How to Make an Immediate Impact

• You’re lucky. You’re a fast starter. Your natural instincts cause you to reach out and connect with your new colleagues. Your genuine interest in them will doubtless endear you to them. So begin by letting these instincts run.

• Start building your own private “scouting report” on your new network. For each person, capture what you’ve learned about his or her particular area of expertise or interest or experience, and your initial thoughts about where he or she adds the greatest value to the team.

• Find an opportunity to surprise a colleague with how useful your network is. Most people don’t continually add people to their mental list of potential resources and so won’t have many people whom they can call on to help them get something done or solve a problem. But you do. So as soon as you can find the right situation, pull out your “Rolodex” and offer just the right person or expert who can help solve a pressing problem.

• Once you feel you’ve had the chance to display your resourcefulness, it will be time to flex your “possibility-thinking” muscles. (Don’t try this before you’ve established your credibility or others may reject your ideas as presumptuous.) What’s powerful about you is that the possibilities you see in your head are not theoretical. Instead you think in terms of practical realities, as in “Let’s put this person with that person and then focus them on this particular project.” Your ideas might not necessarily be accepted immediately, but persevere. Keep offering up these “what-if” scenarios. Soon your colleagues will come to rely on you as a source of practical ideas.

• Be sure to target these “what-if” ideas toward solving existing problems rather than creating something utterly new. People tend to be immediately grateful to problem solvers. And, in contrast, people are initially suspicious of innovators.

• Always keep your social networking platforms up-to-date with fresh and vivid content. You’re inclined to do this anyway, but sometimes, as with all of us, the other demands in your life distract you. As the Connector amongst us, we will come to rely on you to maintain the web of our relationships. (If keeping three or four platforms up to date proves too much of a time drain, configure one platform so that it updates all the others.)