Women at Work - Networking Doesn’t Have to Be a Drag

Episode Date: October 21, 2019

Building relationships that benefit our careers isn’t about exchanging business cards at work events; it’s about getting to know people we can learn from. We discuss how to develop a strong network and what the very best women networkers do. Guest: Inga Carboni. Our theme music is Matt Hill’s “City In Motion,” provided by Audio Network.

Over 40,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform. Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com slash women at work. I just stopped calling it networking. Like I, the term networking to me still feels so like icky and it just feels transactional and it's all about like what you're trying to get out of talking to people. Whereas I think I just naturally like, like I'm very curious about other people. I like meeting people. Like I like those events where you're forced to mingle and be social and talk about whatever you're working on or whatever you feel like. But I cannot call that networking. And if something is like

billed as a networking event, like I can't, I can't go. I feel like there's so much pressure to say the right things when it's described as networking versus when it's just go meet someone and have an interesting conversation. To walk out with X number of business cards. Yes, that I leave in a pile on my desk that's never been dealt with. Yeah, it's sort of the kind of cognitive dissonance of LinkedIn for me is that the bigger my network gets, the less LinkedIn I feel to it. Right. You're listening to Women at Work from Harvard Business Review. I'm Amy Bernstein.

I'm Nicole Torres. And I'm Amy Gallo. This episode, we're talking about how to build relationships that benefit our careers in a way that doesn't feel icky or transactional. And yes, we will be calling it networking. Our guest is Inga Carboni. She's a professor at William & Mary's Mason School of Business, and she's the author of the book Connect the Dots. She's an expert on networks, and like us, she's not really into networking events and the whole business card exchange.

But she is into helping women build strong networks in more effective ways. She's seen what can happen when we don't do that. It always seemed to me that the people who were rising through the organizations weren't necessarily the most skillful. And I would often see that in small, subtle ways, they were getting advantages

over some of the women that I worked with. In other words, she saw less competent men becoming leaders because they had connections. But she also saw women becoming leaders and she wanted to know what these female leaders were doing differently from men and from other women. So Inga 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. And then they interviewed hundreds of female executives about their networks. Inga's here to talk about the important gender differences they found and what the women who were successful at networking had in common. Oh, and it's just Nicole and I interviewing Inga. Amy G. will be back later in the episode. Inga, thanks for joining us. Hi, thanks for having me. Tell us a little bit about what you found. You know, I'm curious what a strong network looks like.

So how do you define or characterize how you have really strong connections? What did that look like in your research? Well, in my research, one of the key aspects of that was, did you have a lot of what we call boundary-spanning relationships? And so these are people who don't necessarily look like you, and they aren't embedded in the close group of people that you spend time with, maybe in your function or your unit or even among your friendship set, but are there in different pockets of the organization or industry? So is just having a lot of connections and relationships with people in lots of different areas, is that what a strong network is? A strong network is more than just boundary spanning. And there was other aspects of 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 that you're doing, on the problem domains that you're involved with. And those different diverse perspectives make you more able to see a problem holistically, to make a higher quality decision. You also are in touch with new information. You're getting new perspectives all the time. So you're hearing new things. Research goes back, say, decades on the value of this position. And we know that people who have more boundary spanning in their networks, they 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 I know from other research, including some of the research we did on this project, that women experience that role very differently. That this boundary spanning causes more problems, it poses more challenges, maybe

is a better way to put it, for women than it does, than it seems to for men. Can you just help us understand what some of those challenges are? Sure, sure. One of the big things that came out in our research was this feeling of inauthenticity. Women were saying things like, well, being proactive in that way, sort of reaching out and connecting with new people sort of felt wrong. They felt like they were using people and they were being manipulative. There's other research that other people have done that says when we sort of look at the reasons why we network, it's sometimes very hard for us to think that we're doing it out of altruistic reasons, especially in the professional realm. We sometimes think, well, we must be doing it to be very selfish or very manipulative, right? 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 probably some of the feelings about it feeling wrong and feeling like you're using people, I think were heightened for women. And that, I suspect, has a lot to do with the pressure we put on ourselves to be very relational. I think there was also a feeling of bothering people. I heard that from a lot of women. I don't want to bother anybody. I don't want to, you know, suggest we get to coffee, you know, or have a chat or have a meeting. They would talk about, you know, I just don't want to, I don't want to bother them. I'm just curious though, did you have any stories where there were women like that with those fears or concerns and they overcame that and became better networkers? I did talk to one woman who said that she had a moment in her career where, like a lot of the

