Why Swapping Social Capital For Social Liability Is A No No

A man introduced a friend of his to fellow members at a prestigious club. This friend exchanged contacts with several guys and proceeded to make use of them soon after.

The man was a car boot menswear vendor. He had excellent offerings and quickly offloaded his stocks.

The same member introduced a second car boot-based friend to the same lot of people. This guy sold household goods. His route to market required the benefit of a further introduction to the spouses of the gentlemen, for the ladies decided on what gets used at home.

The sales were not as impressive as those realised by the menswear seller. The ladies needed to have a lady-to-lady recommendation. Clearly, the vendor was not the user at home, besides, men are careful with whom they can introduce their spouses to.

This goes to show that social capital needs to be correctly configured for one to release or realise social equity. Well-executed introductions may require further cultivation and sowing before reaping. Some quickly grow like mushrooms and need frequent harvesting, yet others grow like macadamia and take years of nurturing before they are ready for consistent harvesting.

Your ability to socialise sustainably yields you social capital. The basics are, a good word, a good name, being of good standing and some serendipity. They add points to your social capital index. The familiarity and trust that come with exposure within your social circles admit you to a value-adding ecosystem that you can gainfully tap into sustainably.

But depending on how one chooses to play in that space, you could attract fingernails destroying relationships that make you the only party scratching other people's backs. Equally, too many favours coming your way faster than you can use them could leave you with a sore back. It is always better having a little at a time.

Well, unless yours is pure philanthropy, being a social liability magnet is the last thing you want to become.

The irony here is that you may have to play in both spaces to gain social capital in the long run. It is a give-and-take process. Some call it planting the seed ahead of the harvest season. But never get stuck in the excessive-giving stage lest you develop that muscle better than that of calling in favours from your already invested social capital pool. Father Christmas never wants to hear a voice thanking him twice over the same Christmas season when others lack gifts.

Imagine that your invested social capital was like the deposits in a bank account—and the social liabilities seen as the withdrawals. For you to tap into your social capital, you must withdraw capital from the account. To run an account with a positive balance, your deposits must exceed your withdrawals. So as a rule, always have more good deeds extended to your contact before you call in favours.

A good introduction to a new contact is indeed a loan facility that must be repaid. It gains you immediate access to your intended objective. It is bad manners to fail to repay.

A story is told of a man who benefited from the clout of sharing a name with a famous man. Everyone believed this man was a son to the well-known man. Unfortunately, this prominent man died and the imposter went around fundraising for funeral arrangements. His friends came out in a big way.

Our man was conspicuously missing from the family photos that made the newspaper stories and discomforting murmurs went around.

A year down the road, the true father died and the guy called for another fundraiser. Very few people turned up as it dawned on them all that they had been taken for a ride all along.

Stollen clout is a guaranteed liability and boomerangs in devastating ways as you have no control over its maturity date.

Never harvest before sowing your own seed unless you've been asked to help out.