What do people say, when they talk about you?

‘People talk to People’ Josephine Okui Ossiya said this during our In Her Element conversation, and then asked a question that stayed with me:

When people talk about you, what do they have to say?

It made me think about networks differently.

We often think of networking as something we need to go out and do. Meet new people. Attend events. Make connections.

But by this stage of our lives, many of us already have extraordinary networks. Former colleagues. Clients. Friends. People we studied with. People we worked alongside twenty years ago. People we helped. People who helped us. People we may not have spoken to for years. And they know other people. So, our relationships travel much further than we realise.

But so does our reputation.

Over time, people experience whether we show up. Whether we do what we say we will do. How we treat people. Whether we can be trusted. These things are built slowly, through hundreds of ordinary interactions. So perhaps, as we think about What next?, we shouldn't only ask: Who do I need to meet?

We should also ask: Who is already in my life? Which relationships might I tend more intentionally? And when people talk to people about me, what do they have to say?