It Takes a Network

A review of Eric Motley's Madison Park

In 2005, Eric Motley decided to leave his job at the White House, where he worked as Deputy Associate Director of the Office of Presidential Personnel. Like all departing White House staffers, Eric had an opportunity to pose for a photo with his boss, George W. Bush, to mark the end of his tenure.

Typically, staffers pose for these photos with a spouse or parent. But various circumstances prompted Eric to break with tradition in a unique way. In the official photograph that documents Eric's time in the White House — he'd been the Bush Administration's youngest appointee when he started in 2001 — Eric stands alongside the President. But he's also flanked by four key mentors from his college years and his time at the White House.

Anyone who has read my book The Startup of You and its I^We philosophy, or how "an individual's power is raised exponentially with the help of a team," will understand why Eric's photograph resonates with me. In a moment designed to commemorate individual achievement, Eric chose to recognize the role that others had played in his success.

I know Eric from his work as the Executive Vice President and Corporate Secretary of the Aspen Institute. In my interactions with Eric it was readily apparent he possessed well-honed relationship-building skills and a high degree of what I call network literacy. Madison Park makes it clear that these are skills he's been cultivating his entire life.

In America, the idea of the self-made man is a major motif. But even with individuals who fit that description, relationships are often just as crucial as talent and character. Who we spend time with helps define who we are, what we value, and what opportunities we pursue.

In Madison Park, Eric makes this fact clear. Born in 1972 to an unwed teenage mother, Eric grew up in modest circumstances in Madison Park, a small town near Montgomery, Alabama that was founded by freed slaves in 1880.

"Looking back, I didn't simply 'grow up.' I was raised," Eric writes.

This uplift was provided first and foremost by his grandparents George and Mossy Motley, who became his legal guardians, but also by community members and teachers.

When he got low marks in reading in the first grade, members of his church brought books and magazines to his family's home to give him more material to practice on.

When Eric was in high school, his grandfather used to drive him to downtown Montgomery three nights a week for a YMCA youth development program. To ensure that they always had enough fuel for these trips, a neighbor used to surreptitiously siphon gas from his car into their car; Eric only learned about his generosity years later.

Obviously, the people who took an interest in Eric saw something in his particular attributes and abilities that made them reach out to him. But what makes his story instructive is how receptive he was to the value of mentorship and relationship-building.

Eric understood how experienced and influential elders could help him channel and amplify his abilities and interests, and sought out opportunities to make himself discoverable to such people.

In high school, he participated in leadership and citizenship programs that ultimately earned him a trip to Washington, DC and a chance to meet Vice President Dick Cheney. At Samford University, he got involved in student government, and thus created more opportunities to connect with the school's president, Dr. Thomas Corts, who ended up becoming a key mentor to him.

In the pages of Madison Park, Eric frames different stages of his life not so much through the lens of his own accomplishments, or some grand master plan he'd concocted. Instead, he focuses primarily on relationships and the impact others had on him — broadening his horizons, steering him toward new paths to follow.

People often feel strange about pursuing new connections or friendships with the explicit intention of strengthening their networks — because they worry that the intentional aspect of this process feels manipulative. In reality, though, relationship-building is about finding mutual points of interest, building real trust, and taking the time to learn how each party can be more useful to the other. The goal is to create a more productive and mutually reciprocal relationship.

In this context, professional and social platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook play an obvious role. While nothing can take the place of face-to-face interactions, digital tools like these can make it easier to strengthen and maintain relationships over time, especially when people begin to use them proactively rather than reactively.

Still, many people continue to under-invest in developing their networks, and fail to appreciate how much impact relationships and alliances can have over the course of their careers.

As a result, they don't look for ways to make strategic new connections, but instead hope for serendipity to strike. They don't fully utilize the network intelligence they could gather from their strongest allies by regularly seeking their counsel. They fail to act in ways that would make themselves more useful to their existing connections.

That's why it's so satisfying to see stories like Eric's, and why that photo of Eric, his mentors, and President George W. Bush is so instructive.

Often, "networking" is presented as a superficial activity — making rote connections with strangers at conferences who might conceivably be useful in some way some day. But while this sort of transactional approach will certainly help you build a nice collection of business cards, it probably won't lead to the kind of meaningful alliances that can transform your life and career.

What the photo of Eric and his mentors suggests is that they established a much more significant bond than that.

Indeed, the fact that he valued their personal investment in him is just half of the story. The other half is that when he invited them to his photo event with the President, they all showed up. Clearly, it wasn't just that they'd been important to him. He'd been important to them too — so much so that they wanted to be there to share in his moment of glory.

That sort of mutual respect and reciprocity is at the heart of all enduring alliances. And it vividly reinforces how Eric's relationship-oriented approach to life, which he captures so well in Madison Park, is a model that everyone can learn from.