You’ve heard the old saying: “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.”
It usually brings to mind backroom deals and unfair advantages. But what if that phrase actually holds the secret to becoming a more effective leader in today’s hyper-collaborative world?
For modern leaders, “who you know” isn’t about getting a leg up—it’s about creating value for your entire team by building and leveraging a powerful network.
The Expert Trap Many New Leaders Fall Into
When you first become a manager, the instinct is to prove your worth by being the ultimate expert. You focus on deepening your technical knowledge, believing your value comes from having all the answers.
But here’s the paradox: the more you position yourself as the single source of truth, the more you become a bottleneck. Your team can only move as fast as your personal bandwidth allows, and their growth is limited to what you alone can teach them.
The Shift: From Expert to Super-Connector
Your real job as a leader isn’t to have all the answers. It’s to know how to find them. Your greatest value lies not in your personal expertise, but in your ability to connect people and ideas.
Don’t just take my word for it. A well-known Gartner study on coaching found that of the four main types of managers, those who act as “Connectors”—linking their employees to the right people and resources—have the biggest positive impact on team performance. These leaders recognize they don’t have all the skills or time to help, so they make meaningful connections for their team instead.
Your Network is a Performance Multiplier
Thinking like a Connector is a powerful strategy for two key reasons:
- It Helps You Get Things Done: The higher you climb, the more you rely on cross-functional collaboration. You’ll need support from other teams, buy-in from different departments, and expertise from outside your bubble. A strong network is your key to making things happen.
- It Accelerates Your Team’s Growth: Your team doesn’t always need you to show them how to do something. More often, they need access to the right expert, a different perspective, or a senior leader who can offer sponsorship. Your ability to be a resource hub is far more scalable and impactful than your personal technical skill.
This isn’t just true for coaching. Research has consistently shown that employees who build strong internal networks during their onboarding are more successful and satisfied in the long run.
A Quick Network Health Check
To be a great leader, you need to intentionally build a strong and diverse network. Ask yourself:
- Are you the hero or the hub? Are you constantly trying to be the go-to expert, or are you building a “bench” of specialists you can turn to and connect your team with?
- Are you investing in relationships? Are you regularly dedicating time to building connections with people who might be important to your team’s success down the road?
- Are you a strategic matchmaker? Do you deeply understand the development goals of your team members so you can connect them with the right mentors and resources?
So, it turns out the old saying is right, just not in the way we originally thought. In modern leadership, who you know isn’t about who you can take from—it’s about who you can connect. It’s not just your personal knowledge, but the collective knowledge you can unlock, that truly matters.