Meaningful Connection II

Hi, everybody. Happy Monday for YouTube. I'll be in here really quick to finish out our conversation. Also hoping that I have my do not disturb said correctly. Everybody who can dial back in a couple of seconds to dial back in. Hello, nice to have you here. Hope you're having a beautiful Monday as you're joining in today. Similar to all my conversations, I'll simply invite everybody to take a breath. A slow, slow breath in little pies, little exhale. Just activating that breath allows us to reset our systems, reset our minds, to be present, to open up.

So today I had a bloop on my first stream. So I am doing a quick redo to finish up the conversation because we got partway in there and I'm just gonna capstone it and come back out. I do still have my trusted work advisor with me. He says hello, he's here for it always. So if you haven't been with me, my name is Jamie Jules. I'm really excited to be here. I am here on Sundays and Mondays and leading with authenticity is my main jam. But today we're focusing in on meaningful connections. So if you listen to part one of the conversation today, the purpose of meaningful connections is to really drive home intentionality with interactions.

And here's what I mean with that. And here's how it can look in a workspace. So having meaningful connections allows us the opportunity to get to know a little bit past that surface layer. So maybe we have interactions with people like I'm at a coffee shop to where we do a casual hello because we see familiar faces. But over time, sometimes that familiarity starts to break down and you have a conversation and you learn a little bit more about the human behind the counter or the human sitting next to you at a coffee shop or in the workplace, you start to get to know your colleagues a little bit more or a little more intentionally so.

When I think about networking, which was the topic of our conversation last weekend, and then I dive into meaningful connections in my mind, there's a really big difference. Say it that way. Networking is often time invested to get to know people for the purpose of a future work connection. There's nothing right or wrong about that. Oftentimes if you go to a networking event, they do speed networking, very short, brief interactions where you get to know the highlights of who people are and then you can choose who you want to follow up with next.

So in the essence of those connections, I would say a meaningful connection. Welcome back, Robert. I apologize for my disconnect, but I did love what you shared about meaningful connections, personal, purposeful conversation. So thank you for putting that out there. So as a follow up to my conversation that got cut short, I just want to take those meaningful actions a little bit farther, to dive into what I mean of it, but also learn what meaningful connections mean to you. So in the instance of going to an album event and let's say you do the speedmit networking activity that often happens at networking events, they kind of make my skin crawl a little bit.

But that's because I'm so focused on having a meaningful connection that sometimes those short, brief interactions just leave me feeling a little empty. But if I go into those speed networking events or activities and I get a few cards and I feel a spark with someone, what I do intentionally is I see if there's one, two, maybe three people that I want to invest in and learn a little bit more, maybe because there's something I can do to help that person and I want to connect them further, but I want to learn about them first.

Or maybe it's because there's something that maybe felt a little deeper. And so I was recently in a networking event and I found two people that I really wanted to have an exploration with. One person was a massage therapist. So I literally booked a massage the next week with that person and got to know them more so I could pay their story forward to other people. I work in fitness, it was one of my jobs. So having those connections are really important. The other person is somebody that just have really good energy and I knew that there was something that we could create or co create in the future.

So we have lunch or I think actually a coffee date set up for next week. Meaningful connections in the workplace. Let's go there for a second. In the time of today where people don't stay at their jobs for a really long time, maybe 10 years is considered a long time right now. But my brother, when he retired from his job at work, his job for almost 40 years, you don't hear about that often anymore. So when I think about meaningful connections, I think about the mentors that I've had, the people who invested time to get to know me beyond just the work that I did at previous jobs.

Those are the people who got to know who the human was at that work. They got to know about my family, they got to know about my passions, my interests. I got to know about theirs. So meaningful connections go a little layer deeper. And you're not going to have those with everybody. You're going to have them with a select group of People that probably see. See your work, see your purpose. The people that you can have an honest conversation with. Not just the ones that say, hey, you did great job, but ones that say, wow, you kind of missed the mark on that one.

How might we do better on the next one? And they say it in a way that doesn't make you feel like you just wrecked everything, you just blew up your career. They say it in the way that says an opens the door or opens the invitation to helping you improve and get better. And they partner with you on that. When I think about my past jobs, I used to work at Best Buy as one of my big corporate connections, and I think about my time spent there. I knew hundreds of people that I worked for, and there are probably a dozen people that on any given day, I can still connect with today, 15 years later, for a recommendation, an idea, connection, or they have hired me to come into their companies, even though the work that I'm doing today is different than the work that we did together.

