Okay, so I'm the lawyer who has been writing the seven part series titled "A Junior Associate's Networking Plan".  I know, I know, I owe Ms. JD a couple of installments of that series, which I promise to get to soon.  Anyway, I recently found myself on the receiving end of a friend's networking efforts and it was hard for me.  Therefore, I thought I would write here to tell you about how hard it was for me but also share how I talked myself into doing that which I knew I should.

Background:  My good friend, who is an attorney in my town, has decided to run for the board of directors of our local women's bar association.  This is something that I have strongly encouraged her to do and totally support.  In fact, it falls under items II and IV of my so-called "Plan".  I am also involved in the same bar association and regularly attend events and chair one of the association's committees.  Through this, I have formed relationships (both working and personal) with a number of the group's members. 

Because of our friendship and my connection to a number of the group's members, my friend asked me if I would send my endorsement along with her personal statement to my association connections.  This was to be in addition to her email solicitation and letter mailing campaign.  Well, of course I wanted to help.  I beleive that my friend would be an excellent addition to the board.  Truthfully, I think her and I are a lot alike and I think she has very excellent and practical ideas to improve the service that the association provides to women attorneys in our town -- especially young attorneys.  At the same time, I felt anxious about doing what she asked.  While I worked with my connections on association business, I felt resistent to ask them to do me any favors -- which is what I felt I would be doing by asking them to vote for my friend.  I admit that it is totally irrational but I felt that if I sent them a personal endorsement and asked them even to just "consider" my friend's candidacy that I would be asking too much.  I was nervous that they would be put off.  When I am truthful with my self about it I also felt like I would be sort of taking money out of the bank of our relationships to call in this "favor" and that I was scared that I would need the account to remain full in case I needed to draw on it in the future for something else. 

However... I convinced myself that I needed to do this for my friend and, even, that I needed to start doing this sort of thing all the time and even needed to be the person that asks others to do this sort of thing for me in the future.  Afterall, I wasn't asking too much of my association connections.  I was asking them to vote for somebody that I truly believed was the best candidate.  I wasn't asking for money or time or anything other than their consideration of her candidacy.  In fact, I thought, I was actually doing them a favor by introducing her since the association is so large that there was a good chance that my connections didn't even know enough of the candidates to have a full slate to vote for.  Also, I thought, isn't this sort of thing the very reason why I joined the group, became active, and made these connections in the first place.? What else was I saving the money in the "relationship bank" for?  How long was I intending to save it, anyway?  If I couldn't do this favor for my friend then what, exactly, was I expecting to give and get out of my association membership?

I am reading the book "She Wins, You Win" by Gail Evans at the moment.  In chapter 9, titled "Weave A Female Web", Ms. Evans talks about the fact that women are often loathe to mix business into personal relationships and too often fail to seize opportunities to do business networking within their personal network.  This, she points out, is not a problem for men and equally really shouldn't be a problem for women.  I've realized that all my effort at building networks won't do me any good if I am not willing to call on those networks to help me when I need them.  And.. frankly helping my friends is important to me and will likely help me in the long run too.

And, so, I sent the endorsement.  I feel good about it and feel like it was entirely the appropriate thing for me to do.  I really hope that my friend is elected but I am also glad that I was able to be there to help her regardless of how the election turns out.  Once I sent out the email to my association connections, asking them to consider my friend and giving a personal endorsement of her, one of the women immediately wrote back and thanked me saying that my personal endorsement meant a lot to her since she knew very little about any of the candidates -- Ah ha!  Validation!  I think the women I sent it to did very likely appreciate it, even without knowing how hard it was for me, personally, to send the email in the first place!

I realize that the situation I've revealed here is pretty mundane.  It is a baby step in my networking journey.  I freely admit that I am a novice at this and have a long way to go before I am a pro at asking people for business.  I'll also admit that I have probably asked more of my network contacts in the past (e.g. job interviews, business introductions, etc) but this time it involved helping somebody that I consider a true friend more than I consider her a professional acquaintence. Therefore, it involved the mix of personal and professional for me.  But, in reality, my friend was just asking that I be her friend and do what many friends do for each other all the time.  Also, the connections that I reached out to were professional contacts and contacts that I had made through an association which, arguably, exists for the very purpose of this sort of networking.  However, I relate it here because it was hard for me to ask anything of my network.  I'm conscious of this and am dedicated to working on getting better at it so that it isn't even hard for me at some point.  I imagine that there are other Ms. JD readers out there who also find this hard and I hope will learn something from my experience. (Also, please share!)