On the CO2 Partners Blog, I’ve discussed Sharing Your Network and Gary Cohen has written about Triangulation. Triangulation happens when a Victim, Persecutor, and Rescuer enact an unhealthy dynamic that leads to a lot of hurt feelings and wasted effort. But not all triads are unhealthy.
Triads that arise out of sharing a network can boost your standing and lead to unexpected, rich opportunities for everyone. Keith Ferrazzi in Never Eat Alone and Dave Logan in Tribal Leadership devote a great number of pages to purposely developing these triads within your network. For example, you could introduce the Development Director at a local non-profit to a donor that has an interest in that specific mission. How about helping to develop relationships between departments within your own organization? Introduce somebody from the sales team to somebody on the service team. Help them build that relationship. As the team develops, they will most likely transition through the stages defined in the Tuckman Group Development Model of Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing.
Build a network of triads and watch as performance improves. Even if you don’t benefit directly from these improvements, you will over the long haul. The more introductions you make, the more introductions will be made for you.
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