Page 141 - Free Yourself From

124 It’s Not a Glass Ceiling, It’s a Sticky Floor

It’s easy to get bogged down with just getting the everyday work
done, but this restricts your view. You get entirely caught up in the
short term and forget to spend any time on your long-term goals,
future challenges, or opportunities. Operating this way also curtails
your network. You may keep in contact with the people who are
important to the here and now, and let all others fall by the wayside.
But if you wait to reach out at the time you need something, then you
send a message that you’re not good at relationship building and you
can make people feel that they are being taken advantage of.
Having strong relationships that are strategic can bring so much
value to people’s life and work. With the right relationships, you can
do just about anything you set out to do and in return can help oth-
ers around you to do the same. It takes 18 months or more to develop
a meaningful relationship—the kind of relationship where you can
reach out and ask someone to be a key sponsor or a mentor.
Start today. If you usually eat lunch at your desk, or were plan-
ning to bring this book down to the company cafeteria, don’t. Shoot
an e-mail to a colleague you’re overdue to check in with or are eager
to know better and ask if they’re free to grab a sandwich. You just
don’t know where it might lead.