Networking Unleashed: Building Profitable Connections. An Interview with Paul Thornton and Michael A Forman
- mforman521
- Nov 6
- 22 min read
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Welcome to Networking Unleashed, building Profitable Connections, the show where we uncover how powerful relationships drive powerful results. I'm your host, Michael Foreman, and today we're diving into the intersection of leadership and networking. Two forces, one combined can transform careers and organizations.
My guest is an expert in leadership styles, leadership leading change, and developing the skills that separate good leaders from great ones. We'll explore how leadership style shapes the way you connect, how to use your network to navigate change, and why the best leaders are also the best relationship builders.
If you've ever wanted to expand your influence guide people through transition and build a network that works as hard as you do, this conversation is for you. I'd like to introduce to all of my listeners Paul Thornton, and he is the expert that I'm talking about. Paul, how are you? Welcome to the podcast and give us a little bit about your background.
Okay. Thank you, Michael, first of all, for having me on. I have worked roughly 20 years in a large corporation. I worked in a variety of settings. I was on the leadership team in several profit centers within this company, so I got a firsthand look at the way leaders operated and made change happen, and built teams and managed performance and things like that.
I also have about 20 years working as a professor at a university or college teaching management and leadership. So I have a lot of the theories of leadership and also some actual practice being a leader. I've had people reporting to me. I also coached a hockey team for four years that gave me some real life leadership experience.
And also I always say being a parent or grandparent is also a leadership role. And so that's another angle to look at it. You're absolutely right. Being a grandfather myself, I understand that wholeheartedly. And that of course adds your practicality of your leadership roles because your leadership roles with your grandchildren and corporate may be slightly different, but you have to attack it the same way.
Okay. Okay. So how does a leader's style influence the way they build and sustain professional relationships? I think leaders are always looking at two things, the task or the work that needs to get done and the relationships that they need to build to make it happen. So those two things are really important, but I think leaders.
Build strong, positive, engaging relationships with people to start with. They get a chance to understand the person, the goals, their ambitions, their wants and needs, and then they, manage them or lead them in a way that connects to. What they wanna achieve as well as what the company wants to achieve.
So they try to weave those things together and make it happen. I think leaders too, they're always building their network. So when they have needs and problems that arise down the road, they have a group of people they can contact and say, I got this problem with a.
Demotivated person, what would you advise or what would you do in this situation? So their network helps them provide advice and guidance and ideas. You might not always agree with someone in your network, but you can get some ideas from them about, who knows, strategic planning, building teams, merging with another company.
It's it depends on the situation, obviously. Yeah. And that, that's true. You don't want yes men around you. You want somebody that can give you actual information and you decide you have to always go with your gut. But, if you get oh you know what I didn't think about that.
Or maybe I should attack it like this. Because I found that, or the people that I coach the leaders are really training. Other leaders. And they have to teach them to think like that because if they can't think on their own, then they're really not worth their salt. So that's why I think. Yep. Okay. So in Times of change, what role does networking play in helping leaders guide their teams and organizations effectively? I think the first thing in leading change is you have to diagnose the current situation. What's happening, what's working well, what are the biggest problems what do the numbers tell you about what's going?
And I think having a network or a group of people that you can go to and get their advice and their opinions. It helps you get a complete full picture of what's happening. And you're right, some people surround themselves, some leaders surround themselves with yes people, and that doesn't help them get a full, complete picture of really what's going on.
So I think it starts there and sometimes some leaders I find, go to the same one or two people all the time to get their input. Sometimes you gotta think about, I need to change it up a bit. I need to make sure I'm going to the right people. That could mean the right customers, the right suppliers, the right employees.
Each situation is unique, but you gotta figure out who can give me, who can help me understand the current situation. Before I even begin the change process, the next step I think in the change process is what idea or what changes are you gonna pursue? I find leaders always have a laundry list of things they like to do, and some of them try to do way too much.
They're doing 18 different things at once. It gets confusing and people don't know what the priorities are and it's just, it's too much. So what are the one or two things I'm gonna focus in on and pursue? And again, getting advice from your network can help. You might not always, you, the leader might not always have the clear.
Precise answer of what direction, or what idea or what proposal you should be pursuing. So getting a little other points of view can be helpful. Third point I think is presenting your message to the right people. Just like the investor, just like the entrepreneurs on Shark Tank, they're presenting their idea.
To the sharks to get them to invest, the leader has to present his idea or her idea to the right people to get them to buy in. So they gotta be able to explain it really clearly and succinctly, and they have to be able to convince the people that this idea is a winner. It's going to help me, it's gonna improve the team or the organization or whatever.
