Unlocking Career Growth: Rethinking Networking and Building Meaningful Relationships

When I thought about networking during the first few years of my career, my mind went to building relationships with experienced leaders within and outside my organization. My views on networking were admittedly selfish, knowing that good relationships with leaders would help my career growth, whether in compensation, reviews, or getting put on the best projects.

Recently though, I’ve had a mindset shift in how I think about networking. It’s made a big difference in the quality of my relationships and my enjoyment of ‘networking’ (a term I actually don’t much like — it feels like it’s taken on a connotation of building relationships with a professional purpose in mind, rather than just because you enjoy learning about people’s work).

When thinking about networking, I now think about it in three buckets:

• Relationships with experienced leaders
• Relationships with peers
• Relationships with up and comers

Relationships with experienced leaders

These are the relationships most think of when they hear networking. These are leaders at your firm or within your industry.