You should have the ability to build relations for your success in life in general. From my experience, relationships are everything! I would not succeed in reaching out to the head of the biggest private sector companies to solicit their support for my idea and my direction to hold a totally new kind of events in my country and convinced them to sponsor this event without having strong mix of skills; networking skills are the most important among them.
Building relations is somehow easy as long as you have the key networking skills but maintaining those relations and connections are really the difficult part.
First of all I had the ability to identify who is important to build a relation with. This importance emerged from the contributions those parties will add to your work, study or whatever you are doing in life. Every contact matters in this formula, as this contact may lead you to another one who might be more important and more capable of helping you in your destination.
The second important issue is how to keep a long term relationships. From my experience during university and working life, the most interesting secrets behind keeping a long term relations are:
- Being positive and ready to give as much as you can: If you started with helping others, others will help you in return mostly.
- Respecting my connections' commitments and time: During my role as a sponsorship team leader, I used to depend more on emails as a tool of communication with the decision makers within sponsor's entities since it's faster for both parties. When urgently needed for face to face meetings, I used to arrange for maximum 10 minutes meetings and be well prepared, direct and clear regarding the purpose of this meeting and the desired results of the meeting.
- Being appreciative for having this relation and thankful.
- Keeping a continuous contact with important connections even after the completion of your work together.
One more example from my working life regarding the importance of connections, I managed to achieve more than fifty percent saving in the transportation costs for one of the humanitarian projects I managed because of the help and support of former colleagues who direct me to the key and biggest transportation service providers in the local market. We went through a very competitive bidding process that ended up with a competitive deal. The savings out of this deal was used by the project management in implement other useful activities for the project direct beneficiaries.
If I managed to be a CHEVENING scholar, I will spare no effort trying to build real and true relationships, starting from the university campus including students and teachers up to the most important organizations that support and believe in building and developing my country.
Building relations is somehow easy as long as you have the key networking skills but maintaining those relations and connections are really the difficult part.
First of all I had the ability to identify who is important to build a relation with. This importance emerged from the contributions those parties will add to your work, study or whatever you are doing in life. Every contact matters in this formula, as this contact may lead you to another one who might be more important and more capable of helping you in your destination.
The second important issue is how to keep a long term relationships. From my experience during university and working life, the most interesting secrets behind keeping a long term relations are:
- Being positive and ready to give as much as you can: If you started with helping others, others will help you in return mostly.
- Respecting my connections' commitments and time: During my role as a sponsorship team leader, I used to depend more on emails as a tool of communication with the decision makers within sponsor's entities since it's faster for both parties. When urgently needed for face to face meetings, I used to arrange for maximum 10 minutes meetings and be well prepared, direct and clear regarding the purpose of this meeting and the desired results of the meeting.
- Being appreciative for having this relation and thankful.
- Keeping a continuous contact with important connections even after the completion of your work together.
One more example from my working life regarding the importance of connections, I managed to achieve more than fifty percent saving in the transportation costs for one of the humanitarian projects I managed because of the help and support of former colleagues who direct me to the key and biggest transportation service providers in the local market. We went through a very competitive bidding process that ended up with a competitive deal. The savings out of this deal was used by the project management in implement other useful activities for the project direct beneficiaries.
If I managed to be a CHEVENING scholar, I will spare no effort trying to build real and true relationships, starting from the university campus including students and teachers up to the most important organizations that support and believe in building and developing my country.