What Is a Relationship For Before It Is Useful?

Meeting the right people

I used to think networking was mostly about meeting the right people. That usually meant people who knew something, decided something, or could introduce me to someone who did. I was thinking about where a relationship might lead before giving much thought to the relationship itself.

Looking back, I can see how much of my career moved through people I knew. Information reached me. People were willing to recommend my work. I had choices because someone else knew something or was prepared to say something on my behalf.

I'm grateful for that. I'm also less sure how much of that access I earned and how much came from simply being nearby.

Part of what I'm reconsidering is what I meant by “the right people.” I tended to think about influence, but someone can make a difference simply because they see a part of the world I don't. They might hear about work I would enjoy or understand something about a role that I would struggle to learn from a job description.

Research using LinkedIn data gives that idea some support. Moderately weak connections were associated with greater job mobility on the platform, although the pattern varied by industry. Someone can know something useful to me even if we rarely speak.¹

That helps me think more broadly about who I might learn from. It also makes me more aware that hearing about an opportunity and being recommended for it ask different things of a relationship.

Someone can pass along an opening with very little knowledge of my work. Recommending me asks them to put their own judgment behind what they say. If another person asks why they think I could do the job, they need something to draw on.

I think about that from the other side when I remember people I've helped as they took on more responsibility. Some of that time was spent walking through contracts together, paying attention to delivery commitments and what fell inside or outside the scope of the work. We also talked about learning from other people: which behaviors were worth adopting and which ones they wanted to avoid.

Those conversations gave us something specific to work through. They also gave me a chance to understand how someone thought, what they noticed and what they did with the feedback. I could learn more about their judgment through that work than I could from hearing that they were ready for greater responsibility.

Lara Hogan describes sponsorship in similarly practical terms, including recommending someone for an assignment and making their work visible to others.² I find that useful because it brings the idea back to actions people can take during an ordinary working day.

It also changes what I can do when I'm hoping someone will recognize my own capability. I can give people already around me a clearer view of my work, explain a decision and ask for their judgment. That gives us something more useful to discuss than a general statement about where I want my career to go.

Even then, someone has to have the chance to see it.

That's where I become cautious about turning my experience into advice. If someone had enough familiarity with my work to recommend me, how did that familiarity develop? We may have worked closely together. I may have had an assignment that brought me into their view. Being nearby gave them opportunities to see things in me that they might never have seen in someone equally capable elsewhere.

I can take responsibility for the work I did and how I treated people while acknowledging how much depended on circumstances around me. Telling someone to build relationships is useful advice up to a point. It becomes less useful if I make it sound as though everyone has the same chance to become known.

It leaves me thinking about whom I have enough information to recommend, and whose work I might need to understand better. Familiarity makes it easier to speak confidently about someone. I want to pay attention to how that familiarity shapes my judgment.

When I think about what I hope Miss Mango learns about relationships, I find myself paying closer attention to how I talk about my own.

If I describe people mainly through the opportunities they helped me find, that becomes the part she hears. Someone recommended me. Someone introduced me. Someone helped me get somewhere. All of those things mattered, but they tell her very little about the people themselves or why I enjoyed knowing them.

I hope she'll feel comfortable asking people for help. I hope she'll find people who take an interest in her and become someone who does the same for others. I'd also like her to have relationships she values without needing to know where they're going.

That brings me back to my own expectations. I can care about someone and hope they'll think of me when an opportunity comes along. I can enjoy helping them and appreciate being asked. Those feelings can exist together.

What I want to pay attention to is whether I leave enough room for everything else. What they're interested in. What they're finding difficult. Something they wanted to tell me that has very little to do with work.

I think about the people who have helped my career because I'm grateful to them. I want to keep being curious about how their lives are unfolding, too.

Sources

1. The power of weak ties in gaining new employment, MIT News, September 15, 2022.
2. Resilient Management, An Excerpt, Lara Hogan, A List Apart.