Speaker 0 00:00:00 From Romano Leadership, I'm Oscar Romano. This is Learn Reflect Lead Leadership and d I A development for mission-driven individuals and organizations. This episode is titled The Power of Power Mapping, how to Build Strong Community Partnerships As a School Leader. This episode is for you if
Speaker 0 00:00:23 You're a principal or leader who who's looking to establish partnerships with community organizations to bring in additional funding and provide opportunities for your students. If you're an educator or an administrator who's interested in building your social network and want to gain insight into its structure to identify the people who can help you achieve your goals, or if you're anybody looking to build strong partnerships and you wanna learn how to use power mapping as a tool to visualize your network and identify opportunities for growth. Today we're gonna talk about the power of power mapping. Throughout my time as a school principal, one of the most important things I focused on was establishing and maintaining partnerships with community organizations. These partnerships brought in over $200,000 in additional funding and provided our campus with over 20 student opportunities. How can I get similar partnerships of my own? Other school leaders would ask me, they were pressed for time and had so many competing priorities they'd share that they didn't even know where to begin.
Speaker 0 00:01:26 It all starts with para mapping, I tell them, so what is para mapping? Para mapping is a strategy used to create a visual representation of your social network. It helps you see who you know how they're connected, and what resources are available to you. A power map allows you to identify the people who can help you accomplish your goals and enables you to strengthen your con connections with them. But why go through power mapping? Power maps are an excellent way of visualizing your network and gaining insight into your network structure. When used correctly, they can help you see where your connections are strongest and where you may have opportunities for growth. It's also a great tool for getting a better understanding of what other people in your network do and how they work. Para mapping can help you assess how your current network can support your personal or professional goals.
Speaker 0 00:02:19 When you're trying to build relationships with new people or groups, you must first get an overview of the landscape before diving in headfirst. If you don't know who's who and what's what, then how will you know who's worth reaching out to or if there are opportunities for collaboration? Para mapping helps us get this information so that we can make informed decisions about who we want to connect with or collaborate with in the future. So how do you start power mapping? First, write down everyone that comes to mind who could be helpful in achieving your goal. That includes everyone who works with you, people in your organization or division, people in other organizations or divisions within the same organization, and anyone else who could help you in some way. The only caveat is that you have to select the names of people you know. If you've never met Bill Gates and have no connection to him, you can't write down his name on your paramount.
Speaker 0 00:03:08 All right, second. Next to each name, write down their basic information. At a minimum include the following, roll and organization location, email, and phone number. Third, make a note of the strength of your connection with them. For example, you know loose ties are weaken in frequent relationships. Moderate ties are stronger and more frequent. Relationships and close ties are the strongest and most frequent relationships. Fourth, write down the areas where those individuals have expertise. And fifth, this is optional. You can rank each individual by level of importance so that when it comes time to contact someone, you know whom to contact first. You can also document additional organizations or associations that each individual has, and you could establish links that individuals on your P map have one another or with people outside of your network. At the end, your P map could look like this.
Speaker 0 00:04:19 Hey, there, there's a future app to para mapping to practice of para mapping isn't an end in itself. My experiences with the process prove it. I was able to provide my students with incredible opportunities due to my awareness of the connections in my network. One of the standout experiences for our students was when we partnered with the Houston Dynamo Front office staff, our students had the opportunity to visit with the staff and learn about off the field career opportunities in sports. It was a valuable and exciting experience for them, and it wouldn't have been possible without our partnership with the Dynamo. Another successful partnership was with Twitter. A contingent from the company came to our school for an entire day to provide our students with firsthand accounts of what it's like to work for social media organization. It was unique and engaging experience for our students, and it helped to provide them with a better understanding of the different career paths that are available to them. Now it's time for some closing thoughts. Overall, I think the power apps are a valuable tool for establishing partnerships. The process of creating them forces you to look at where your social network currently is and compare it to where it could be. The visual nature of the map helps bring this process into clear focus. Too often we view our networks as static things, when in reality they're always growing and changing. A power map can help you see this growth and chart your course to partnership success. So now it's time to commit.
Speaker 0 00:05:44 When are you going to start power mapping? And who are the first five people you will include on your P map? Let me know how it goes. Thanks. That's it for this, this episode of Learn, reflect Lead. Thank you for watching on YouTube or listening via podcast. If you're interested in more, you can find
[email protected] or connect with me on LinkedIn at Romano Leadership. If you like this episode, please share with your friends. Subscribe and leave a review. I'm Oscar Romano. Until next time.
