Let me start with the uncomfortable truth: much of the networking advice given to women still reflects a different era.
An era when influence was built on the golf course.
An era when access was shaped in rooms where women were rarely present.
An era when time, mobility, and informal access were distributed very unevenly.
The systems that still drive many career opportunities grew out of that context. Women today are often navigating those same informal relationship structures, but under different constraints and with less margin for error.
And the standard advice does not account for that reality.
I say this as someone who has never been particularly good at traditional networking. Early in my career, I did what many of us were told to do. I went to the events. I collected the business cards. I followed up.
And more than once, I came home with a small stack of cards and a sinking feeling.
Because I knew what would come next.
An email.
A coffee request.
And, very often, a conversation that would consume scarce time and result in something largely transactional. A request for an introduction. A quick ask. A thin exchange that did not build anything durable.
Over time, I realized the issue was not effort. It was the frame.
I do not build my best relationships in transactional environments. And many women I work with do not either.
What has worked for me, consistently, is something different.
Start With Genuine Interest
If there is one shift I would encourage, it is this:
Give yourself permission to focus on the people you are genuinely curious about.
Not the longest list.
Not the most senior title.
Not the most efficient “networking target.”
The people.
The work that makes you lean in.
The challenges that make you think more deeply.
The individuals whose perspective expands your own.
When I look at the strongest professional relationships in my life, they did not begin with a strategic calculation. They began with real interest.
I was interested in their work.
I was interested in the problems they were trying to solve.
I was interested in how they saw the world.
Sometimes that led to collaboration. Sometimes to shared projects. Sometimes simply to a deeper understanding of an adjacent field. There was rarely a short-term objective.
But over time, something much more durable formed.
The Generosity Reframe
This is where the usual networking script breaks down.
The question that has shaped most of my meaningful professional relationships has been very simple:
What might actually be useful here?
Not in a performative way.
Not as a tactic.
But in a grounded, practical sense.
- What context might help this person think more clearly?
- What connection might remove friction for them?
- What honest perspective might be helpful at this moment?
This is often labeled as altruism. I see it more as disciplined generosity.
In complex professional ecosystems, people remember who consistently brings signal rather than noise. They remember who connects thoughtfully, who shares insight at the right moment, who shows up prepared and paying attention.
Over time, those patterns compound.
The individuals who operate this way tend to become quietly central in their networks. Not because they are constantly “working the room,” but because engagement with them reliably creates forward motion.
Why Transactional Networking Often Backfires
There is a particular dynamic I see repeatedly, especially among highly capable women.
They are told to expand their network quickly. They do so. And then they find themselves managing a growing number of shallow connections that require maintenance but create little real value.
This is not a time-neutral activity.
For many women, time is already tightly allocated across demanding professional roles, family responsibilities, and community commitments. Adding layers of low-yield relationship maintenance is not a small cost.
More importantly, transactional networking often produces weak ties without trust depth. And in high-stakes environments, trust depth is what actually moves things.
This is why I encourage a different orientation:
- Depth before volume.
- Substance before visibility.
- Mutual relevance before polite connection.
Build the Ecosystems You Actually Want
One of the most important shifts in my own career came when I stopped trying to simply enter existing networks and started intentionally convening the kinds of spaces I wanted to be part of.
I am, by instinct, a community builder.
Not in the large, performative sense. In the more deliberate, human sense of bringing thoughtful people into meaningful conversation with one another.
Sometimes that has looked like small dinners.
Sometimes like cross-sector working groups.
Sometimes like gatherings of women leaders wrestling with similar strategic questions.
Each year, I host a Friendsgiving-style gathering. We go around the table and each person shares two things: what has been genuinely hard this year and what they are grateful for.
The shift in depth is immediate.
When people are given structured permission to move beyond surface-level exchange, the quality of connection changes quickly.
You do not have to host large events to do this work. But you can be intentional about creating or participating in professional spaces that allow for real conversation rather than pure transaction.
The Relationships That Actually Sustain a Career
Today, I do have a strong and meaningful professional network.
But it did not come from optimizing business card collection. It came from sustained curiosity about people and their work, combined with consistent, thoughtful contribution over time.
The relationships that have mattered most share a few characteristics:
- There is mutual respect for each other's work
- There has been some form of shared problem-solving or collaboration
- There is enough personal understanding to support real trust
- There is no immediate pressure for the relationship to “produce” something
Those conditions take longer to build. But they are far more durable once established.
A Practical Discipline
If you prefer something concrete to act on, try this.
Once a quarter, identify a small handful of people whose work genuinely intersects with yours in meaningful ways.
Not dozens. A handful.
Then ask yourself:
- What are they currently trying to move forward?
- Where might I have useful context or connection?
- Where would I genuinely value deeper understanding of their world?
Reach out from that place.
Over time, this approach tends to produce a network that is smaller, more thoughtful, and significantly more powerful than one built on volume alone.
Professional relationships, at their best, are not built through performance.
They are built through sustained attention, genuine curiosity, and well-judged generosity.
And for many women navigating systems that were not originally designed with them in mind, that shift in approach can make all the difference.
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