Networking Doesn’t Have to Be a Drag
A conversation with Inga Carboni
If you hate networking events, it may be comforting to hear that experts don’t think they’re a great way to build strong relationships anyway. There are more natural, less transactional, and more effective ways to make real connections with people, especially within your company.
Inga Carboni, a professor at the College of William & Mary’s Mason School of Business, studies the characteristics of a strong network and common challenges women face when building theirs. She and her research partner, Rob Cross, analyzed networks within 30 organizations—about 16,000 people in total—to map who was connected to whom and how. They then interviewed hundreds of female executives about their networks. Women at Work cohosts Amy Bernstein and Nicole Torres spoke to Inga about her research.
NICOLE TORRES: Inga, tell us a little bit about what you found. How do you define really strong connections, and what did that look like in your research?
INGA CARBONI: One of the key aspects we found was whether these women executives had a lot of what we call “boundary-spanning relationships.” These are connections with people who don’t necessarily look like you, who aren’t embedded in the close group of people that you spend time with in your function or your unit, or even among your friendship set. They may be in different pockets of the organization or industry.
NICOLE: So, having a lot of connections and relationships with people in lots of different areas—is that what a strong network is?
INGA: There were other aspects of strong networks that that emerged from the research, but boundary spanning is an important part. If you are connecting to those diverse pockets of the organization or the industry, you’re getting slightly different perspectives on the work you’re doing and the problem domains you’re involved with. Exposure to different, diverse perspectives makes you more able to see a problem holistically and make better decisions. It also puts you in touch with new information. You’re getting new perspectives all the time, so you’re hearing new things.
The research on this goes back decades. People who have more boundary spanning in their networks get more job opportunities. They get promoted faster. They make more money. They’re more likely to be involved in innovation. They’re more likely to be tapped as top talent. It’s a big differentiator when it comes to performance.
But we know from other research, including some of the research we did on this project, that boundary spanning poses more challenges for women than it does for men.
AMY BERNSTEIN: What are some of those challenges?
INGA: A big one was a feeling of inauthenticity. Women were saying that being proactive—reaching out and connecting with new people—felt wrong to them. They felt like they were using people.
Other research shows that when we look at why we network, it’s very hard for us to think that we’re doing it out of altruistic reasons, especially in the professional realm. We sometimes think, “Well, I must be very selfish, or very manipulative…. I just want to connect with somebody to get something from them.” The problem is that if we let relationships drift and just emerge organically, we tend to hang out with people who are like us. And for women, that’s a big disadvantage.
So some of the sense about networking feeling wrong is heightened for women. I suspect that has a lot to do with the pressure we put on ourselves to be relational. There was also a dislike of bothering people. I heard that from a lot of women: “I don’t want to suggest we get to coffee or have a chat or have a meeting. I just don’t want to bother them.”
NICOLE: Did you hear any stories where women were able to overcome those fears or concerns and become better networkers?
INGA: I did talk to one woman who had seen herself passed over for a promotion and realized that she needed to change the way she was doing things. She was aware that a lot of the other women at lower levels in her organization really liked hanging out together. They would socialize with the same sort of the people and really didn’t stretch too far out of their comfort zone when it came to the people that they were connecting with. She realized that she had done exactly the same thing in the earlier part of her career. It was then that she got very thoughtful and strategic about networking. She still kept a lot of those good friends, but it was being more thoughtful and strategic about building her network and how she was facilitating interactions within it that was what took her to the next level.
AMY: You’ve also said that women who do a good job of networking are efficient. What do you mean by that?
INGA: This is delving into some of the work of my collaborator, Rob Cross, around collaborative efficiency. We are constantly collaborating at work, and his research has uncovered that we are often on collaborative overload. Learning how to have efficiency in our interactions to make sure our network supports us and doesn’t drag us down is very important. Women were much more likely to be sought out for advice than they are to seek advice, which puts them at risk for collaborative overload. A lot of people are asking them for favors, help, advice, or information. Almost every woman I interviewed, when I asked them whether there was a downside to saying no to a request for their time, said that they’d feel bad. And no man said that.
NICOLE: Can you tell us about women who were efficient collaborators? What did they do? What made them stand out?
INGA: A big part of it was how they framed collaboration. More than one woman said that they had learned that when they say yes to one thing, it means they’re saying no to something else. That framework allowed them to make better decisions. So she was able to say yes when she really felt that this would be something that would align with her professional objectives and otherwise to be able to say no and to delegate it out. That was a huge differentiator.
Successful women also put a lot more structure in their day, so they weren’t constantly in reactive mode. For instance, they set aside time for reflection. That’s the time when you’re strategizing, when you are envisioning new things, when you’re managing your network and reaching out to relationships that you may have lost contact with. They were better at seeding relationships, connecting with people long in advance of actually needing them. Then, when they actually needed help, that help was there.
AMY: It sounds as if “nimbleness,” another of the traits that you’ve noticed in successful female networkers, is connected to this idea of efficiency. Talk to us about nimbleness.
INGA: Women are more likely to form and stay in relationships with other women than men are to stay with relationships with men. Not only that, but the women’s relationships get stronger and more mutual over time. Compare that to a man, who more typically will move in and out of relationships, build up new relationships, and have a lot more of what we call “network churn.” Network churn is not a turnover of your core, closest, really trusted people, but of the other hundred-odd people in your life. We found that women were much more likely to keep the same people in their networks, whereas men were churning their networks—and that’s what leads to nimbleness.
If you’re working on projects that require you to be really agile and responsive, and you have a network that’s very dynamic, you’re going to be able to respond better. So the stickiness in women’s relationships was preventing them from being nimble.