So that's important. And then the fourth step is plan and implement. Any type of change, any type of new thing you're doing, you gotta have a plan. And the plan's gotta lay out all the steps and actions that will be taken to implement what it is you're gonna do. So that's a quick synopsis, but the theme, I think that runs through all of those.
Involving others, meaning involving your network, getting feedback from them at each step in the process to help them or their information will help you get clearer in your thinking and the steps that you're gonna take to achieve your goals. Absolutely. And what would you say to, if you're a C-Suite executive, let's say, and one of your managers has a problem with the company, whatever, what would you say to them on how they should react to their manager or employee with that?
Now, before you answer my. Answer was always, if you have a problem, bring me a solution. Bring me a solution with the problem and we'll discuss it. But if you don't have a solution, if you're just here to complain, I don't want to hear it. So how do you feel about that? I was also taught that by my manager who said the same thing, don't just bring me problems.
And that's true I think a lot of the time. But I think sometimes you legitimately don't know what the solution or possible solutions might be, and you need someone to go to who's a little bit more seasoned and more experienced and maybe they've had a similar problem. Now you can come in, hopefully you can come in with at least some ideas you've thought about.
You can't quite, nail it down in terms of what would be the best approach or solution to pursue. So that's the way I would advise it, that, some, sometimes let the person come in and, spill their guts and explain the problem they're having and see probe them a bit.
What have they thought about and what, how have they analyzed? The different ideas they've come up with, make it a learning learning opportunity for the individual, the manager. So yeah, that's what I'd recommend. Okay good. In times of change what role does networking play in helping leaders guide their teams and organizations effectively?
We all know change is messy, right? It never quite goes the way you hoped. We lay out a plan, we think it's, perfect, and we start implementing it, and things don't always go as we hope. You need to be in touch with not only the people directly involved in the plan. Also, again, your network to give you some advice and guidance that, we implemented A, B, C and it's not working.
Or, we've had these problems and this is what I'm thinking of doing. These are the changes I'm thinking of making. Does that make sense? And getting some feedback from them. So again, your network can be a great source of. Ideas and feedback to you to consider? Am I thinking clearly? Am I seeing the picture clearly?
Do I need to make some adjustments that I'm not aware of? So that can be very helpful to the change leader. Absolutely. Absolutely. And you rely on your network to help you sort things out. Of course, the answer, you always have to answer it yourself, right? You always have to go with your gut and everything else, but it's good to hear it from other people, right?
Can you share a story or Alea or a lead where a leaders network directly helped them navigate a major transition or challenge? Let's see. I was involved in a pretty major change initiative at the company I worked at. We were introducing continuous improvement philosophy into the operation.
Now this goes back, 30, 40 years ago. And there was an outside consultant, that group that was hired to. Lead the training and the actions and what have you. And there was a senior leader who was driving this change throughout the company. Now this is a big company, 20,000 employees, so it wasn't a small deal and there was lots of training going on, lots of new process changes were being implemented and what have you.
And I would say that the, efforts to make this happen? I would say the change leader did a lot of networking and consulting with a variety of people to get their inputs and their ideas to understand how's it going? Is it working? What metrics are we tracking the right metrics? What do we need to change to make it even better?
So there was a lot of, outside input. Again, not that everything was accepted and taken verbatim. Like you said, Michael, you gotta trust your gut and you gotta have a sense of, is this going the way I had hoped or wanted? And having the right metrics you're tracking to assess, are the results going good.
But that was an example of using a broader network to solicit their input as well as the people directly involved. I think that's really important. I have seen some change initiatives where once the plan gets formalized, the. The senior leader who wants the change to happen isn't as active or involved as he should be.
They disappear and they think it's gonna take care of itself. And again, it doesn't, there's lots of little things that come up and people get discouraged and the other thing is, we're trying to have people. Change to new ways while they're still doing their old ways of working.
Their plates are already overflowing and we're giving them yet one or two or three more tasks that they have to learn and do. And they're like, scratching their head like, I'm stressed out. I can't take on anything else. I just can't do it. So the senior leader needs to be aware of that.
And make adjustments and change the plan as needed. And, it's dynamic, but they have to stay close to the action, I guess is what I'm saying. That, that's true. They can't forget where they came from. Yeah. That, that's the biggest thing. All of a sudden they get to a position of power and they're like, this is the way it is, and that's it.
