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Why Networking Events Are Useless

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I don’t mean to be so blunt, but it’s true! Keith Ferrazzi nails this once again in Never Eat Alone. His words are especially significant given that he is one of the most connected people in the world:

I have a confession to make. I’ve never been to a so-called “networking event” in my life.

If properly organized, these get-togethers in theory could work. Most, however, are for the desperate and uninformed. The average attendees are often unemployed and too quick to pass on their resumes to anyone with a free hand — usually the hand of someone else who is unemployed looking to pass on his resume.

Imagine a congregation of people with nothing in common except joblessness. That’s not exactly a recipe for facilitating close bonds.

The problem with “networking events” is that they are typically based on the “me first” model of networking, which we’ve refuted in the previous posts. If you are networking first of all for what you can get out of people, you’ve blown it. That’s not networking — that’s schmoozing.

Real networkings is first about the value you can bring to others. Certainly, your own needs do matter, and it is right and legitimate to seek help from your network (in fact, it is essential and, when understood rightly, actually another way of helping). The problem is when your own needs become your first priority, when networking is abstracted from mutual interest, and when networking is abstracted from what you have to offer without thought of return.

That’s what’s wrong with most networking events. They are artificial and canned. But when you are interested first in other people for their own sake, then you don’t need networking events. You will naturally encounter people at places of common interest, such as conferences and events, which are the best places to “network” (= meet people!) in the right way.

Should You Make a Rigid Distinction Between Your Personal and Professional Life?

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The answer is no. That’s maybe how things were done in the 1950s, but it’s not how things work in the new economy. Thankfully.

Keith Ferrazzi once again nails this in Never Eat Alone:

Contrary to popular business wisdom, I don’t believe there has to be a rigid line between our private and public lives.

Old-school business views the expression of emotions and compassion as vulnerability; today’s new businesspeople see such attributes as the glue that binds us. When our relationships are stronger, our businesses and careers are more successful.

Elsewhere he adds:

Real connecting insists that you bring the same values to every relationship. As a result, I no longer needed to make a distinction between my career happiness and my life happiness — they were both pieces of me. …

You can’t feel in love with your life if you hate your work; and, more times than not, people don’t love their work because they work with people they don’t like. Connecting with others doubles and triples your opportunities to meet with people that can lead to a new and exciting job.

I think the problem in today’s world isn’t that we have too many people in our lives, it’s that we don’t have enough.

The Real Meaning of Networking

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A few years ago a friend of mine mentioned that he was going to be at an event where he could encounter someone he would really like to meet, but he wasn’t going to introduce himself because it would seem like networking.

There is of course such a thing as the “networking jerk.” This is the guy who is the insincere, ruthlessly ambitions schmooze artist everyone wants to avoid, and you certainly don’t want to become.

However, the unfortunate existence of the networking jerk should not be allowed to give real networking a bad name. My friend is one of the most sincere people I know, and would by no stretch of the imagination be mistaken for the networking jerk. So I encouraged him to reach out to this person. I said to him “but it wouldn’t be networking, really, at least not in the sense you seem to be thinking. Understood rightly, networking is simply about making friends — and doing it sincerely, because people matter, and not because you are trying to get anything out of it other than encouraging someone and recognizing the value of reaching out.”

Keith Ferrazzi nails this in his excellent book Never Eat Alone: “Those who are best at it don’t network — they make friends. …A widening circle of influence is an unintended result, not a calculated aim.” That’s the first rule of real networking.

And the second is this: have something to offer. Be a person who brings benefit, not a leech who sucks people’s time and energy. Ferrazzi nails this again: “Relationships are solidified by trust. Institutions are built on it. You gain trust by asking not what people can do for you, to paraphrase an earlier Kennedy, but what you can do for others. In other words, the currency of real networking is not greed but generosity.”

Understood in this way, “networking” is a very biblical thing to do. It is about helping and being helped. If we care about building up the kingdom of God (Matthew 6:33), then we have to care about “networking,” because the kingdom of God is built of people — most of whom we have not yet met.

Is Attending Conferences an Unnecessary Expense?

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Keith Ferrazzi makes a good case that the answer is no, in Never Eat Alone.

The reason that conferences are not unnecessary expenses is because it is actually revenue generating to attend. But this is often overlooked because only the cost is tied to the conference in an organization’s budget, but the productive outcomes from the conference are not.

First, here’s how Ferrazzi decides whether to attend a conference:

“Conferences are good for mainly one thing. They provide a forum to meet the kind of like-minded people who can help you fulfill your mission and goals. Before deciding to attend a conference, I sometimes informally go so far as using a simple return-on-investment thought process. Is the likely return I’ll get from the relationships I establish and build equal to or greater than the price of the conference and the time I spend there? If so, I attend. If not, I don’t.”

Second, here is Ferrazzi’s very good case on why cutting out conferences is a bad way to cut costs:

“Right after we sold YaYa, the new owners instituted a set of cost-cutting policies relative to travel and conferences. I thought the policies were fundamentally off the mark. The owners saw conferences as boondoggles–pleasant affairs for indulgent executives rather than as revenue generators. To our new parent company, the costs of sending people to a few events each year seemed like an unnecessary expense on the start-up company’s balance sheet.

“I strongly disagreed and promised to convince them otherwise. I set about recording the actual number of revenue-generating projects that came directly from people I had met at conferences. The owners were stunned when I presented a spreadsheet showing successive deals and how a significant chunk of revenue could be traced back to one conference or another.”

Third, here’s a good summary from Fast Company on the value of conferences and conventions: They enable you to (1) make contacts and (2) share ideas.