other women that I saw at lower levels who really liked hanging out in groups, you know, they would socialize with sort of the same people and they'd go after work and hang out and really didn't stretch too far out of their comfort zone when it came to the people that they were connecting with. And she said, when I look back on the earlier part of my career, that is exactly what I did. And she said she realized at one point, and it was when she saw herself passed over for a promotion, that she needed to change the way she was doing things. And then she got very thoughtful and strategic about it. And she still had good friends, and she still kept a lot of those friends, but in terms of being more thoughtful and more strategic about how she was building her network and how she was facilitating interactions in that network, that was what took her to the next level. Yeah. I'm always curious about those points where, you know, something will change your thinking or force you to act differently. So you've also said that women who do a good job of networking are efficient.

What do you mean by that? Yeah, yeah. So this is delving into some of the work of my collaborator, Rob Cross, around collaborative efficiency. And it's based on this idea that we are constantly collaborating at work. And his research has uncovered that we are often on collaborative overload. And learning how to have efficiency in those interactions so that our network supports us and doesn't drag us down is very important. When you ask people, who do you seek for advice? Women were much more likely to be sought for advice, but they were less likely to seek advice.

So that puts them at risk for collaborative overload, right? A lot of people are asking them for favors and to help them out with things and to give them information and advice about stuff. Almost every woman I interviewed, when I asked them if there was a downside to saying no to a request for their time, said, I'd feel bad. And no man said that. Wow. Yeah, it was a huge difference. So can you tell us about the women who collaborated well, who were efficient collaborators? What did they do? What made them stand out? Well, a big thing was how they framed collaboration. So more than one woman, but one woman said it really clearly when she said, you know, I have learned that when I say yes to one thing, it means I'm saying no to something else.

And when she started to frame her responses in that framework, she was able 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 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. They set aside, for instance, time for reflection. And that's really important time. That's the time when you're strategizing, when you're envisioning new things, when you're

managing your network and reaching out to relationships that you've maybe lost contact with. And women were just not as good at that. But the successful women put in that time for reflection. They were better at seeding relationships, so connecting with people long in advance of actually needing a relationship. And that led to when they actually needed help or they wanted to take a request to them and suggest that somebody else might be a better person to talk to, they had those available to them. 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. Yeah, yeah. It turns out that women are more likely to form and stay in relationships with other women than are men likely to stay with relationships with men. Not only that, but the women's, has a lot more what we call network churn, which is not a turnover of those core closest people to you, the ones that are

really your trusted sort of personal board of directors kind of thing, but the other hundred people in your life. And we found that women were much more likely to keep the same people in those networks, whereas men were churning those networks. And that's what leads to nimbleness. And if you're working on projects that require you to be really nimble and really agile and really responsive, if you've got a network that's very dynamic at the same time where you're learning how to move people in and out of your active network, you're going to be able to respond better. So the stickiness was preventing women from being nimble. Now, there's a positive side to the stickiness too. The positive side was that women were much better than men at building strong external networks. That's a real strength and it helps them, opens them up for job opportunities.

I know some organizations are taking advantage of this and are creating inter-organizational 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. But you're absolutely right about the nimbleness. And it has a lot to do with the more agile dynamic form that men tend to have and the stickier, more, I guess, more static version that women tend to have. What does the future hold for business? Can someone please invent a crystal ball?

