One of the first things to consider when you map your network is the strength of the relationship that you have with people. The really strong link might be one where you have regular contact, tell them all the important things that happen in your life and tend to be there for each other no matter what other demands are placed on you. The really great thing about the strong tie is the fact that you can depend on the person. You know that no matter what happens you would be able to meet with them for a drink, dump all your worries and start to make sense of the world.
However, there can be a few downsides as well. We all face the constraints of time. With only 24 hours in the day we have to make difficult decisions about how to allocate the time, Part of this allocation process involves making a decision on whom to see. Now, imagine you have this amazingly strong tie with John, an old school friend that you have always kept in touch with. You meet at least every Friday night to catch up on the week and talk about some of the new dreams you are chasing. However, this regular tie can begin to limit or constrain you. It can prevent you from meeting other people to ask for help on ways to get a job in their company. Dilemma – what can you do? On one hand the strong tie with John is really powerful and adds a lot of personal value to your life. But the constraint it offers is quite limiting, as Friday night might be the time when other people would want to meet up.
The alternate model is where you might have a range of people that you meet on a Friday night. Maybe you have a network of ten people who you tend to socialize with regularly. In this case you have a number of weak ties with a diverse range of people. Each person is important, but the ties are not that strong that you couldn’t break an engagement without hurting the other person’s feelings too much. The upside of this arrangement is that you have a wider access to the market and a range of people who might be able to help you change jobs. The down side is that none of the relationships is that strong or close that you can talk to them about your real fears about the job change. The emotional link with the weak tie is more superficial than the strong tie and as such you don’t have anyone really close to confide in.
The strength of the weak ties in your network is that they act as boundary spanners that have a finger in many pies. Because they might sit in a number of networks they are able to help you access the social capital from networks other than your own. For example the strength of weak ties is crucial to the labor markets. Job seekers are more likely to first hear about the job they eventually secure through contacts or people they did not know well (i.e. weak ties).[i] The essence is that ideas can reach a larger number of people and traverse greater social distances when passed through weak ties rather than strong ties thus they create opportunities across different and discrete social and functional groupings.[ii]
Boundary spanners
There is no hard evidence that people who are weak ties in your network will always be boundary spanners who will help you bridge into other networks as seen in Figure 16 . However, since more frequent and intense interactions are likely to occur with people in your network with whom you have a strong tie, the implicit suggestion is that where you have a weaker link with someone they probably spend time with people in other networks.
We should aspire to get strength from the development of weak ties. Because we can develop links to differing social networks and their associated social capital. This both broadens the range of our network and also includes the possibility that we will be connecting with dissimilar people (more on this in the next section) who will bring a richer range of viewpoints into the network. Thus the creation of a heterogeneous network will probably offer a stronger social capital than the common homogeneous one that people often create for themselves.
However, there can be quite high risk in depending on boundary spanners as a resource to bring variety to your network. If they are the only link to the other network then you are dependent on their bridging contact. If this link is severed then so is your access to resources or contacts in the other network. This gating process is an important one, especially in a career changes. For example the contact you have with a director in the department you want to move into gets transferred. The social value of that linkage is probably enormous and work required to replicate that linkage might be so large as to make it untenable.
However, the converse might be true if you are the weak tie in someone else’s network. In this case you might want to initially maintain the exclusivity in order to heighten your extrinsic social value to the network! If your value to the network is in the access you offer to another group of people and this is currently your only value then it might be in your interest to maintain your exclusive hold over the resources. Over time, once the network understands what additional value you can offer then you might choose to open up the market and give people access to your discreet area - but beware that you don’t do it too quickly as you might be made socially redundant.
Tie Mapping
The first step in charting your connections is to develop a clear picture of the people in your network and where you would place them on this strong/weak tie continuum. Try to list the people in your network and set them out in a chart form as seen in Figure 17 . Draw two circles and place those you have a strong tie with in the inner circle and those where you might deem it as weak in the outer. Use the distance from for the center as a more specific measure of the strength of the tie if that helps. Also, where you have someone who you believe is a boundary spanner who can bridge you into other networks, show them on the edge and if you can indicate what other networks they belong to.
One might think that any effective networker will follow the mantra "the more connections, the better." However, this is not the case. What is true is that "the smarter your connections, the better." Social connectivity that provides the most benefit will come from links to connections you currently do not have access to. The goal is to be well connected to people who are well connected.
[i] Granovetter, Mark, 1974, Getting a job; A study on contacts and careers, Cambridge, MA; Harvard university press
[ii] Ross Gittel and Avid Vidal, Community Organizing, Sage Publications, London, 1998, page 19
(c) Mick Cope