Happy to share that our new article on reconnecting dormant ties has just appeared in MIT Sloan Management Review.
While our previous research has found that rekindling dormant professional relationships can offer tremendous career benefits to executives, our new study shows that some reconnections are more beneficial than others — and that executives often don’t select the best reconnection choices.
In particular, reconnecting with long-lost or dormant contacts can be very valuable — both professionally and personally. But choosing from among hundreds of former contacts can be challenging. We find that executives, when left to their own devices, don’t take full advantage of their opportunities to reconnect. And when they do reconnect, they tend to focus on comfort and not on re-connections that might offer the best advice.
To get the most out of reconnecting, however, you have to seek out former contacts who are likely to engage with you and to provide you with novelty. To achieve more novelty, this may mean going outside your usual comfort zone and reaching out to higher-status people or to people you didn’t know very well to begin with. But these are exactly the kinds of reconnections that can best point you in a new direction, tell you something you don’t already know, and help you make the most of dormant connections in your network.
Read the full article here.
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