Let’s say you want to figure out what to do on the weekend. If you don’t already have a set of options to choose from you will probably look up your friend, you know the one, that friend that just seems to always know where to find some action. They’ll likely end up linking you up with several other friends and before you know it you’re out having a ball.
Every network has a hub and that can mean either a person or a place. Hubs aren’t usually the coolest person or place that you know, instead hubs are (almost by definition) the most connected and often the most inviting people or places.
In order to be a hub you have to be open to accepting diverse connections. You have to see how those individual connections interweave like connecting social dots. A hub is almost always a generalist of sorts; the hub doesn’t get too bogged down in details because the hub is always looking for opportunities to connect those dots that will produce the important details.
By making these connections the hub can create it’s own power of influence. Some people and places are all about being specialists; that is how they earn their social power. An office building specializes in providing office space and derives its power from the perception that it is about serious business. A nuclear scientist derives their social power from the perception that they know a great deal about nuclear processes. But do those things have to be specialists to succeed? Do they actually have to rely on those skills to have influence and create brilliant new possibilities?
No. Of course not. What if that nuclear scientist is the one who knows how to network two other, more brilliant scientists together (maybe they aren’t even both in the same field); and perhaps that nuclear scientist knows of investors who want to bring the resulting brilliant idea to market.
Power of influence is only limited by the sphere of connections we open ourselves up to. So what role fits for you? Are you a hub or a specialist; or, are you finding a way to be both?