And forgetting completely that all of these people have. Jobs and they, everything is on their plate now. So when you're adding to it, what do you really do? Are you taking away from the other tasks at hand? So you really have to take all into consideration. You're absolutely right.
Yeah. How can emerging leaders use networking to develop the skills they need to lead effectively in the future? I think, to develop your skills. I think it's a lifelong journey and I think there's a number of things you can do, but let me mention a couple. I think one is you can observe other leaders who are really good at a particular skill.
For example, when I was early in my career, there was one particular manager who was outstanding at running meetings. So every time I went to one of his meetings, I would make a point to study him, what he did, how he ran it, how he facilitated it when he made decisions, how he involved the group.
So my point is observing other people, other top performers, I should say. Is one way to get ideas and techniques that work and you can think about how do I incorporate that into my approach having a mentor now, I find if you have a big network in that network, you can identify one or two or more people who have accomplished what you wanna accomplish.
You can approach them and ask them to be your mentor and have a one-on-one relationship with that person. And again, tap their brain and what they've done and they can give you, again, some valuable advice and guidance on how to handle different situations and how to be more effective and things like that.
In general, using your network. If you have a good network, you have some people that have expertise in certain areas that maybe you're not as strong as you'd like to be. For example, I'm not great in ai. It's a new thing coming on. I'm trying to find a couple people who are expert or more expert than I am, so I can network with them and they can give me, insights of the.
Tool and how I can use it more effectively in various ways, things like that. So using your network to tap into the various skill sets that they may have can be a plus to develop your skills. Also, getting feedback, we all need feedback on to improve so. Asking someone in your network, Hey, you're coming to this presentation I'm making on Tuesday, would you observe me and focus in on how many effective questions do I ask during my presentation?
Or how often do I pause effectively to let the audience to consider the point I'm trying to make? So give them some. Things to focus in on, to give you feedback on, to help you again, be a better presenter down the road. So that's a few different ways, you could use your network.
That's so true. And just going on the point of having a mentor is so important and really no matter what level you're at, if you're at a low level management leading, you need a mentor to help you through it. If you're a, middle management, or even a C-Suite executive, it's always good to have a mentor because you need to throw some things at him and say, what about this? Did I do this right, or could I do it differently? Or is there something that I'm missing? I mentor two people, but I also have a mentor because everybody always needs a mentor, everybody. And the more you can get now or AI is concerned, I had no idea, but I began writing I connected with somebody who was.
An AI company. And I'm writing an article for him, for AI and networking on three different platforms. So I do that every week. And I'm finding that the more I write for ai, the more branding. I'm getting i'm not necessarily getting a customer or client but I'm branding myself.
So I'm using AI in that way. But yes, you just, you need that. Point of view that isn't not necessarily like yours but someone who you can throw something like, did I do this right? Or, can I do this better? And ongoing relationship like that. Yes, it's very important.
Do you see certain leadership styles being more effective at building trust and influence through networking? I have taught over the years, basically three leadership styles. One is directing, telling people what to do, how to do it, when have it done by. One is discussing asking questions, involving people, getting their thoughts on ideas. And the third one is delegating. Basically, I think leaders use those styles when they're working with their direct reports or the people in their organization.
Now, would you use those styles when you're networking? I think when you're networking, basically you're discussing you're asking questions to get their thoughts and ideas and approaches they would use. If you are a mentor, you might be delegating to your mentee, telling them before our next meeting, I want you to do A, B, C and come to the meeting and we'll discuss it.
Directing, not so much, would be used, but I think, trust is. Something that develops over time. And I think it's basically being true to your word and, doing what you commit to do and being present and, focused on helping the person improve and providing them the best advice you can give.
If you're the person that's being asked for that advice. So I don't know. That's I'm rambling, but those are some thoughts on on trust and leadership styles. I don't know, what do you think? What I think is it really depends on your role within the company. Yeah. Or your own company.
But the most important thing is a, you have to be present. You have to be authentic, but you have to come through with what you said you were going to do. Yeah. Because once you don't do that, you lost all that trust, with the networking. It's know you, like you, trust you. They'll do business with you.
And to know you. Everybody knows you like you. You're a very likable guy. But that may narrow the scope down just a little bit. But that trust factor is so important. And how do you attain that trust factor? So you have to come through with what you say you're gonna come through at a minimum.
You always overdeliver. Yeah. So you always overdeliver, you always come up with that at a minimum, but you're always. A true leader doesn't just delegate the information and just close their eyes to it. Yeah. They, there's gotta be some feedback. And you, however you deal with the feedback that's up to you.
