Network one hour per week, and your future self will thank you
Networking has always been essential for professional success. Whether cultivating new connections within an organization or developing external partnerships, networks can make or break our careers. But how do we build and maintain connections with colleagues who we may rarely see in person? How can we maintain relationships when we are not in the office? How can we mix the physical and virtual water coolers?
To understand how we can network differently, I reached out to Dorie Clark, who teaches executive education at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and Columbia Business School. She’s the author of numerous bestselling business books, including “The Long Game: How to Be a Long-Term Thinker in a Short-Term World.”
For starters, Clark says you need to recognize the differences between remote and in-person networking. We need to be more intentional about networking when we work remotely, she says.
It begins with thinking about how we interact during remote meetings. Clark suggests that the natural focus on only discussing the work when you’re not face-to-face is transactional and damages our working relationships and network.
Making time to be social is even more critical with colleagues who are working remotely.
When going into the office, it’s essential to make time for socializing, which Clark defines as “the social form of work, where part of what you need to be conscious of is cultivating interpersonal connections.”
She emphasizes the need to plan your in-office socializing time. “Say OK, who else is going to be in the office, who do I need to be connecting with, who do I need to meet with to accomplish something, and who do I need to be meeting with to relationship-build and deepen my connection with?”
And after the pandemic, it’s vital to be explicit about wanting to connect. “People have gotten used to being weird about COVID or have gotten used to not inviting people,” Clark points out. “So you’ve got to remind them.”
Finally, Clark reminds us to not fall back into the pre-pandemic habit of eating lunch at our desks. “If you only have two days in the office, you should never eat alone.”
The shift to hybrid work is an excellent opportunity to meet new people — something that suffered during the pandemic. Clark says Microsoft’s Work Trend Index report found that “weak networks” with people outside our immediate professional circle suffered the most.
The move to hybrid provides an opportunity to fix that. “If there are people who you only know peripherally,” she explains, “there may have been many people onboarded, for instance, and you haven’t even met them . ... This is a really good time.”
Technology enables us to connect with far more people than ever before, but Clark says there’s a flip side.
Her advice, particularly if you are reaching out to a high-profile person, is to ”stand out by making an offer that would be legitimately valuable to them, which implies that we have to get into their head and understand what would be valuable to them.” Clark says when you do that, it enables you to come in “as a peer and as a colleague, rather than as a supplicant.”
In her book “The Long Game,” Clark introduces “Infinite Horizon Networking,” which is all about connecting with people you may have no apparent reason to connect with now, but may in the future. Even the best networkers may miss the opportunity that Infinite Horizon Networking can bring.
“Their bias is, ‘Oh, I’m in marketing, so I need to know marketing people,’ and it doesn’t seem worthwhile to cultivate relationships with people outside your field, outside your city, outside your sphere,” she says.
Even if the payoff may take years, Infinite Horizon Networks can expose us to new perspectives and new information. “The further afield it is, the less it seems relevant,” Clark admits, “and honestly, it might not be relevant ... But when it is, it is extremely relevant.”
Clark recommends TEDx events as one place to begin building your Infinite Horizon Networks.
“There are TEDx’s all around the world, and they bring together people who are interested in a diversity of ideas,” she says.
University alumni networks are another place to start. “You have enough of a commonality that you can talk to them, but they may have ended up in very, very different regions and industries,” she says.
Like any disruption, the shift to hybrid work provides opportunities that allow us to expand and broaden our networks. Clark says that by spending only one hour a week connecting with new people, we can expand our network by up to 50 people per year.
It doesn’t take a lot of time, but the benefits can be massive.