You are a mashup of who you let into your life
creating your developmental network
I love the meme that I have seen in various forms that asserts
“You are a mashup of the five people you most let into your life.” Here’s one version from the podcaster Tim Ferriss:
The basic idea is that we are social animals and what we believe and how we act is highly dependent on the people we associate with most. We come to think, speak, and act like the people we spend time with, even if we don’t intend to. It’s why parents get anxious about who their kids play with - your kid is going to come to share the values, beliefs, and behaviors of the kids she is allowed to play with (I say “she” because I have all girls). But this is true of us, even as adults. Our brains adapt to our environment. So if you have a lazy, negative, unambitious, disorganized friend with whom you spend a lot of time… guess what? They are dragging you down, making you a worse version of you if you aren’t careful.
While you can easily allow negative influences into your life, you can also seek out influences that will challenge you and raise you up. If you are lucky, some of those people are in your closest circles - family, spouse, close friends. Family is tricky because you don’t get to choose them. That’s a relationship you have to manage. I’m lucky to have my father nearby, who I can call any time for help around the house, because he can fix anything. Also, I have his example of having come up from nothing to being a very successful doctor. If you have a spouse, I hope you carefully chose her or him. I have always known that being around TLW (The Lovely Wife) makes me a better person. It’s part of why I asked her to marry me. I have a few close friends who I look to for their example and advice. I have a couple of coworkers whom I admire and seek to spend time with whenever I can because I want to emulate their way of thinking and their accomplishments. I can now add some of the members of my jiu-jitsu community who I also admire for their accomplishments and leadership and who are helping me become a better practitioner and through that, a better person.
All of these people are positive influences in my life. Some are closer and some are a little more removed, but all of them make me better for being there. Kathy Kram, who I interviewed for the FITW podcast, calls these people your developmental network. These are the people who are in your orbit who care about you and want you to grow. If you listened to the podcast (which you should if you have not), you would know that Kathy launched the academic study of mentorship in the workplace back in the early 80’s. Mentorship is a dyadic relationship, and it is important, but over her career she came to appreciate that having a mentor was not universal and not sufficient, especially in a dynamic world of work where people are changing jobs frequently, technology is evolving, and as ever, the economy is always picking winners and losers among firms. It’s nice if you can have a mentor who can meet many of your developmental needs, but having a developmental network is better. Instead of relying on one person to meet all your needs, you can have a group of people who can each meet some of your needs. Building a developmental network, which can include mentor(s), is a better way of ensuring redundancy and access to advice when you need it.
Kathy provided me this graphic to help analyze your developmental network. This is part of an exercise at elucidating your developmental network. Her instructions were:
“Group your developers into the social arena in which you interact most frequently, often this is where you first met (e.g., work, home, community, professional association, college, graduate school). Label each box with a social arena (it’s alright if you have fewer than four!), then place your developers’ initials on the map in terms of closeness to you.”
As the instructions indicate, you can have fewer or more than four.
I think an important question, as you start to think about your developmental network is, what are you trying to become and accomplish? I’ve written over the last couple of weeks about having a vision for your life and trying to find your calling. Those are both work-centric, but not everything in life is centered around work. I’ve shared with you my weekly goals, which include, broadly three categories:
Physical fitness
Professional development
Artistic
Another way of organizing my developmental network would be to think about who can and does help me with each of these three ongoing developmental goals. So instead of having the blocks identify the social arena, I could label the blocks for each macro goal. And then I could reflect on who is helping me with my fitness goals, who is helping with professional development, and who is helping with my artistic ambitions. For “professional”, I would probably subdivide my boxes into teaching, research, and networking. You could likewise subdivide your macro goals. Too many categories will make the graphic messy, but it’s just meant to help you think, so if it gets messy, maybe have a separate bullseye diagram for each macro goal. The important part of the exercise is to think about who is currently helping you, and figure out if you need to look for more help.
You have some control over who you let into your life. Maybe not family, but friends, coworkers, and certainly your spouse. You have agency over these things and it’s important to exercise it. Using an exercise like Kram’s bullseye diagram can help you to do a gap analysis - to discover if you are missing people you need and to fill a gap. It can help you build your developmental network so that you can become a better mashup - a better version of yourself.