Perspectives on networking relationships for a college Freshman

Earlier this Fall, I delivered a speech to a group of college students and covered a range of topics. The email below is from one of the students in that audience.

One of the major themes from my talk was the importance of relationships when building your career. This student’s question is about how to look at networking relationships differently from friendships. Pretty interesting question and, surprisingly, one that I don’t remember ever having been asked before.

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GW wrote:

Dear Mr. Marquis

I didn’t come to speak to you after your lecture but I want to thank you for coming and giving us insight on how to truly succeed. I liked your points on Networking. Lately, our classes have been teaching us that networking is just making acquaintances as a means of getting ahead in the world.

Similar to what you said, I think networking isn’t made up random people you “kinda” know. It has to be authentic. Networking is in my opinion, making friends with people in a similar field.

I didn’t speak up but I just had a simple question. They keep pushing us to just network and network, do you have friends outside of your network who you just like to be around? Weird question, I realize but it sounds like most of the Business professionals I know only befriend people that they could network with.

Thank You for taking time out of your (probably) extremely busy schedule to share your path to success

From,

GW

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My response:

Hi GW,

Thanks for taking the time to attend my talk and for following up with this email. I never know how I am actually doing when I deliver these talks, so seeing positive feedback like the message from you is a HUGE relief for me as I think back on my performance.

I’m glad that my comments about networking and relationship building stuck with you because they’re probably the most important concepts that I covered. There are too many people who approach networking in the way that you described your classes as teaching and I think that is fundamentally wrong. If one goes into a relationship thinking that the person will help him/her get ahead in some way, then he/she will be really disappointed when that whole “get ahead in some way” thing doesn’t happen, which is usually the case. If that happens, there’s always the risk of the person resenting the new connection for no reason other than unmet expectations, which, in my opinion, is just plain wrong. As I said last night, if you go out and meet people with the purpose of making a new friend or at least a friendly acquaintance, you’ll find that it’s a MUCH less stressful experience.

I really like your question about whether I have friends outside of my network that I just like to be around because I don’t think anyone has ever posed it to me before. It’s a difficult question for me to ask because, for the most part, I consider all of my friends to be a part of my network, but I always tend to look at them as friends first. What I mean is that, when I establish relationships with people, I err on the side of identifying folks that I’d like being around enough to at least want to hang out with for a few minutes. I don’t go into that kind of situation thinking “How can this person help me?” because that mindset may distract from the task of actually getting to know a new person, which would be a shame. Of course, there may be many ways that a new connection could help you, but it’s much more fun and interesting to get to know someone simply for the sake of getting to know someone. The whole “productive networking” aspect of it can always come in later, but, in the early stages, I’m all about just learning about the person to determine whether we could be friendly.

So, to answer your question, I have lots of friends that I just like to be around and, while those people might happen to be good networking connections, I interact with them exactly as what they are…my friends. As you get older and move further in your career, you’ll find that you start hanging around other driven young professionals who will have interesting jobs at good companies. Then, one day, you’ll look around at your friends and realize that you’ve compiled a hell of a professional network without even trying.

I don’t know if my response above nailed the question in the way that you were hoping for. If it didn’t, circle back with me and I’ll try to fill in any holes that are unclear.

Take care and have a nice afternoon.

Marquis