#514 Why the Best Networkers Don’t “Network” (And What They Do Instead) with Scott MacGregor, Founder of the Outlier Project

According to author and entrepreneur Keith Ferrazzi, developing fulfilling and mutually beneficial professional relationships, or successfully networking is crucial to career success. Becoming a prolific networker will give you a reputation for having good people skills, making it easier for you to gain positions managing others. Likewise, if you already know and get on well with company leaders, they may choose to do business with you rather than people they don’t know.

In Never Eat Alone, Ferrazzi gives tips on building and maintaining a professional network. Learn how to network with people who can help you achieve your goals; how to use conferences to network; and how to use social media to get new contacts to come to you.

Do you feel like the job market is changing faster than ever? Does job stability seem like a thing of the past? In The Startup of You, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and entrepreneur Ben Casnocha argue that to build a successful career in the modern world, you must approach your career as if it were a startup company—something that’s always growing and adapting. By applying principles of entrepreneurship to your career, you can overcome unexpected career obstacles and react quickly to opportunities.

In this guide, you'll learn about the changes to modern work and how to approach your career as if it were a startup company using three entrepreneurship tactics. We’ll supplement Hoffman and Casnocha’s strategies with those of other business professionals and provide suggestions on how to apply their strategies to your career.

Good leaders should be well-rounded, right? In Strengths Based Leadership, Tom Rath and Barry Conchie argue instead that the best leaders invest in their personal strengths while building a diverse team to fill in for their weaknesses. This way, each individual contributes unique strengths to create a well-rounded team.

Rath is a workplace researcher who spent more than a decade in charge of leadership consulting at Gallup, a business research and consulting company. Conchie is a business consultant and the former Senior Scientist for Gallup’s leadership consulting program. Together, they examine research on successful leaders and their teams from around the world and conclude that the best teams are those that maximize individual strengths. In this guide, we’ll compare Conchie and Rath’s strengths-based leadership approach to other leadership books, such as Jocko Willink’s Leadership Strategy and Tactics. We’ll also explore the nuances of Gallup’s strengths-focused philosophy and suggest actionables to help you maximize your strengths.

Defining moments are the small, meaningful moments that make our lives richer and give us fond memories to look back on. In The Power of Moments, brothers Chip and Dan Heath break down the elements of defining moments and teach you how to use them to make everyday experiences meaningful and memorable. You’ll learn how to elevate moments with delightful and deliberately random surprise, guide others to transformative truths, multiply your moments of celebration on your journey to a goal, and deepen your connections with the people around you.

In this guide, we’ll explore the psychological phenomena and developments of human nature that shape the Heaths’ ideas. We’ll also discuss ways you can meaningfully use the elements of defining moments in a range of settings and with an eye toward our rapidly changing and ever more tech-dependent world.

We love tales of geniuses and underdogs who rise to success through extraordinary talent and hard work—but this isn’t the whole story. In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell argues that these stories of supposedly self-made men and women mislead us into thinking that success is an individual achievement. But in reality, every successful person had circumstances that contributed to their success.

In this guide, we’ll explain why uncontrollable factors like when you’re born, how you’re raised, and the culture you grow up in impact your success just as much as personal attributes. We’ve also included commentary that adds context to the case studies, provides nuance to the principles, and offers alternative explanations for Gladwell’s conclusions.

Do you belong to a community you care about and want to improve? If not, have you ever wondered how to establish or join a new community? In either case, community expert Charles Vogl can help you achieve your goals with the advice in his 2016 book, The Art of Community. Vogl covers everything from the beginning stages of community development to the roles and responsibilities of community leaders.

In this guide, we’ll explain what a community is, explore some of the fundamental guidelines all communities should follow, and discuss Vogl’s advice for instituting a community meeting place and set of customs. Then, we’ll talk about how you can use lore, emblems, and mementos to enhance belonging within your community. Finally, we’ll discuss community growth, including best practices for incorporating new members and managing community ranks. In our commentary, we’ll explore other experts’ opinions about what makes a community worthwhile and how to make the most of your community experience.