I have met plenty of people who say they dislike networking. I understand why.
If networking means walking into a room full of strangers, talking about yourself for a few minutes, exchanging contacts and leaving with the feeling that you just sat a practical exam in self-promotion, the problem may not be networking itself. It may be the way we have learned to think about it.
Do not start with ‘What can I get from this?’
When we enter a professional conversation with a very precise goal, we tend to see the other person through that goal: a potential client, a partner, someone who can recommend us or someone who knows someone.
The conversation can become a transaction before there is even a relationship. People usually notice that quickly.
A better conversation starts with curiosity. Who is the person in front of me? What are they building? What matters to them? What do we have in common?
Not every conversation has to lead somewhere. Sometimes its value is simply that you met an interesting person. Paradoxically, those are often the relationships that become important over time.
A network is not a contact list
We can have thousands of LinkedIn connections and very few people we can actually call when we need an honest perspective, a recommendation or help.
Having access to someone does not mean having a relationship with them. Professional relationships are built over time through repeated conversations, trust and what we do when there is nothing immediate to gain.
That is why I prefer to think about networking as developing a network of relationships rather than accumulating a database. The difference sounds semantic. In practice, it changes almost everything.
A better question: ‘What can I bring to this relationship?’
Networking becomes much simpler when we let go, for a moment, of the pressure to sell ourselves.
You may know something useful to the person in front of you. You may be able to introduce them to someone, offer a perspective or simply listen.
This is not generosity used as a hidden sales tactic. That is the same transaction in better clothes. It is a genuine willingness to participate in a relationship.
For me, good networking starts not with ‘How can this person help me?’ but with ‘Is there something valuable we can build or share?’
Shared values make relationships easier to keep
We do not need relationships with everyone, and I do not think we should try.
Some of the strongest professional relationships appear when we discover that we see work, fairness, people, business or the way we want to build things in a similar way.
Shared interests can start a conversation. Shared values can make it last.
From idea to practice
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Professional networking course‘I am not good at networking’
I hear this often. Behind it there is usually not a lack of ability but a barrier: ‘I do not know how to start’, ‘I do not want to bother people’, ‘I do not know what to say about myself’ or ‘Everyone else seems to know each other.’
All of those reactions make sense. None of them is a sentence.
Networking is a set of behaviours that can be practised. You can learn to start conversations, ask better questions, talk about yourself without turning the exchange into a pitch and notice when there is a genuine connection.
Do not try to be interesting. Be interested.
There is a lot of pressure around making a good impression: what do I say, how do I introduce myself, how do I become memorable?
Sometimes the most useful move is to shift attention in the opposite direction and become interested.
Ask a question and listen to the answer. Then ask the next question based on what you just heard rather than on the next thing you planned to say.
It sounds elementary. It is not. People who truly listen are surprisingly easy to remember.
Networking does not end when the event ends
You had a good conversation. You exchanged details. What happens next?
Many potentially useful relationships stop here, not because the people disliked each other, but because everyone returns to daily life and assumes they will reconnect when an important reason appears.
Relationships do not work particularly well when they only reappear when we need something. A message, an article you thought the other person might appreciate, a congratulations, a coffee invitation or an introduction can seem small. Over time, their effect is not.
Perhaps networking is simpler than we make it
You do not have to walk into a room and meet twenty people. You might meet one and have a good conversation.
You do not have to turn every meeting into an opportunity. Some relationships will never create business, and that is perfectly fine.
A healthy professional network is not built only from people we can get something from. It is built from people we know, trust and can exchange ideas with, and with whom opportunities sometimes appear that neither person could have predicted in the first conversation.
So the next time you walk into a room where you know nobody, the objective does not have to be ‘I need to network.’
It can be much simpler: ‘Let me see who I can get to know.’ The rest can come later.
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This article develops ideas from Bogdan Vizitiu’s networking workshops and his Stup Unplugged conversation about networking and growth mindset.
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