The connector’s mindset
Reminder: It’s time for your Weekly 1:1™
Today’s agenda: The connector’s mindset - how giving to your network changes everything
The question on the table: Who are you giving to right now, without any expectation of what comes back?
Before we start: Pour another cup of tea and take a few minutes for yourself.
Sometimes the best things happen when you’re not trying to make anything happen. You reach out, you reconnect, you have a conversation - and somewhere along the way you remember that the relationship was never really about the outcome. It was about the people you were lucky enough to find along the way.
Over this past weekend, I drove up to LA and had dinner with some wonderful friends I’ve known since I was a teenager. One of them I have known since he and I were in kindergarten. There we were - reconnecting, sharing stories of our lives, laughing about old memories and reminding each other of our shared history. There was nothing to ask of each other, except maybe the recognition that we had all been there, witnessed the same youth. Those bonds are tight as ever, and I’m so grateful.
I’ve been spending intentional time reconnecting with people in my professional network. Sometimes I’m reaching out because I genuinely miss the connection, because working for yourself is isolating and it’s just good to hear what people are up to and find out what they’re building. Sometimes I’m reaching out because I’m working on something I think they might be interested in. And what I keep noticing, regardless of the reason, is that the conversations feel completely different when the relationship is real - when the person on the other end knows that my interest in them isn’t contingent on any one interaction.
What determines how professional conversations feel isn’t what’s being asked or offered. It’s everything underneath it - whether you can find that shared history, even if brief, that connected the two of you in the first place. Even if many years have passed - kind of like the friends I made in my youth.
The connector’s mindset isn’t a technique for making your asks land better. It’s a genuine orientation toward the people in your professional life - showing up without keeping score, staying curious about what people are working on and going through, and letting the relationship be real regardless of what else happens in it. When that foundation is there, everything else takes care of itself.
The people in my network who I most look forward to hearing from operate exactly this way. They’ve introduced me to people I needed to know, shared things that were useful, shown up in small ways that I didn’t ask for and didn’t expect. So when they reach out, I want to say yes - not because I owe them, but because the relationship is real and I know their interest in me comes from the same place mine comes from with them.
That’s what I mean by the connector’s mindset. It’s a genuine way of being with the people in your professional life that makes everything feel like part of something real rather than a transaction you’re managing. What it actually looks like in practice is quieter than you’d expect.
It’s remembering something someone mentioned three months ago and sending them an article that made you think of it. It’s making an introduction because two people crossed your mind in the same moment and you thought - these two should know each other - and then actually following through instead of filing it away as a good intention. It’s responding to someone’s post not with a generic comment but with something real, something that shows you actually read it and it landed somewhere.
The connectors in my network aren’t doing anything complicated. They’re just paying attention to what people are working on, what they care about, what they might need that nobody has thought to offer yet. And then they act on it - without waiting to see what comes back, without tracking whether the gesture was noticed, without needing the scales to balance.
That’s it, really. Paying attention and following through. It sounds almost too simple to be the thing. But sitting around that dinner table in LA this weekend, laughing with people I’ve known since childhood, I was reminded that the relationships worth having - in life and in work - are built exactly the same way. Showing up. Staying curious. Not keeping score. In a world where most people are moving too fast to notice much of anything, that turns out to be magical.
The question I’ll leave you with this week:
Is there someone in your life - personally or professionally - who you’ve been meaning to reach out to, and what’s been stopping you?
Lisa English, ACC, CMM is a Leadership and Executive Coach and Strategic Consultant with deep expertise in Events, Travel and Hospitality. The Weekly 1:1™ publishes every Tuesday at 8am PT. Subscribe at lisaenglishsg.substack.com or subscribe below.