20 Behaviors for Strong Network Culture and “Net Effects”

Curtis Ogden

Senior Associate

“… Keep reaching out, keep bringing in.
This is how we are going to live for a long time: not always,
for every gardener knows that after the digging, after the planting,
after the long season of tending and growth, the harvest comes.”
–Marge Piercy, from “The Seven of Pentacles”

Over the past fifteen years, we’ve written various posts on this blog about the many benefits networks can offer the people in them. Networks can inspire us, support us, and help us build new skills. They can give us greater access to information, funding, and other resources. They can offer greater systemic or environmental awareness, pull us out of isolation and make us a part of something larger, and amplify our voice and efforts. And they can bring new partnerships and projects we couldn’t have started alone.

It is also true, however, that not every network or network activity creates all or even most of these effects and outcomes. In other posts, we have looked at a couple of factors that shape whether networks are able to deliver robust value to individual participants and the collective, including how the network is structured and the form that leadership takes. Networks are by no means a “cure all” to social and environmental issues and can easily exacerbate social inequities and extractive practice. That’s why values certainly have a place, as does paying close attention to dynamics of power and privilege.

Individual and collective behavior on a day-to-day basis also has a lot of influence on what networks can create. Here is a list of twenty behaviors for you to consider as part of your network-weaving practice:

1. Weave connections and “close triangles”. Closing triangles means introducing people to one another, as opposed to networking for one’s own self – creating a mesh or distributed structure rather than a hub-and-spoke structure with you at the center.
2. Create connections across boundaries/dimensions of difference. Invite and promote diversity in the network, which can contribute to resilience and innovation.
3. Promote and pay attention to equity throughout the network. Equity here includes ensuring everyone has access to the resources and opportunities that can improve the quality of life and learning. Equity impact assessments are one helpful tool on this front.
4. Conduct a “mattering audit,” formally or informally, asking “Who is feeling like they are left out/unseen-unheard?” Then reach out!
5. Think, learn, and work out loud, in the company of others or through virtual means. This contributes to the abundance of resources and learning in the network.
6. Don’t hoard or be a bottleneck. Keep information and other resources flowing in the network.
7. Stay curious and ask questions. Draw out other people’s values, knowledge (spoken and unspoken), and other strengths.
8. Make ongoing generous offers to others, including services, information, connections.
9. Be a matchmaker who helps to connect needs and offers throughout the network.
10. Practice good listening. In particular, listen for values, needs, assets, potential, patterns, and themes.
11. Identify and circulate underutilized strengths and excess capacity in the network.
12. Promote others and their work.
13. Express authentic appreciation of others.
14. Share credit with others.
15. Embrace shared responsibility for success.
16. Create and use platforms (in-person convenings and virtual sites) that allow people to find one another, create new connections, match interests/offers with needs, and share information freely.
17. Curate information and data to make it more accessible, attractive, and digestible.
18. Support, encourage, and practice self-organization (letting people organize their own work and decisions, rather than directing it from the top).
19. Celebrate small and large successes and key developments along the way.
20. Get comfortable with chaos. Most networks thrive at the edge of what can feel like disorder, at least compared to more formal and hierarchical organizations. Enjoy the exhilarating ride!

Reflect on which of these behaviors you and others in your network, organization, community, and/or networked activities already demonstrate and which you do not.

Which behaviors might you start practicing more intentionally and what might be the benefit of doing so?

What additional behaviors would you add to the list?