We’re Asking Networking to Do Too Much

One of the biggest reasons events are special is because they bring people together.

People take time away from their work, their families, and their comfort because, despite everything that technology can do, they believe that showing up in person will give them something different, something that will make it all worth it. They might meet their next client, find a new job, learn from someone, or simply find themselves surrounded by people who are as excited about something as they are.

And yet, when it comes to actually creating those connections, we tend to rely on one familiar format: networking. Put people in a room, give them some time, and let them figure it out.

If connection matters this much, why do we leave so much of it to chance?

Networking asks more of us than we realize

The first challenge of networking happens before anyone has said a word.

Walk into a reception alone, and you have to figure out where to go. Everyone else seems to already be talking. Which group do you approach? How do you enter a conversation amongst strangers? Oh, this person is standing alone; maybe this is someone easier to approach? Or do you settle for a run to the bar, for a bit of liquid courage and the chance to meet another solo person there?

For some, navigating a scene like this is second nature. But for the majority, it’s stressful. Watch a networking reception closely, and you can see what's truly happening: people hovering at the edges of the room, pulling out their phones, searching for a familiar face or circling the room without quite finding their way in.

But networking itself isn’t the problem.

Networking does something useful. It creates permission to approach someone we don’t know, introduce ourselves, and have an initial conversation. It gets us from stranger to acquaintance.

The challenge is that we ask attendees to do a tremendous amount of work on either side of that introduction.

Once you’ve exchanged names, roles, and the inevitable “What brings you here?”, what happens next? Without some shared context or something more meaningful to talk about, the conversation can easily run out of road and become a terrifyingly uncomfortable silence between the two of you.

Some people are brilliant at this. They can walk into a room of strangers, effortlessly join a group and, five minutes later, be having a fascinating conversation with a new best friend.

But that’s a skill. It shouldn’t be the prerequisite for getting value from the people around you.

That’s where I think we’re asking networking to do too much.

As event professionals, we want our events to lead to new relationships, opportunities, ideas, collaborations, and a sense of belonging. We want our attendees to get what they came for, and more. But too often, we create those outcomes by simply providing a room and some time. Then we leave attendees responsible for navigating the rest…

What if we designed more of that journey?

The answer isn’t to get rid of networking. It’s to give networking a better place within the experience.

When we know where the problem is, we can do something about it. People usually don't struggle with sharing their name, their work, and being interesting and interested for a few minutes. The pain is getting into that conversation and keeping it interesting.

So we should design a way to remove some of the awkwardness before the introduction by making it easier for people to find one another and start conversations. And we can improve what happens after the introduction by giving people shared experiences, questions, contexts, or reasons to interact differently.

Then networking can feel less cringe and do what it does well: open new doors.

Many things can happen once a door is opened. Sometimes people simply need a better conversation. Sometimes they need to discover what they have in common. Sometimes they need to do something together. And sometimes there is an opportunity to go considerably deeper.

That’s where I think about peership.

There’s a lot more available to us

Peership is one of the most potent forms of connections I have witnessed.

It's what happens between people when their conversation goes beyond simple introductions and starts being deeply honest and caring.

I’ve spent years facilitating mastermind groups (peer groups for CEOs), and this is where I’ve seen the potential of peer relationships most clearly. In these groups, people were not afraid to bring up what was on their minds: the messy decisions they struggled to make, the regret of not having handled a situation as they should, the victory they felt shyly proud of. Others leaned in to listen, to understand, to be there. It becomes a privilege to hear such intimate details from someone's life. And everyone is supported with kindness and honesty. People walk away feeling understood, appreciated, and supported, and they leave deeply bonded.

When asked to bring peership experiences to events, I've created similarly deep relationships amongst large groups of attendees. Incredibly, peership can happen intentionally and remarkably quickly when people are given the right settings.

The point isn’t that every person needs to leave with a new best friend, or that every interaction needs to become deeply personal.

It’s that there is a much wider range of human interaction available to us than we typically design for.

In that range of relationship potency, networking sits at the beginning and peership, at the far end.

That is why I find it a shame to see people get only “So, what do you do?”-level questions at events.

I've seen what's possible. We can aim much higher.

Peership shows us the true potential that a relationship can have.

And there is a lot of room in between.

You can see the difference

From across a ballroom, these different kinds of interaction can look surprisingly similar. People are standing or sitting together. The room is loud. Everyone appears to be talking.

Look more closely, though, and you start to see differences.

Are people scanning the room while someone is talking to them, or leaning into the conversation? Are they reaching for their phones, or losing track of time? Do they leave as soon as the session ends, or linger because they aren’t finished talking?

The bigger test comes later. Do those relationships disappear when the conference ends, or do people keep talking? Do attendees describe the people they met as one of the most valuable parts of the experience? Do they come back because they want to be part of that community again?

Those differences can show up in surveys, in retention, in social media shares, and in the stories people tell about an event long after it is over.

If all we measure is whether people talked to one another, almost any networking reception can look successful.

But people talking is not the same as people truly connecting.

Events have an extraordinary advantage: they bring people into the same place, at the same time, often around something they already have in common.

Networking absolutely has a role in that.

But instead of asking it to create the entire relationship, we can design more of the journey — making it easier to enter the conversation and giving that conversation somewhere to go.

Imagine what your next event could look like with your attendees truly deeply connected.

We all know what the best relationships can give us.

And that quality of relationship is absolutely possible at any gathering.

We just need to design for it.