Heidi Roizen is a full-fletched venture capitalist, currently working for Apple. Initially, she worked as an operator in the Silicon Valley and used her connections to become a rather successful venture investor. The personal characteristics that lead her on the way to success are associated with communication and networking. In particular, the ability to combine social relationships and professional communications as well as the principle of reciprocity are highly valued by Roizen. According to the former, she spent years to build her networking based on a wide range of communications beginning from short conversations and ending with conferences (Mooney). Regardless of the duration of communication, the lasting impression defines the outcome, thus affecting the perspective relationships with the other side. In case of Roizen, the mentioned strategy proved to be successful and fruitful for her personal life and professional career.
In terms of the principle of reciprocity, Roizen believes that it is of great importance to understand the needs of the other person (McGinn and Tempest 8). Sometimes a person has to conduct long hours of negotiations to comprehend what the partners want. However, when both sides begin to understand each other, the process develops rapidly based on strong and long-term relationships. The case study shows that Roizen used her networking to contact people between each other only in case she was sure in win-win results of these manipulations. In an attempt to maintain and strengthen her networking, the capitalist continuously pursued to communicate with people by attracting them with smart and elaborate ideas and solutions and also adopting their suggestions regarding one or the other business issue.
From the suggested case study, it becomes evident that Roizen understood the significance of networking from the very beginning of her career. Having a degree in creative writing, she had a desire to work in technology industry that was quite difficult, especially taking into account that women were not largely presented in this area (Ruch and Nazemetz 165). The specific action that helped her in building effective social networking as it is now may be identified as the maximization of social situations. In other words, she tried to communicate as much as possible to gain the integral quality of a successful person – the so-called social capital – the availability of business acquaintances along with the ability to build successful communication.
Making the proper connections, Roizen considers the process of networking as the search and development of relationships, in which the reciprocal exchange of experience and useful information contribute to success of both sides that participate in communication (Mooney). It assumed the active acquaintance with different people that resulted in the following outputs: the expansion of contacts that help to develop business and solve various problems, development of her own communication skills, and pleasure from communicating with interesting and smart people.
The consideration of networking changed through the course of Roizen’s professional career. If she strived to meet new people and communicate with them in order to accomplish her own goals working at her first job, then she understood that the positive networking is based on caring about how she can be useful to a person and the sincere desire to help others that like a boomerang will return to their good disposition and some interesting offers (Gulati et al. 516). During her work at T/Maker and Apple, the venture capitalist adheres to the principles of networking that dictate the use and dissemination of only positive information as well as an ethical ban on information that is inappropriate for business relations. Thus, the positive emotions in any form of communication and skillful dialogue may turn even a conflict situation into a winning moment and the state of crisis – in a chance for the development of great success in a career or business.
Nowadays the key efforts are put on maintenance of the existing networking as it is rather expanded and includes the leading CEO’s, funders, etc. Roizen believes that networking is not acquaintance only with the right people, but the ethics of the relationships, in which everyone should win (McGinn and Tempest 7). This is the style of life, where communication serves as a starting point and a method of self-education and self-development. It should be emphasized that Roizen states that the concept of networking is broader than solely business relations. As a way of life, it is acceptable to people of different social estates and groups. This is creative art of being friends with plenty of people that is quite interesting and requires constant attention and personal development.
As for recommendations for Roizen to enhance her network, it is possible to note that she reads many business plans per day and has to evaluate them, spending significant amount of time. In effect, Roizen experiences the lack of time that can be spent on networking maintenance. In this regard, it may be recommended to largely focus on efforts on keeping relationships to remain competent and competitive.
Works Cited
Gulati et al. Management: An integrated approach. 2nd ed., South-Western College, 2016.
McGinn, Cathleen, and Nicole Tempest. Heidi Roizen. Harvard Business Review, 2010.
Mooney, Loren. “Heidi Roizen: Today Everything Is Relationship-Driven.” Stanford Business, 2014. Web.
Ruch, Will, and Pat Nazemetz. HR and Marketing Power Partners. Versant, 2012.