Until then, over 40,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform. With real-time insights and forecasting, you're able to peer into the future and seize new opportunities. Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com slash women at work. That's netsuite.com slash women at work. Hey, listeners. Thank you. hosted by Columbia Business School professor Madhupe Akinnola. The show features TED Talks about everything from setting smart goals to the latest on DEI in business,

followed up with a mini lesson from Madhupe on how to apply these lessons in your own life. Listen to TED Business wherever you get your podcasts. How do you, you know, respectfully de-emphasize the old connections? How do you, what is a not horrible way to cut ties? You don't want to ghost someone, right? No, no, and that's not at all what I mean. I'm not talking about like, you know, saying, No, no. And that's not at all what I mean. I'm not talking about like, you know, saying, yeah, ghosting someone or not picking up the phone or taking the other pathway

down the hallway so you don't have to bump into somebody. I think it's more about being open to meeting new people, avoiding that really comfortable tendency of wanting to do things with the people that you've always been doing stuff with. So going to the same people for advice, for instance, or going to the same sorts of lunches or the same after-hours events. I think it's more reaching out and embracing the new than it is sort of rejecting the old. So as you mentioned, nimble networks, more churn

leads to greater energy. Can you just talk a little bit about, you know, how energy fits into having a good strong network, what you saw strong female networkers put out there in terms of their energy? Yeah, yeah. And actually, there's some really good news about energizing. So and this is, again, referencing some of Rob's research. But he's taken a look at energizers over the last two decades. And he's found that the extent to which people say that you are a person who leaves me energized and excited after talking with you, right? So somebody that you want to brainstorm with, somebody that you want to innovate with, someone who really leaves you excited about your work, the more people identified you as that, that was like a four times a higher predictor of any other network aspect. So being that person who pulls people towards you, who energizes other people, has a strong effect on performance. And the reason it

has a strong effect on performance is because the reason it has a strong effect on performance is because you're pulling talent towards you. You're pulling ideas towards you. 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? Just be magnetic. How do you be magnetic? Just do it. How tough could it be, right? Well, one of the easy aspects of it is just to, you know, exhibit positivity, right? We like people who are positive, you know, sort of smile at us and do 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,

women were more likely to be identified as energizing. They were also more likely to be the people who were de-energizing others. When we dug into this and we tried through the interviews, tried to understand what people meant, what they wanted when they were asking about energizing, we found two very different things. Both people, but more so men, were saying that I want somebody who's going to be, you know, really knows what they're talking about, will be able to poke holes in what I'm saying, can pull in their expertise and show me what they're doing. A person who, you know, we refer to as having a lot of competence-based trust, like I trust this person knows what they're talking about. And that makes me excited that they're listening to me. So that was important to both men and women, but far more important to men. And what was important to women was having a feeling that somebody cared about what they were

saying. One woman, very high level woman, CEO of a large company, said to me she turns to her network because they say, it's okay. You're doing good. And they need that kind of feedback. And we call that more benevolence-based trust or this idea of caring. The bind comes when you're trying to communicate being energizing to men and women, right? So both of them want you to be competent. And the women also very important that you be caring. But the men are a little less concerned with you being caring, supposedly for energizing. But I'm sure your listeners are

familiar with the trade off between being likable and being competent that women struggle with all the time. So 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 de-energizing. So it's a very tricky line. So the successful women were very strategic about it. So they would say, 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. And, you know, very good, non-threatening way to do that is saying like, well, here's my experience. I don't know if it would be relevant to you, but here's when I dealt with a similar issue. Here's some findings that I had that might be useful to you. When they're interacting with women, they need to lead with the warmth. And they have to walk this very tricky line between being sure that they come off as caring, because they don't want to blow up the gender stereotype and get the backlash of not being nice enough. But they also have to put forward the gender stereotype and get the backlash of not being nice enough. But they also have to put forward their competence.

And they have to adjust that for their audience in a way that men seem not to have to do as much. So 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? So when I do tell people what to do about 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 like, wow, everyone in my network is white and in their 20s and comes from three different colleges or something like that. But I encourage people to take a look at their network and then start to look at the similarities among people. And where are their gaps?

