You Can Let Some Networking Opportunities Pass You By
When it comes to professional relationships, quality matters more than quantity
It was a Tuesday afternoon in April and I was taking the train to New York City from Philadelphia. As soon as I plopped into my seat, a tall gentleman sat beside me.
I listened to him chat with his co-workers across the aisle about the meeting they were apparently prepping for. From the sound of it, they were in a creative field. Then I noticed something in the corner of my seat-mate’s computer screen: His name in block letters. Curious to learn who I was sitting next to, I typed it into a search engine on my phone.
This guy — let’s call him Pete — had, in his midthirties, already developed an app and directed the creative side of a major ad firm. Going further down the rabbit hole, I learned that he’d written a movie script, and that he’d been outspoken online about anxiety and depression. He was creative and honest about his struggles.
In short, he was the kind of person with whom I’d like to be acquainted.
I toyed with the idea of striking up a conversation. But what would I say? “I’ve been Googling you and you seem interesting”?
Then I swung back the other way: Perhaps he or I would someday have a project that could use the other person’s expertise.
Was my instinct to talk to him the mark of an ambitious, confident person? Or was I reacting to some misguided pressure to always be networking, even when I shouldn’t?
Experts say there’s often a wide gap between the way most people think of networking and the way to do it well. Most people tend to over-network, indiscriminately shaking hands and amassing business cards like they’re collectibles — a strategy that executive coach Bonnie Marcus, author of The Politics of Promotion, has called the professional version of throwing spaghetti at a wall and seeing what sticks.
“Unfortunately, this doesn’t result in the type of network that supports our career advancement,” she wrote in a 2018 blog post. “It has no purpose or intention.” Cultivating deeper relationships with fewer people — asking insightful questions, then really listening to the answers —…
