomes. Faster, easier, better.
The next level up when we start to have a breadth or depth of connections, would be a niche connector. This is about having that depth within a certain area. It could be a geographic region. It could be an industry. It could be a job function. My sister’s a great example. She knows everybody in real estate law in the state of New Jersey. It is a niche, and she hasn’t broadened, and that’s great for what she does. So a niche connector, sometimes also called a regional connector if it’s a geographic niche. Great place to be.
Now we’re going up a little bit further. We have not just a depth, but a breadth. And this is when we think about diversifying and expanding our connections. To be a super connector, we need to break out of the similar-to-me bias and the law of similarity of liking people like us. If you really want to have a generous spirit and if you really want to be open and accepting and if you really want to be able to, play in this world of connector, expanding and diversifying your connections is going to enable you to help more people because you have more access to all the different ways in which people know people and know things.
So all the way at the top of the spectrum is the global super connector, and that just means that’s somebody who knows that breadth and depth beyond your own country’s borders.