Networking. A word to strike fear in the hearts of introverts everywhere. It sounds like robots in a room together, linking their synapses and transferring data. It sounds heartless.
A business meeting. The horror.
It is somewhat heartless, but then again, so is everything it represents; psychopaths often make excellent businesspeople. The world of networking, of worming your way to the top through whatever means necessary, is a harsh one. It rewards those who disregard social boundaries, who leap into conversations headfirst, who are ‘masters of communication management’ (Babiak & Hare, 2006).
So business, and by extension a networking event, favours the extroverted. The ideal schmoozing socialite is an outgoing performative type. Pity the poor introvert, the orbiting Pluto of the party, on the outer rim by the drinks table trying to engage someone whilst simultaneously avoiding eye contact like the plague.
I have excellent news for you, fellow introverted creatives, fellow reluctant networkers. It may be in vain, after all. Perhaps the best course of action is to stay home and work, not to go and sip a buck’s fizz and stand awkwardly while a man much bolder than you talks to a marketing executive.
In a world in which we interact ever more frequently with our peers and potential business and personal partners online, the introvert can thrive. Able to draft and redraft responses and avoid the throng of hundreds of data-hungry robots in a conference hall, online communication holds many advantages as the networking pathway of the future.
Besides, tweeting at potential collaborators doesn’t feel, to put it bluntly, dirty in the same way that networking does. That isn’t just a turn of phrase, either. A study found that people really feel dirty after ‘instrumental networking’ and literally value soap 19% higher after such an activity. We have a physically and psychologically negative response to networking, they ‘impinge on an individual’s moral purity’ (Casciaro et al, 2014), so why bother? We are told that it’s essential to succeed, but that is not necessarily the case.
It seems that, actually, no one mixes at mixers. Research suggests that most people just talk to the others they already know at events, mingling among their circles and not forming new connections at all. This feels somewhat counter-intuitive and, I would argue, fails to fulfil on the basic point of networking events. People in this study ‘were much more likely to encounter their pre-mixer friends, even though they overwhelmingly stated before the event that their goal was to meet new people’ (Ingram & Morris, 2007).
What conclusion can be drawn from this for the introverted creative? Poet alex d r horn has some closing thoughts:
if studies are to be trusted
reliable confidants as they are
then we need not bother
leaving the house
sipping cocktails
with coat-tails
better surely to stay home
and tweet your desires into the void.