Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Hidden Rules of the Game

The other day my husband mentioned that a new person had attended their "in the garage," (read, man cave) ever-so-often, poker game. He said that he doubted this new person would ever be invited back. I couldn't imagine why that would be so. After all, there is plenty of belching and f__ting going on during the play. Oh no, it was not rude behavior. No, the rule broken, was that this newbie won. Yep, you got it, he took their money.

I guess there is an unspoken rule that you don't do that when you are new. I don't know what you do when you're having a winning streak, but I guess you're just supposed to play badly. But no one clued this person in to the secret.

Which takes me to my favorite topic - networking! Think of the organizations you belong to. What do they do to help your visitors know the secrets of the meeting? What riddles do your guests need to solve in order to be part of the "in" group? Do you banish these visitors when they don't follow code or do you help them?

In my world, the definition of networking is helping others to feel comfortable. What's yours in relation to the above story?

2 comments:

Leanne said...

Your post on the poker game is funny and inspiring. I can see it happening! Not that I think about networking anymore being a full time mom now, but after all the volunteer work I do, I totally agree with you and I realized reading your post that building up trust with people is super important to gain their support in whatever endeavour I'm up to.
Thanks for morning food for thought.
Leanne from Canada
http://familystylehikingbc.blogspot.com/

Debby said...

Leanne, thanks for the comment. In all facets of our lives we network; personal, volunteer and business. And in my opinion the volunteer world probably relies on networking more than anything to be successful achieving the mission of the organization.