Photo Credit: Michelle Brea @Flickr

It would be an understatement to say that I passionately loathe traditional, conventional ideas of networking.

My social and professional radar is not necessarily widening, but it is definitely becoming a better filter. Although we are not all perfect, I appreciate the opportunity for genuine connections. For some reason, that gets lost in the networking merry-go-round.

1. Whitewash

I am pleading to all (young,  Black) professionals: Please stop telling me how many important people you think you know. If this is not embarrassing for you, than it is for me. I could write a whole other post on how bad people are at networking and how they’ve taken committing networking faux pas to a new art – but I won’t (right now).

When it comes down to it, some professionals are still adopting that tired habit of the subjective importance in reference to making others think they’re special.

What’s worse than that?

Organizations like the ELC are using research to back up the fact that Black women are tanking in their careers because they don’t know enough white men. It’s total BS, frankly.

Michelle Obama didn’t need to know any white men to become First Lady. Nor did Desiree Rogers. Oh…and what about Oprah? She may say she likes surrounding herself with good white people, but you don’t hear her touting about how great da man has been for her career.

So much for progress.

2. A Case of the Competing Profiles

It’s totally bad news for anyone to endure the horror involving someone trying to ultimately top you no matter what. These people like crushing you with every bit of their accomplishments (realized or not) scraped from the bottom their profile barrel. It’s nonsense.

By the time they finish talking – you’ve stopped listening from the second they went 5 minutes into the conversation.

How did their low-self esteem enter into the picture? You’re not being authentic when you choose to compete with someone that way. The other person has no interest in competing with you. After all, they’re just trying to get to know you (if they’re genuine). It’s not fair to internally measure yourself against someone only to externally use it against them.

Punk networkers
create
90% of
the loathing others
have for
traditional networkingPunk networkers create 90% of the loathing others have for traditional networking

And, if they are as equally engaged in competing with you, then the both of you are only going to hit each other upside the head with back and forth banter on how much better you think you are than the other. So it’s a waste. The purpose is to gain a real connection.

That can take 10 minutes of colloquial chit chat, not 1 hour of upping the professional ante. Networking is about meeting and getting to know interesting people. It’s not about you lambasting others with boring (or obnoxious) facts about why they should think you are somebody worth knowing.

3. Namedropping

Supposedly, the idea behind networking involves exchanging information with others. Sometimes, this involves talking about people in your social and professional circles. Name droppers use it like a bat to the head. “I know X person who knows Y person and they all live in blah blah blah” – in one ear and out the other.

It’s self-defeating from the very beginning.

Am I the only one who thinks name droppers alienate and annoy the absolute be-Jesus out anyone they talk to? How does this behavior continue to exist if everyone knows that it’s stupid?

4. Talking so much – I forget why I’m standing here

A month or so ago, I attended the Chicago Urban League’s Entrepreneurship competition because my sister was competing with a team from her high school. The premise of the competition, in theory, seemed promising and chockful of learning of opportunities. In reality, it was severely annoying. Disappointing. And left me…blank.

More accurately, the experience was akin to the feeling one may get between discovering Seth Rogen’s Twitter profile is fake and that coffee may not really help with your sex drive.

The program ran over because volunteers used any any time they could to talk about the program. Every time a volunteer spoke, nonetheless, it was about themselves. They talked so much, it left little time for the teams to connect with others (like the judges or other competition participants). These kids do all this work, the judges give out  awards – everyone just goes home.

What?

Within that, staffers talked endlessly about how great they were because they were working within the program. They blabbed about how they were entrepreneurs at heart because they had this deal with that person and they were doing this with that company.

Mix habits 1, 2 and 3 = destroy my faith in the public.

And that’s the problem: these same habits slip into the one on one. Talking so much about what you think is relevant to only you leads to missed opportunities – not more connections. You won’t be adding anything – just more noise.