Harvard Business Review Special Issues Fall 2022

BUILDING EFFECTIVE RELATIONSHIPS is a requirement of good management and leadership. But research shows that during the pandemic, people’s professional and personal networks shrank by close to 16%. (See “We’re Losing Touch with Our Networks” in this issue.) Conferences shut down, video calls made it hard to connect and build relationships, and masks made in-person meetings uncomfortable. Whether you’ve returned full-time to a central office after the Covid lockdowns or gone hybrid or permanently remote, building relationships now takes more deliberate effort and feels more uncomfortable than it did before. So how do you start reconnecting? Practical tactics abound and you’ll find them throughout this issue. Underlying all of these are a few mind shifts that can help get you beyond the inevitable awkwardness. Don’t be embarrassed that you’ve been out of…

“I HATE NETWORKING.” We hear this all the time from executives, other professionals, and MBA students. They tell us that networking makes them feel uncomfortable and phony—even dirty. Although some people have a natural passion for it—namely, the extroverts who love and thrive on social interaction—many understandably see it as brownnosing, exploitative, and inauthentic. But in today’s world, networking is a necessity. A mountain of research shows that professional networks lead to more job and business opportunities, broader and deeper knowledge, improved capacity to innovate, faster advancement, and greater status and authority. Building and nurturing professional relationships also improves the quality of work and increases job satisfaction. When we studied 165 lawyers at a large North American law firm, for example, we found that their success depended on their ability to network…

THE PROBLEM Networking is a necessity. Building and nurturing professional relationships leads to more opportunities and knowledge, faster advancement, and greater status. But aside from extroverts who thrive on social interaction, many people say it makes them feel uncomfortable and phony—even dirty. THE SOLUTION An aversion to networking can be conquered with four strategies to help change your mindset: 1. Focus on learning, thinking about growth and advancement rather than obligation. 2. Identify common interests that can help you forge meaningful relationships. 3. Think broadly about what you can give instead of only what you have to gain. 4. Find a higher purpose that helps you feel more authentic about networking. Using these strategies can help you overcome a distaste for networking—and even become more excited about and effective at building fruitful relationships.…

OUR RECENT RESEARCH shows that our professional and personal networks have shrunk by close to 16%—or by more than 200 people—during the pandemic. Network shrinkage has some serious downsides. It can make finding a job more difficult, hinder career progress, and make it harder to get promoted. For companies, it can lead to less creativity and more groupthink. People with fewer connections at work have a decreased sense of belonging and are less likely to identify with the organization, which puts them at higher risk for turnover and possibly even fraud and negligence. Under normal circumstances, our networks don’t simply shrink; they’re more likely to churn. Rather than slowly losing friends over time as we move, change jobs, or have kids, we usually forge new relationships to replace the ones we’ve…

AT SOME POINT in our careers, we find ourselves in need of help from others—whether it’s to make a direct connection to a hiring manager, gather information on a prospective client company, or learn about a new industry quickly. However, over the years, we often lose touch with people in our network as work, family, and other demands fill our limited time. As if asking for help wasn’t hard enough, what do you do when you need assistance from someone you haven’t spoken to in over a decade? As an executive coach, I have seen clients in this situation many times. Building and nurturing our personal and professional networks is essential for career success. Research shows that robust networks lead to better opportunities, faster advancement, and greater status, among other benefits.…

AS YOU ADVANCE in your career, you have more experience and more connections to draw on for networking. But chances are you’ve also become a lot busier—as have the really successful people you’re now trying to meet. How do you get the attention of people who get dozens of invitations per week and hundreds of emails per day? And how do you find time to network with potential new clients or recruit new employees when your calendar is packed? The typical advice that’s given to entry-level employees—Invite people to coffee! Connect with them on LinkedIn!—simply doesn’t work for people at the top of their careers. Instead, you need to lever-age an entirely different strategy, something I call “inbound networking.” In the online world, inbound marketing is a term that was popularized about…