Where is their underrepresentation? What are you missing in your network? Age, 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. So you want to have vertical spanning, you want to have horizontal spanning. So now your next step is to figure out, okay, how can I put myself in a position where I'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 kind of impression of networking. I really 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 I joined a faculty play group where parents, it was mostly mothers, of tenure track faculty had kids that were all

under five. I would never have met people across my university in these different domains if I had not joined that faculty play group. And we were bonding over hanging out with our kids, you know, and then we also got to talking about what it's like, and since most of us were women, what it's like to be a woman on tenure track and being a mother. And then I formed some very strong relationships in there, not with everybody, but with a couple of people who I had some interpersonal chemistry, I guess, with. I went to a golf outing once. Well, do you like golf? No. But I met a lot of people outside of my usual day to day.

I did the same one. I went twice. I will not go to a third. It was like a one-time thing. Well, sometimes people all bond over how much they hate golf, right, when they're at those kinds of things. So, you know, it drives me nuts when people tell me that they're going to have to go,

they have to go to this networking event. You know, they know they got to do more networking. They're going to go to this networking event. And, you know, it's better than nothing, but it's really not a great use of your time. And especially if you're an introvert like me, it's torture thinking about what's my elevator speech and working the room and stuff like that. You're much, much better off taking an activity that already kind of fits into your areas of interest, something that has you working with people to do something, volunteering. If it fits with you to be on a board of a nonprofit that you are passionate about or helping with your industry, serving on a committee or serving on a panel.

It's something that puts you interacting with people. It's really not enough just to go to a conference or something like that, because that's a very receptive kind of state. It's not a highly interactive state where people get to learn about each other. Inga, this was very, very helpful. Thank you so much for taking time to talk to us today. Thanks so much, Inga. Thank you. I for taking time to talk to us today. Thanks so much, Inga. Thank you. I really enjoyed it.

What does the future hold for business? Can someone please invent a crystal ball? Until then, over 40,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform. With real-time insights and forecasting, you're able to peer into the future and seize new opportunities. Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com slash women at work.

That's netsuite.com slash women at work. That's netsuite.com slash women at work. I think if I had listened to Inga talk about networking when I was in my 20s, I would have felt sick to my stomach. Like the whole idea of networking was so appalling to me. The fact that you would spend time with someone in order to get something from them seemed just wrong. And I think over time what I've realized is that it's less about it being transactional, like someday I'll need something from this person, and more about just trying to find people I like who are in different worlds that I'm in. And if I focus on being curious about them and actually networking with people I like, then it's much more palatable to me. I am totally, totally on the same page as that. It's how I trick myself

into walking into a room full of people I don't know. Right. Yeah, I had this moment this past week where I went to a networking event in a hotel. I was there for a conference and I got ready in my room and I went down in the elevator. It was on floor two and then the doors opened and dinged and it was this room full of people with drinks and it was so loud. And I really I was like, how do I press the close door button and get out of here immediately? Yeah. And then I was like, OK, deep breath, deep breath.

And then I sort of caught eyes with someone who was I must have had a look at my face because she was laughing at me. And I was like, all right, here I go. I can find one person in here who probably has an interesting story. Yeah. And I did find one person and talk to her the whole time. That was my way of dealing. Yeah. I used to have to give myself rules because I just I had like that social anxiety when things were described as networking of going in and like having to meet someone and strike up a conversation. I just could not, I would not be able to do what you did, Amy, and like getting out of an elevator, seeing a room full of people already talking to

each other and trying to figure out how I would break into a conversation. So I would be the person like who walks in, like goes straight to the bar, like is on their phone the whole time. And it's like looking at the most important email I've ever gotten in my life. So I like realized early on when I started going to conferences that that is not how I meet people. Like I meet people in line for coffee or sitting next to them, sitting next to someone. That's so much easier for me to strike up a conversation and just say, like, how are you enjoying things? Or what are you doing here? Where do you come from? Or what did you think of that last talk? What did you think of the last talk?

