In 1973, American sociologist Mark Granovetter published an article on the strength of weak ties.

Its core idea revolves around acquaintances being more valuable than close friendships when collecting new ideas, perspectives, and potential work opportunities.

Considering that the people we spend a lot of time with swim in the same body of information that we do, it makes sense that weak ties would expand our reach and help us to discover possibilities we didn’t know we didn’t know.

But to truly leverage those weak ties, we need to make sure they know what we’re interested in, curious about, and looking for.

Having weak ties is only half the battle. Making sure we can help them help us is the other.