I recently went to an alumni night for my grad school program. 

That’s not an error, I just realized that I forgot to take pictures and I’m kicking myself now because I had such a great time connecting with people I haven’t seen in awhile. Faculty, other alumni – it was such a great event.

One question that kept coming up from current students?

“How do I network?”

Especially if I don’t like networking.

Especially if I’m shy.

Or in my case, I used to hate networking because I thought it was just “being fake” or pretending to be someone I wasn’t. But one of my mentors, who was the head of the program that I saw at this event, wisely told me long ago, “you won’t get very far in your career with that thinking”.

Ultimately, he was right, I missed out on multiple opportunities [in fact, I shared about this in a previous newsletter!]

I want to be clear, it’s no longer enough just to be good at your job.

Building strong relationships and networking is vital to really developing your career.

But HOW?

Let me help answer with some specific tactics you can use based on questions I’ve been getting:

How do I get more comfortable with networking?

I’ve found that getting comfortable with the idea of networking comes down to reframing the entire of networking.

Look at it as an opportunity to be curious about learning about someone else and finding what makes them tick. What are they interested in? What do they care about? What are they passionate about?

From there, you can find something you have in common with them and chat about that.

In one of my previous roles, there was a c-level leader that I could not stand. But she loved football, and I loved football.

So I was able to build a relationship with her because I would just focus on our shared interest of football. You don’t have to become best friends with everybody, but if you can humanize people, you can at least have a good working relationship.

What if we have nothing in common/they’re passionate about something I couldn’t care less about?

I thought this was a really good question from a student. To answer her, I gave the example of advanced math – something I personally couldn’t care less about.

If someone starts talking about how passionate they are about advanced math, my go-to question is:

“What about advanced math interests you so much?”

OR

“How did you get so into advanced math?”

Do you see how it works? It doesn’t have to be about the content, it can just be focused on learning about them as a person.

Why are they passionate about this? What makes them tick?

If you have a curious enough tone, you can even share genuinely about why you can’t get into that topic.

“Man, I’ve never been able to get into math that deeply because I just wasn’t good at it. It’s incredible that your brain is able to work like that.”

I even throw in a genuine compliment.

Chris, you’re extroverted and you like talking to people. What if I’m shy?

Start small. 

Start with friends and other people you know and practice just asking questions about them and their interests. Get used to asking follow up questions in a safe space and then practice longer conversations or practice short conversations with people you know less.

Hopefully those quick tips help.

Do you have other tips to help networkers that hate networking? Let me know and I’ll add them into a larger resource!

Regards,

Chris

PS – Was this newsletter helpful? Reply back and let me know, I personally respond!