And I started giving myself rules because I would go to conferences and not talk to anyone. Like I would just leave and I would feel so disappointed in myself for not being able to. You feel like such a failure. I felt like such a failure. I'd be afraid to come back and tell people about the conference because like the first question you'll get is who did you meet? And I wouldn't have met anyone. So one rule I gave myself was when I go to a conference and there are panels and talks or whatever, I always have to go up to someone on that panel afterwards and either say, like, I thought that was great, or can you send me your

slides? Or I really loved what you said. I work at HBR, like we should talk. And like, I'll give them my card and kind of leave it at that. But that rule helped me actually start meeting people and feel better about myself and what I was doing after this. That's really constructive. Yeah. And I think that also helps with the boundary spanning that Inga was talking about, because if we stay within our circle and meet people that we work with, or even just meet people at industry events, which I'm doing air quotes because I hate industry events. But the nice thing about going to conferences and hearing people from different worlds talk and going up to them is you get that sort of broader network, which is really smart. Totally. And the way to start a conversation there is to think about what you just heard

and start talking about it. The help me understand kind of comment, because I often walk out of those feeling like there's more to what I just heard or, you know, I want to know more, help me learn more. And that is kind of great neutral ground. do our job as editors and journalists are the same skills that help us network, right? It's just being curious about another person. So sometimes I'll even say, is this your first time in San Francisco? Right? It doesn't even have to necessarily be about the content. You know, sometimes it's like, where'd you get your shirt? You know, it's very, very simple openings to regular conversations. The trick for me is then how do you get out of it when you realize, oh, this is like an awkward first date. Oh, I see someone over there I need to say hi to.

Yeah, I'm going to go fill my glass. Yes. Yeah. Okay, how do you get out of those conversations? Because I cannot successfully. I just gave you two lines. Yeah, I use those lines. I need to go get a, you know,

or I will just say like, I need to use the restroom, I'll see you later. Like, I really just keep it very simple. I mean, you don't even have to make an excuse. You can say, you know, it was great to talk to you. I hope we run into each other again. Yeah. Yeah.

Something like that. My line is I have to go and then I actually go. You leave? Wow. That's not a good tactic, Nicole. I'm in this area. Yeah. You just walk to a different part of the room. It's not a good tactic, Nicole. I need some help in this area. Yeah. You just walk to a different part of the room.

It's fun. Okay. Because think about it. But they'll see you and they'll know you left them. Of course they'll see you, but they want to move on too. It's not dating. Right. Yeah, it's not.

And no one has that expectation. If they do, you're not responsible for it. It was so great to talk to you. I'm going to go get another drink. It was great to talk to you. I like that. See you around. See you around. I hope our paths cross again. Oh my God, that is so good. Yes. I hope our paths cross again. That's good. I like that. I also like, I've been very direct and said, I know we both want to meet more people. I'll see you later.

Like just sort of keep being direct. I mean, you know, the nice thing about transactional conversations is that they're transactional and they probably want to move on. The thing is, you may think that you're clinging to each other for, you know, social dear life, but chances are it's only you in that case. Yes. Yes. I mean, the other thing that's helped me is in the conversation, not be thinking, how can this person help me? Right. Like that, that feels so gross to me. And so I think it's more about who and you won't know. Sometimes you'll meet someone and they sound interesting. And, you know, five years later, you're like, wait, I met that person at the conference. They might have a connection here or they might show up in your LinkedIn feed or Twitter feed. And then you're able to sort of continue the interaction in a meaningful way.

But at the time, like that's, that's the thing when I know when people are sitting there thinking, how can she be useful to me? And it just feels gross. Yeah. So what did you guys think about what Inga was saying about boundary spanning relationships, especially within the organization? I thought that was really smart advice, but very hard to execute on because we all know we should be connected across departments, silos, functions. And yet, do you look at the org chart and sort of say, oh, I should meet that person? Or I'm, you know, like, how do you actually do it? Yeah. Is the tough thing. Right. Introducing myself, actually, I'm trying to get better at being the person to say, like, we haven't met before. Like, what's your name? What department do you work in? Usually that comes

