We ruined networking. Can we fix it?

We Ruined Networking

When the economy was a simpler affair, networking meant having a chat with the local baker, doctor, or teacher. They were professionals, just like us.

We referred to each other without business cards, insincere comments on LinkedIn, or bragging about our “personal brand” to develop it.

Today, networking has morphed into something tragically different:

• We’ve reduced ourselves to personas. We have to prove that we are authoritative, experts, and – of course – thought leaders. We narrow down our interests to a few dimensions that can convince the audience that we are the go-to person in our field.

• We go through the motions of connecting with other people. We do that all the time, online and offline. We follow protocols, some better than others, hoping to make connections that might be useful tomorrow. Not interesting or meaningful: useful.

• Our conversations are based on clichés: we are successful, always busy with work, have read the latest popular science book (Grit? Range? Atomic Habits? Clear thinking?) and have just enough challenges or failures to later claim that “we learn from them too.”

Networking has become a tedious duty, with tired and trite social norms.

Stuck Between Human Needs and Professional Duties

Let’s delve into how we got here:

• Over time, we realized that the people we know are an asset, and we should get to know as many as we can. The principle makes sense, in theory. To achieve this, we created mechanisms to facilitate networking: conferences every single week, social networks, et cetera. We normalized asking someone for an introduction. Meeting new people has never been easier.

• We have fewer genuine social circles. The role of the workplace in our lives has become quite social. We make friends at work, confide in colleagues, have social events as part of our office life. It’s not bad in itself. Many of us, especially knowledge workers, spend much of our days in front of a screen or in meetings – we need social spaces in our professional daily lives. What else are all these Happy Hours for? There’s an expectation that we must bring our social skills to work and that without them, we are less capable workers.

• Work once focused on performing the same range of actions for 8, 10, or 12 hours a day. Cue the GIF of Charlie Chaplin in the factory hitting the nail repeatedly. Throughout the past century many privileged work duties have become routine.Traveling to another country for work was a privilege of the elite – now it’s normal for many. Receiving gifts from work was unthinkable, now many of us expect it at least 2 or 3 times a year. The same happened with networking: attending conferences was a reward – now it’s a duty in many roles. Networking has become a necessary practice. No wonder we do it in a technical way.

Networking has become a duty because it’s no longer a privilege, and because many of us are seeking new social connections through work.

The paradoxical image that emerges is a generation wanting to enrich their professional daily lives with meaningful human connections but reducing themselves to approaching new people in a formulaic manner, hoping for a professional return.

We used to be natural connectors, now we’ve become formal small-talkers.

Back to Natural Connecting

It makes me think:

• Is the work/life divide to blame?Why do we automatically think that relationships have to start from being useful and then – only then – might become friendships? Can’t it be the other way around? We can definitely connect on a human level, and then consider, if beneficial for both, a professional relationship.

• How easy is it to build a relationship when we wear a mask of a person? We are used to perpetuate a crafted persona on social media, at conferences, and maybe even with some of our colleagues. Why do we choose to wear a mask, and what does it tell us about how natural our relationship with work is?

• Have we allowed the myth of productivity to ruin also interpersonal relationships? Did we agree to strive to connecting with as many people as possible, in the shortest time, to achieve the most utility? Perhaps we need to learn when to ask “how can we do this more productively?” and when to focus on the opposite question: “How can we do this in the most natural way?”.

In theory, networking could be the most natural channel to make progress in our profession.

Having conversations like those our grandparents had with the baker, doctor, and teacher isn’t an insurmountable challenge, but a muscle we can reawaken.

There’s a layer of falsehood and formality that we need to shake off. There is nothing wrong with trying to develop a certain kind of curiosity and letting it guide us when meeting new people. Trying to understand who they are, their story, and how we can help each other together without rushing to judge whether the conversation is worth having or not.

It seems that many of us have grown tired of having to strategize even human relationships. Perhaps it’s time to re-learn how to connect naturally, even in a professional context.