Today, it happened again. A colleague called and said that he tried to join another networking group. This group promoted itself as a mastermind network group. Unfortunately in his discussion with most of the members, they agreed that the group didn't meet their needs. TRANSALATION: Business was not coming easy and required some work.

Every week as a business coach. I experience this same scenario and others. Such as the business person who approached me at a networking event and said that he or she could use my services. I was then asked to give a call the following week. Upon making the call and informing the gatekeeper that I was returning a call, I was told that the person wasn't available and didn't require my services at this time. In several of these cases, I had opportunities to provide additional referrals, but the so busy business person lost. A benefit that I found within this encounters was identifying prospects that I truly do not want as clients.

Networking opportunites abound for people from Fast Pitch Networking to Business Networking International. Additionally, there are countless chambers, civic and professional organizations that serve as vehicles to achieve networking goals. Unfortunately, most people fail to address the one obstacle that is keeping them from incredible networking success.

Several years ago at a national conference, I saw a graphic from the speaker, David Herdlinger, that visually demonstrated this obstacle. For years performance experts, education specialists and organizational consultants recognized that knowledge, skills and attitudes affected performance and hence the success of the individual or business. David had taken this challenge and reconfigured it into a way that would make more sense for people. He placed the letters KSA into a quadrant. The upper boxes contained the letters K for knowledge and A for attitudes. In the lower left hand box was the letter S for Skills. To complete the quadrant, he added the letter H for Habits in the lower right hand corner. Now the letters K.A.S.H. fitted neatly into a box and a new tool - the K.A.S.H. Box - was developed.

The purpose of this K.A.S.H. Box was to show that more often than not poor attitudes and habits contributed as much if not more so to performance failure or success. Yet, individuals spend most of their resources developing knowledge and skills by joining countless networking organiza

tions and fail to develop the necessary attitudes and habits for networking success.

After listening to this dynamic presentation, I expanded David's concept to help even reach more individuals by constructing the K.A.S.H. Box for Sustainable Change. Since the purpose of cash boxes is to hold the daily productivity as measured by change, I placed a large rectangular box under the quadrant. When cash is spent on the left side of the K.A.S.H. Box without investing cash on the right side, the money is not reinvested into the individual, but is drained away. Hence, a negative return on investment happens. When focusing on both sides of the K.A.S.H. Box, the efforts are reinvested into the change drawer and sustainable change happens.

Furthermore within this box, I identified that the left side(Knowledge and Skills) is all about learning - the acquisition of knowledge. While the right side (Attitudes and Habits) is all about performing - the application of knowledge. The question is not whether an individual knows something, but rather does that individual want to do something?

So the next time you enter that networking event, ask yourself this question: Will my success be because of my knowledge or skills or because of my positive attitudes and habits?

Your success in networking will directly proportional to your daily positive attitudes and habits that you clearly demonstrate to everyone. P.S. Having a written plan wouldn't hurt either.

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