up kind of organically because someone is, I don't know, they'll say, like, I saw you give that talk. I thought that was great. Then I'll say, oh, like, who are you again? Yeah. But I think it, yeah, I'm trying to work on just actually approaching people or being more aware of people who are around me and saying hi in the moment. Yeah. I mean, one of the real reasons to do that is that it's so uncomfortable to keep running into people you haven't formally met. Right. to do that is that it's so uncomfortable to keep running into people you haven't formally met, right? Then you have those lame, hey, kind of conversations. There are still people after like

five and a half years of working here who I have never been formally introduced to, but I see every single day we know each other, but we've just never had like a, hi, I'm so-and-so, you're so-and-so, let's talk about who we are, what we're doing. You say, okay, I am so tired of seeing you every single day and not even knowing your name. I'm Nicole, you know? I like that. Yes, I like that too. I like that. For anyone listening, just know I'm thinking about you.

You're going to have a bunch of people saying hi to you tomorrow. The thing is, if you recognize that we're all in the same boat and that we're all uncomfortable, it makes it so much easier to take the first step. Say hi. Yeah. So true. So how intentional do you think we should be in when we're trying to span those boundaries? Is it that we should be saying to ourselves, I need to make a friend in finance or I need to know people in design. I do think we have to be intentional about it. I think of it less as, you know, someday there

might be an issue with my expense report and therefore I need someone in finance who has my back, right? It's not that. I think it's more, who am I interacting with regularly and how would it help me to understand their perspective? Right? So if I'm having difficult conversations with someone in design over, you know, one particular piece I'm working on, before the next time I have to work with that person, I might ask them out to coffee. That way, we have a little bit of shared understanding. It's less about, I need that person to serve a role. And it's more like, how can I make our interactions easier? And I think I do think it's also helpful to say which part recognize, who I've never interacted with, I might email that person and say,

hey, we've actually never met. Do you want to meet for coffee? I've done that like two times. I'm not saying I do it all the time, but I've done it like two times. And it's what I actually ended up, one of the people, we ended up having lunch,

you know, three times in a row because it was just, we had a lot to talk about. We had kids the same age and I don't think we'll ever work together. But now I do know that I can, you know, call her if there's something that comes up that I need to understand about her department. Yeah. And something I found to be really helpful too on that front is like ask your manager or ask other people in the organization, who should you be talking to? Yeah? So like my manager is really good at when someone starts here,

they like you get a list of people you should talk to around the organization, across departments, and because they know like what areas of expertise all these different people have. And when you're coming in, you might not necessarily know that. You won't know who to meet and you might not know, you know, how it would help your job down the road to know someone in marketing or in finance, but your boss might know that. So you can just say, who are some people like in this organization I should get coffee with, I should meet and I should know about their jobs. So I think that is really helpful. Just asking people like, who do you talk to around

here? Like, do you talk to anyone in other departments that I should meet? Like, I know I've met people across departments that way, just from asking the person who I sit next to, like, who do you talk to in analytics? I think the other thing, the other way I've met people in different parts of the organization is through affinity groups. So we have like that woman at work group that meets across departments. And I have met people in that group because they've made an interesting comment in one of the lunch and learns and I followed up with them. Even the person organizing it is someone who I don't interact with regularly and I've gotten to know her better. So I think that's another way, especially in really large organizations, is find an affinity group or

go to a lunch and learn and sit down and talk to the person next to you. Well, the other thing is when you, in the course of your job, find yourself talking to someone you don't know, you know, take an extra couple of minutes to get to know them a little better. Because that kind of context is much easier. It's easier for me and it's much more natural. Yeah. Like just be curious. Yeah, be curious. About the other person. I think that really helps. I mean, even,

so there's a lot of gray area between, you know, hating that scene where the elevator doors open and it's a loud, crowded room. Yeah. And, you know, meeting people. Yeah.

And I think we all like to meet people and that chance meeting that could turn into a real friendship is pretty special. But, I mean, who in the world wants to walk into the room you described to me? Someone does because they were all there. Yeah, no, my head immediately went to heading back up to my hotel room, ordering room service. That's right. I sat through the whole dinner. I'm planning to feel sick in an hour.