Now, there’s a positive side to the stickiness, too: women were much better than men at building strong external networks. That’s a real strength, and it opens up job opportunities for them. I know some organizations are taking advantage of this and are creating interorganizational mentorship opportunities, which has been fabulous for women. And other organizations are also leveraging this by starting up alumni networks where you’re able to get your personal brand out there as an organization. You can use it as a recruitment tool. People boomerang it back and forth.
AMY: How do you respectfully deemphasize the old connections? You don’t want to ghost someone, right?
INGA: It’s not about rejecting the old—it’s more about embracing the new. It’s about being open to meeting new people and avoiding that comfortable tendency of wanting to do things with the people that you’ve been doing stuff with—going to the same people for advice, or going to the same sorts of lunches, or the same after-hours events.
NICOLE: Can you just talk a little bit about how energy fits into having a good, strong network? What did you see strong female networkers put out there in terms of their energy?
INGA: Rob Cross has taken a look at energizers over the last two decades. He’s found that the extent to which people feel energized and excited after talking with you—like you’re somebody they want to brainstorm with, somebody they want to innovate with, someone who really leaves them excited about their work—that was a four times higher predictor of a strong network than any other aspect. Being that person who pulls people toward you, who energizes other people, has a strong effect on performance. You’re pulling talent toward you. You’re pulling ideas toward you.
NICOLE: But how do you do that? How do you give off that kind of energy to bring people toward you with their ideas and their talent?
INGA: One of the easy aspects of it is just to exhibit positivity. We like people who are positive, who smile at us and things like that. But it turns out that men and women need slightly different things. And this might explain a finding that we had that across all these networks that we looked at, that women were more likely to be identified as energizing. But they were also more likely to be the people who were deenergizing others.
When we dug into this, we found two very different things. Both genders, but more so men, were saying, “I want somebody who’s really knows what they’re talking about, who will be able to poke holes in what I’m saying, who can pull in their expertise and show me what they’re doing”—a person who we refer to as having a lot of competence-based trust. The fact that the person knows what they’re talking about makes me excited that they’re listening to me. That aspect was important to both men and women, but far more to men. What was more important to women was having a feeling that somebody cared about what they were saying. One very high-level woman, CEO of a large company, told me that she turns to her network because they say, “It’s OK. You’re doing good.” And we need that kind of feedback. This idea of caring is called benevolence-based trust.
The bind comes when you’re trying to be energizing to men and to women. Both of them want you to be competent, and with the women it’s also very important that you be caring. You’re all familiar with the trade-off between being likeable and being competent that women struggle with all the time. If they project a little too much warmth and positivity, they may be viewed as less competent. And if they don’t project any warmth and positivity, then they’re often identified as deenergizing. So it’s a very tricky line.
The successful women were very strategic about it. They would think, “I’m going to go into an interaction, and if it’s with a man, I know that I have to lead with my competence, give evidence, tell of times where they had a similar experience: ‘Here’s some findings that I had that might be useful to you.’” When they’re interacting with women, they need to lead with warmth. They have to walk this very tricky line between being sure that they come off as caring—to avoid blowing up the gender stereotype and getting the backlash if they’re not being nice enough—and also to put forward their competence. They have to make these adjustments in a way that men seem not have to have to do as much.
NICOLE: If you were going to give me advice on how to form relationships that were boundary spanning, what would you tell me to do? How would I start that?
INGA: When someone asks me that, I start by taking a look at who’s already in their network. And sometimes that alone can be a shock to people when they start to realize something like, “Wow, everyone in my network is white and in their 20s and comes from the same three colleges!” I encourage people to take a look at their networks, at the similarities among people in them and where there are gaps. Where is there underrepresentation? What are you missing in terms of age and hierarchy? As people get higher in the organization, they often miss having connections with people lower in the organization. And that’s a big gap, when you’re not sure what’s going on for people at different parts of your organization. And when you’re lower, you want to make sure that you have higher as well. You want to have vertical spanning and horizontal spanning.
Then your next step is to figure how to put yourself in a position where you’ll be interacting with people who can help fill those gaps. Sometimes you’ll actually know a role, or maybe even a specific person, but often you don’t. I’m very against the whole “schmoozing/using” impression of networking. I encourage people to think about building authentic, real relationships. But if you’re waiting for them to occur spontaneously, they’re going to only occur in the places where you tend to be.
One of the most rewarding things that I did as a young faculty member was joining a faculty play group made up of tenure-track faculty who had kids under five. I would never have met people across my university in these different domains without that group. We were bonding over hanging out with our kids, and then we also got to talking about what it’s like—since most of us were women—to be a woman on tenure track and being a mother. I formed some very strong relationships in there.
NICOLE: I went to a golf outing once.
NICOLE: No! But I met a lot of people outside of my usual day-to-day.
INGA: Well, sometimes people will bond over how much they hate golf when they’re at those kinds of things. It drives me nuts when people tell me that they have to go this or that networking event. They know they’ve got to do more networking, and a networking event is better than nothing, but it’s really not a great use of time. Especially if you’re an introvert like me—it’s torture thinking about what my elevator speech is, and working a room, and stuff like that. You’re much better off taking an activity that already fits into your areas of interest, whether it’s volunteering, sitting on the board of a nonprofit you are passionate about, or helping with your industry by serving on a committee. Something that puts you interacting with people. It’s really not enough just to go to a conference.
Adapted from “Networking Doesn’t Have to Be a Drag,” Women at Work podcast season 4, episode 2, October 21, 2019.