But that's my take. Yeah. No, I think that makes a lot of sense. And I think consistency is so important. Absolutely. You gotta be consistent. You can't, do it one time but not the next time. Or, you miss assignments or dates, or you miss meetings, people's.
You lose trust very quickly. You can lose it very quickly. Yeah. Yeah. It takes over time. How to attain that trust value. Yeah. I was in the military and they always told us, you get a thousand attaboys. You did a great job. You did great.
You did great. But all one off shit. You will screw up once and you lose all of it. Yeah. Yeah. So it's so easy to lose, but when you get it, so that's the big difference. Yep. Yep. When leading change, how can leaders use their network to build buy-in and reduced resistance? Getting them involved early on and soliciting their views. Helping them become part of the change initiative certainly increases buy-in. No one likes to be mandated that you need to do X, Y, Z, and it's totally first time you're hearing it. It's totally new. You've had no input, you're not prepared for it.
So yeah, getting them to, getting them involved early and often is really important. Absolutely. It's. And I've been in this situation all too many times. But if you get the people when you delegate or when you give them responsibility and you take their feedback, but you actually implement some of the items that they suggested, then all of a sudden they have a new.
Renewed feeling about the project or changes and they feel more of a buy-in and you that you get a lot more out of them when you get it. And sometimes explaining why you didn't accept maybe one of the points or one of the comments they had is also valuable. So they understand absolutely why you didn't, do X, Y, z that they recommended.
There may be a very legitimate reason for your thinking and why you didn't accept that particular idea. Yeah it's, the days of when. A boss, I always, I have a big distinction between a boss and a leader. And long time ago, it's like in the fifties and sixties, even part of the seventies, the boss would say, you do it this way because I said so.
Yeah. And I said, so it doesn't fly. It may be totally legitimate reasons you expl. You can explain that to 'em and say, and they might say, oh, you know what? I never thought about that. You're right. Give them that, give 'em that little bit of a buy-in and have them understand what's going on.
What's one networking mistake leaders make when trying to expand their influence? One mistake that they make. Yeah. One mistake. I think some, networking to me is a. This reciprocity you have to give to get, it's not just one way. Some leaders don't treat it that way.
It's all take and, just they don't provide the, they support and assistance and advice and ideas when they could to people in their network. So I think the key. Is treating networking as a reciprocal type arrangement where you can help the people in your net. When you can help the people in your network.
You do, you take those steps. It could be a great article for them to read, or a great seminar or a great thought you had about something, but it's providing advice and guidance as well as going to them for advice and guidance. So it's mutual reciprocity is key. Yeah. I'm gonna take that one step further.
Okay. Okay. You always bring value to the relationship, right? When you network, if you have what's called a servant's heart, if you look to give and not to receive. And you're thinking like why did I come here in the first place if I'm not going to sell anything or get any clients, but I'm just looking to help anybody who I bump into.
That's called having a servant's heart. And so when you look to give, constantly look to give to a person that you're talking to bring value, people connect on LinkedIn but they connect and say goodbye. If you want somebody, you want to expand your influence. You can connect with a person and as you said, bring it an article about something that they was written and say, look, I found that I found this.
I feel that you might find it valuable here. Taken, that type of thing. Yeah. And if you're constantly giving, it will come around. Bob Berg speaks about this often. He's a very, big speaker about networking, communication, and everything else. It's you're giving and not to receive, and you'll see that you'll get twice as many clients by doing that rather than just networking.
Used to be transactional. I have a widget. It's $3. How many do you want? You'll take it. Okay, good. I'll give you an invoice. We're done. That's having a customer base. But I really feel that ever since the pandemic, we've moved it to a relationship base, and it's more of the relationships you have, not just customers.
So that's a way to look at it. Yep. How can leaders intentionally create networks that are diverse in perspective, not just industry or background? I think on LinkedIn you can build your network through various means, but you can broaden it to people outside your function or industry and get some people that have, different orientations or different types of jobs in your network.
And it's interesting, I've written a lot of books about leadership and one of the things I often do is I go to a variety of people to get their thoughts and ideas about my leadership styles. For example, in my last book, I interviewed the local fire chief at the fire department, and I asked him about how he used the three styles of leading.
Now he wouldn't typically identify himself as a leader, or he wouldn't be someone I'd typically go to. I'd usually go to people in the business world, executives and CEOs and what have you, but getting different points of view. I another example, I went to the local artist in our town.