Yeah, exactly. But I think that here's the thing. I think we do want to give people. We should hang out more. I'm all for it. Let's network. I do think we want to give people permission to leave after that half an hour at that event. Half an hour at one of those events is like running eight sprints.

I agree. But you can do it. And you never know. I mean, the woman I met is really interesting. We've already sent each other two different articles. I think she's someone I might actually collaborate with in the future. And that would have never happened. And also, you know, I love what you said before about, you know, you don't have anything else to say.

I love that bag you're carrying. Yeah. Because that starts a conversation. Yeah. So I'm curious, after talking with Inga, do you feel like you have healthy networks? Or is there, like, an aspect you want to do better at? I like my network. I think it could be bigger, better. I could definitely be, you know, meeting more new people who are very different from me and expanding, you know, the people who I talk to every day or every month. The harder thing for me that I'm struggling with

now is like how to maintain relationships that I've built over time and how to. So, you know, we talked about going to conferences and something that happens to me a lot is I'll meet someone really cool, like in line for coffee or something, and we'll exchange cards and want to stay in touch and maybe we'll, you know, connect on LinkedIn, but then there will just not be any follow-up. And I look back on all of those relationships I've formed with people who I think would be awesome to just get to know, you know, might be great to know professionally. I think of all the potential for following up on those meetings and how I've wasted them. So that's something that I want to work on that I think will really help strengthen my network and the people I know. It's just being more mindful of who I'm meeting and trying a little harder to maintain the relationships.

So I have a thought about that, which is that, you know, the difference between the friendships you form in, say, college or when you're first out in the world and the friendships that are genuine friendships in the sense that there's a lot of goodwill between the two people that you form in a conference, they don't require the same amount of maintenance. You know, that the person you met 18 months ago in a conference is still someone who, if you see that, if you see him or her again, someone you could say, hey, it's great to see you again. And you rekindle to the same sort of probably not terribly deep point you were at before, but it was kind of lovely in the moment, right? You know, you don't don't it doesn't it's not these are not your college

friends right these are people who are really nice to run into when you run into them to you know to email when there's something you can do for each other they're lovely people to help when you can help and to ask for help when you need some from them. Because the understanding is different. Yes. Yeah. I think changing how I think about it maybe would just relieve some of the anxiety around why I'm not doing a good job of maintaining these things. But they're very different and you can approach them differently and you can give yourself some slack in how you're managing all of that. Yeah. Don't invest them with more than they are. You know, they are important, but they're different. They're just a different animal.

I mean, one thing that I took away from the conversation we had with Inga is, you know, back to the anxiety and that elevator door opening onto the crowded, noisy room. I immediately, when that elevator door opens, and we've all been there, I go right to the anxious horror of the eighth grade dance. And that's me doing it to myself. And I think that talking to Inga and talking with you guys today makes me see that maybe if I just sort of

change the channel in my head and stop you know no one cares how many guys ask me to dance at the 8th grade dance and no one cares about how many people I talk to so finding one great person to talk to is great.

That's great. Right. And if you go up to your room and order room service, it's okay. Do it after. Yeah. I mean, I like setting the goal of spending half an hour making an honest effort to meet someone. Yep. But I'd be happy with one. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. That's our show. I'm Amy Bernstein. I'm Amy Gallo. And I'm Nicole Torres. Our editorial and production team is Amanda Kersey, Maureen Hoke, Adam Buchholz, Mary Du, Rob Eckhart, Erica Truxler, and J.M. Oljars. For any of our listeners who live in Boston, we have a live event coming up all about conflict and how to navigate it. It is on Tuesday, November 12th at 6 p.m.

at Harvard Business School. It's totally free. The talk will be like an hour and then we're going to hang out afterwards. And I'm pretty sure there will be snacks. Snacks. Plus, we're going to have Linda Hill, who's a professor at Harvard Business School. We're also going to take as many questions from the audience as we can possibly squeeze in. There will be a link in our show notes so that you can find out more about the event and to register. We'll see you there. See you there.