How to Build Professional Relationships

Much of the networking advice given to women comes from an era when influence was built through informal access - to the golf course, the private dinner, or the relationship formed after hours. Those structures still shape opportunity, even though time, mobility, and access remain unevenly distributed. Standard advice to “network more” rarely accounts 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, collected the business cards, and followed up.

More than once, I came home with a small stack of cards and a sinking feeling because I knew what would follow: emails, coffee requests, and thin exchanges that consumed time without building anything durable.

Over time, I realized that the effort was fine and the frame was the problem.

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 Real Interest

If there is one shift I would encourage, it is this:

Give yourself permission to focus on the people you are curious about.

Set aside the longest list, the most senior title, and the most efficient “networking target.”

Focus on the people: the work that makes you lean in, the challenges that make you think more deeply, and the individuals whose perspective expands your own.

When I look at the strongest professional relationships in my life, they began with real interest and no strategic calculation.

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?*

I mean that in a grounded, practical sense, without performance or tactics.

• 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 call it disciplined generosity.

People remember who pays enough attention to offer something useful: context, a thoughtful introduction, an honest challenge, or a question that sharpens the work.

Over time, those patterns compound.

The individuals who operate this way tend to become quietly central in their networks. 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.

A large network can create reach, but reach and trust are not the same asset. High-stakes collaboration usually depends on a smaller number of relationships in which judgment and reliability have been tested.

This is why I encourage a different orientation: depth before volume, substance before visibility, and 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.

It is community building in the more deliberate, human sense of bringing thoughtful people into meaningful conversation with one another, well away from anything large or performative.

Sometimes that has looked like small dinners, sometimes like cross-sector working groups, and 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 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 beyond transaction.

The Relationships That Actually Sustain a Career

Today, I do have a strong and meaningful professional network.

But 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 intersects with yours in meaningful ways.

Then ask yourself:

• What are they currently trying to move forward?
• Where might I have useful context or connection?
• Where would I 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 built through sustained attention, real curiosity, and well-judged generosity.

And for many women working within systems that were not originally designed with them in mind, that shift in approach can make all the difference.