Why Most People Hate Networking (And What to Do Instead)
Hello Friends,
Happy Monday. Last week we introduced the idea of the relationship portfolio and why it is often the deciding factor in which professionals access the opportunities that match their actual ability. This week, we want to address the most common reason people do not build that portfolio intentionally.
They hate networking.
Not everyone. But a significant number of professionals, including many who are excellent at their work and genuinely curious about people, find the formal act of networking uncomfortable to the point of avoidance. The room full of name badges. The forced small talk. The card exchange that leads nowhere. The feeling of being simultaneously under-prepared and over-eager.
If that describes your experience, there is something worth knowing: the research on this is actually on your side.
Why Networking Feels Transactional
A study published in the journal Administrative Science Quarterly found that professional networking, when it feels self-serving, activates feelings of moral impurity in the people doing it. The researchers, Tiziana Casciaro, Francesca Gino, and Maryam Kouchaki, asked professionals to think about instrumental networking, the kind done specifically to advance career goals, and found that it triggered associations with words linked to uncleanliness. Participants who were prompted to think about self-interested networking were more likely to want to wash their hands afterward, compared to those thinking about social or spontaneous networking.
Source: Casciaro, T., Gino, F., & Kouchaki, M. (2014). The Contaminating Effects of Building Instrumental Ties. Administrative Science Quarterly, 59, 705 - 735.
The discomfort, in other words, is not weakness or shyness. It is a moral intuition. And it is telling you something accurate: transactional networking, where you connect with someone primarily to extract a benefit, does not feel good because it is not genuinely good. It is also, for the most part, not effective.
The professionals who build the strongest networks are not the ones who are most aggressive about collecting contacts. They are the ones who are genuinely interested in other people, generous with what they know, and consistent over time. The relationship is the point, not the outcome it might one day produce.
Finding Your Networking Language
One of the most useful shifts in how we think about relationship-building is moving away from a single, prescribed version of what networking looks like and toward an understanding that people connect differently, and that all of those ways are legitimate.
Some people build their strongest professional relationships through shared work: collaborating on a project, contributing to a team, or showing up consistently in a professional community. The connection forms around something they are doing together rather than something they are explicitly trying to build.
Others build relationships through conversation and ideas: the person at a conference who ends up talking for an hour with someone they just met about a problem both of them find fascinating, or the professional who follows a thinker's work for years and eventually reaches out with a genuine reaction to something that moved them. These relationships often feel more natural to people who find small talk draining but can sustain a deep conversation indefinitely.
There are professionals who build their networks primarily through generosity: making introductions for others, sharing relevant information without being asked, showing up for people in moments that matter. This approach builds social capital quietly and consistently, and it tends to compound over time because generosity is memorable.
And there are people who build relationships through proximity: being present in the spaces, communities, forums, and events where the people they want to know are already gathering. Not aggressively. Just consistently. Over time, familiarity becomes trust.
None of these approaches is the right one. The most effective networking strategy is the one that feels authentic enough for you to sustain it over years, not just when you need something.
The Shift That Changes Everything
Adam Grant, organisational psychologist at Wharton and author of Give and Take, spent years studying what distinguishes people who build genuinely useful professional networks from those who do not. His research found that the most successful networkers are not those who approach relationships with the question of what can I get, but those who ask what can I offer.
The practical version of this is simpler than it sounds. Before you attend an event, send a message, or make an introduction, ask yourself what you are bringing to the other person. It might be a relevant article. A connection they would find useful. Feedback on something they shared. A genuine question about work they have done that you admire. The act of orienting toward contribution rather than extraction changes the entire quality of the interaction and, over time, the entire character of your network.
This week, rather than attending a networking event or sending a cold message, try something smaller. Reach out to one person in your professional life who you have lost touch with and send them something genuinely useful, with no ask attached. An article relevant to their work. A note about something they shared that stayed with you. An introduction to someone they should know.
That is the other CV being built. One genuine interaction at a time.
Next week we look at mentorship specifically: what it actually is, why most people approach it wrong, and how to build a mentoring relationship that works for both people in it.
See you Monday.
Fiyin
Team Konseye
With The Right Network Anything Is Possible.®
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