Now what's an artist have to do with leadership? I wanted to see how she approached a painting. Did she start with the big picture idea? Did she start with the background outline? Did she, how did she think about the vision that she was trying to convey? My point is going to different people that are not typically in your, industry or function.
Can be very interesting to see how they view the problem or issue or question you have, so going a football coach is gonna give you a different view than a policeman or someone who's into the arts or a comedian. I, one time I taught leadership and I one time invited a comedian. Into my class to talk about how does he engage the audience, what does he do to connect with people?
And again, it, you get some interesting ideas about, oh, I never thought of that, or, that's interesting that you would do that. So I'm rambling again a little bit, but broaden your views and include people outside your immediate. Domain to increase the diversity of ideas that you might come up with and might help you see it from a different point of view.
You're absolutely right and you, by you going to all these different types of people, different types of leaders, because they're leaders in their own right. Yes. And you're getting the input from all these different directions. But I find it most the comedian. When you brought the comedian in and public speaking and comedians have a lot in common, right?
We're always timing everything. We're always waiting for that, that, that pause that you wait for the audience to respond. That's keeping everybody in check. But you get from all these different sources. I'm my military background, thinking about my. Leaders from behind. Some were like strictly military, and others were like business minded, and they talk about you and everything else. Their orders, usually, whatever they said, that was it. But some explained, some didn't explain, some told me what to do. Some explained what I had to do. Various different people, d very di different ways. You get much more out of it and I understand that a hundred percent.
In your experience, what daily or weekly networking habits separate good leaders from great ones? I think the great ones, the quality of their network is different. I think they have people who have excelled, some people that have excelled in their field, so they're getting, top information from those, outstanding individuals, let's say.
I think people that are, they have a good network, but not a great network. They have a good variety of people, but they might, maybe could broaden it a little bit more, or maybe they could include some, a few outstanding people or a few people, like we were talking about before, that have excelled in different domains.
That would be. Interest and they'd gained some new ideas from, so I think that would help. I don't know if that answers the question, but that's what I think about it. Good enough. Okay. Let's bring this podcast full circle. If you could give one piece of advice to leaders looking to strengthen both their leadership and their network at the same time, what would it be?
Take time to make your network a priority. Think about who is in your network, who do you go to on a regular basis? And maybe how do you need to change it up a little bit. Who should you or who could you include in your network? That would give you valuable, candid, honest feedback or advice. So in what ways can you enhance your network?
I guess that's a good way of thinking about it, and that's something we probably all need to be thinking about on a regular basis. And if you do that you're broadening your source of. Information, source of ideas and source of feedback on things that you're attempted to do or want to do and that type of thing.
That's really good. I want you to think about one additional thing that I don't want you to think about your network, right? You think about how expanse your how broad your network is, but that's really not. Your network, you have to think about whose network are you in. So if you change that way of thinking, say okay, look, they're in my network.
I connected with them and everything else, but who am I in? Am I in whose network? And that will really give you the best answer. Paul, I have to tell you, this was great. I, we had a great conversation. You had so many points to remember of leadership and all the different aspects of it.
That was just, it was great. If somebody wants to get hold of you, what's the best way? I'm pretty active on LinkedIn. I try to write something there two to three times a week. I've written. 28 books on leadership. They're all available on Amazon. The ones that I highly recommend are leadership styles.
I think that's a really great book. The Leadership Process is another good book, and the one I most recently wrote was Add Value, improve the Status Quo. So my books are good sources to, to. Expand on some of these ideas and see what you think. And they're all inexpensive. They're not they're not gonna break your bank.
They're like 4 99, so they're inexpensive. And they're a quick read. I'm a big believer in getting your big idea out there succinctly. My books are typically 50 to 70 pages long, so it's not a. 300 page manual you gotta get through. And I think the ideas, I, for the feedback I get, the ideas are practical and usable and help people be more effective leaders and add value, make a difference.
So that's what I would say. Paul, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. It was great having you and I look to speak with you again. Thank you, Michael. I appreciate being on and let's do it again and down the road a few months. Sure.
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A huge thank you to our guests for sharing such incredible insights today, and of course, a big shout out to you, our amazing listeners, for tuning in and spending your time with us. If you're interested in my digital courses being coached or having me come and talk to your company, just go to MichaelAForman.com and fill out the request form.
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Michael is a business networking expert specializing in enhancing professionals' networking and communication skills to drive profitability. As a leading authority in this field, he is highly sought after for his dynamic presentations and workshops. His extensive experience has consistently led to significant improvements in corporate profitability by empowering individuals and organizations to connect more effectively and efficiently.
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