Hah. As someone who is really focusing a lot on networking and sales, and asking people to help me to get to know more people, I've been thinking about this a lot lately.
I don't see this as a binary yes/no. It would really depend.
One degree, sure.
I would want to at least chat a bit with a two degree before I considered passing them on. I might well also add a low-grade disclaimer so it's clear whether or not it's someone I am vouching for- 'hey, this acquaintance is interested in X; don't know him/her terribly well/haven't actually worked with him directly, but she seems like she might be interesting to talk to.'
If they annoyed me or I didn't see some possible value to passing them on to BOTH parties, I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to casually waste the time of my connections. That's definitely a reputation risk.
I also factor in who they want to talk to- if it's someone I consider to be professionally very high-value (i.e., someone who gets asked for things a lot, because they have control over resources), I'm not going to do it unless I am reasonably confident it will be helpful to that person. I mean, I try to do that for everyone, but there are people I am super careful with.
There is the professional reputation issue, but there is also something to be said for paying it forward in networking as well. I guess I actually visualize those relationships as less linear and more, hm, almost radial? Or at least branching and multi-layered.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2016-10-16 01:30 pm (UTC)I don't see this as a binary yes/no. It would really depend.
One degree, sure.
I would want to at least chat a bit with a two degree before I considered passing them on. I might well also add a low-grade disclaimer so it's clear whether or not it's someone I am vouching for- 'hey, this acquaintance is interested in X; don't know him/her terribly well/haven't actually worked with him directly, but she seems like she might be interesting to talk to.'
If they annoyed me or I didn't see some possible value to passing them on to BOTH parties, I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to casually waste the time of my connections. That's definitely a reputation risk.
I also factor in who they want to talk to- if it's someone I consider to be professionally very high-value (i.e., someone who gets asked for things a lot, because they have control over resources), I'm not going to do it unless I am reasonably confident it will be helpful to that person. I mean, I try to do that for everyone, but there are people I am super careful with.
There is the professional reputation issue, but there is also something to be said for paying it forward in networking as well. I guess I actually visualize those relationships as less linear and more, hm, almost radial? Or at least branching and multi-layered.