They knew who I was as a human and they trust me and they followed my story, they followed my growth, and they have brought me in to do collaborations with them. Meaningful connections go beyond just the, can I put you as a reference on my resume for my next job? They go into the space of who can I call when I'm looking for something new? Who might call me when they're trying to do the same? A meaningful connection, if you're working in a job, is the first thing that you can reach out to. Say, hey, I'm beefing up my LinkedIn profile because I'm curious about opportunities that might be out there, or I just want to keep fresh.

Would you write me a recommendation? And they would say yes. And they would ask you, how do you want me to focus that recommendation? And you might have that conversation. That meaningful connection is someone who sees not just who you are today, but sees what your potential might look like. So when I invite in the conversation of meaningful connection, what does that mean to you? How does it make you feel? I read a book a while ago. It's got an orange book cover. Trying to think of the name really quick.

And then it will come to, because they always do. But inside there, they also talked about meaningful connections. And they used a nice visual. They used a three circle approach. So inner circle, second circle, third circle. And when you think about meaningful connections and you think about circles, who would you put in that inner circle? And that inner circle would be defined by people that you might talk to on a weekly Basis or a monthly basis. People that really know you that. That if you have a question or you need some honest, real feedback, you can call them today.

So if I think about somebody in Cadre who would be in the inner circle, I would say JC I've known him for a long time. We've done podcasts together. We may not always work together, but our circles have kind of always intersected at different points in our career paths over the last 15 years. And so he would be someone that I would say would be in my inner circle, in my next ring would be people that I might want to connect with once a quarter, people who I may not need to interact with every single day, but people whose relationships I value enough that once a quarter I might schedule a virtual call or maybe a coffee date or lunch that I want to say connected with, who might be somebody today for me that I would put into that circle.

I might put Luke in that circle. Somebody that you might guys might know. Luke is somebody that you could connect with here on Cadre, and he's someone that every time I see him, we have great conversations, but he's not somebody that I talk to often. I'm still getting to know him, but somebody I'd want to connect with would be a really great example of somebody that wants a quarter I want to spend time with. Now I'm using examples of people that are on Cadre because they're people that you would see on here as well.

I would have other examples I might have in my quarterly connect, six to eight of them. It's not a lot. It's not a hundred people. It's very intentional. And then in the outer ring, it would be people that maybe I connect with on an annual basis. So I have one of those people I worked with. His name is Paul Dunn. Beautiful, kind human being. Was one of my mentors when I worked at Best Buy. He got me through some really hard times and he had some really hard conversations with me, which was exactly what I needed.

And I never once reported to him, but he was the person that I could go to that could help me get through job transitions. He's the person that I could rely on when I was thinking about a new idea, going to get a graduate degree. So we are on our once a year connect. I literally reached out to him just the other day and said, hey, I'm thinking about you because there's an opportunity I think you might be really good fit for. And we haven't talked for a long time. So he's my once a year person. I also have a guy that I've contracted with and done consulting work through.

And we joke every January. It's our once a year connect. So every January, like clockwork, one or the other of us will reach out and we will have a connection. Now, we've oftentimes floated into quarterly connections or monthly connections, but religious things. Here's my January connection and we have great conversation. I'm reminded of people that are in my circle that if I ever needed anything that I could reach out to those people. Meaningful connections. These are the people that you've invested time at some point getting to know just beyond the space.

The people that will have that hard conversation with you, but also the people that have celebrated your successes. So I would love to hear your reactions to part one earlier today, but also this deeper dive into what a meaningful connection is and how you might engage with them. Do you have meaningful connections? Do you have an inner circle, a second tier and a third tier that you can connect with that let's say you do get laid out from your job or lose your contract before you are ready to. Or maybe you jump into retirement, but you're not ready to be retired.

Who are those people that you would call. Who are those people that can help you make that next leap of faith into whatever that next opportunity might look like? So if you dialed back in for round two today, thank you. And if you've listened to either part one or part two today, what do you think? Tell me more. So I'm going to change my topic for next Monday to be an expansion of meaningful connections again to do some activations with those connections. Give us a conversation how we might actively engage with our meaningful connections.

In the meantime, there's some great people on the rest of today. There's some great opportunities to create some new connections and new learnings this week on Audrey. So I look forward to seeing you out there listening in together. Have the best day, Robert. I'll see you. Hopefully bump into you in Minneapolis one day soon.