Network size really doesn’t matter, it’s all about relationships

There’s not much worse than forcing people together to talk about work and urging them to figure out how they can use one other.

Let’s face it, networking is terrible. There’s not much worse than forcing a group of people together to talk about work, when they can’t be entirely honest with each other anyway, and urging them to figure out how they can use one other.

For genuine career support you need more than numbers, you need real relationships. Those built on mutual respect and a fair bit of honesty are those that will sustain you and take you places.

Networking, in its purest form, is the opposite of that.

There are people on the often insufferable LinkedIn who boast about the size of their network. None of them I asked when I ­researched this piece knew all of them, and all said they had a small group of supportive professional peers rather than the illusion of an ­extensive spider-web.

“A vast LinkedIn network is hardly effective,” says Helen Pit­cher, a governance and executive consultant in London. “The best and most effective networkers I know have a small but wonderfully bonded and trusted network.”

This is because the trans­actional nature of networking diminishes everything that makes us human and interesting. It forces us to package ourselves into titles and short descriptions. We are so much more than that. I have yet to go to a networking event where I have genuinely enjoyed myself and met someone who I immediately trusted and understood.

Even the use of the word network rubs me up the wrong way. I refer to many people, even my most lucrative clients, as friends. That may soften how I am perceived but it builds a more important, deeper relationship.

John Dore heads executive education at the London Business School. He says: “The most valuable network we have isn’t the one ‘out there’ but the one we already have.” Although we may have few close professional friends, those we do have are important.

If our desire is to be more successful, we should seek more ­important relationships that are built on honesty about what we go through. We can’t do that with everyone but we can build a considered group around us.

Peter Quinlan, the new Chief Justice of Western Australia, has long loathed the idea of networking. As a barrister, when he was asked to speak at a Piddington ­Society event, he asked the organisers to delete the word networking from the proceedings.

This was early in the formation of the Piddington Society (an ­association of lawyers) and changed the way it approached professional events, which now have a distinct collegiate social flair that stresses real connections.

But management gurus and ­articles continue to tell us that ­career success relies on a “strong network”, especially when they speak to women. People on the pathway to the C-suite worry less about the size of their network than they do about, you know, being good at their job.

When we focus purely on networks as a career advancement tool, we limit our prospects. Our relationships, professional and personal, are there to support and guide us, to remind us of our failings and stretch us. They are there in good times and bad, not just to get our next client.

It can be easy to think otherwise but networks are built on quality, not quantity.

Conrad Liveris is a corporate adviser on workplaces and risk.