The Power of Connecting 169 When you tap into the desire to contribute and help people see the value of their professional endeavors, you make them feel great and motivate loyalty and best efforts. This is what Abrashoff did. Hoffman's lesson, on the other hand, lies in the expansive- ness, rather than the depth, of connections. An extensive profes- sional and personal network allows you to get to know and be known by others in a more peripheral way. Networking puts you in a position to do things for others, lots of others. You build irreplaceable kindness capital by connecting people to the resources and contacts they need to help them accomplish their professional goals. And your network works for you. Create Common Ground If there is any great secret of success in life, it lies in the ability to put yourself in the other person's place and to see things from his point of view--as well as your own. --Henry Ford As Mike Abrashoff knows, people are not a particularly ra- tional lot. We are thinking, feeling, dynamically changing, and often confused, organisms. Our right brains--responsible for our imagination and sym- bolism--are as, or more, important in business than our rational left brain analyses. In the words of Thomas Peters and Robert Waterman in their classic work, In Search of Excellence, on what makes companies excel: "We reason by stories at least as often as with good data. `Does it feel right?' counts for more than `Does it add up?' or `Can I prove it?'" 2