The late, great Peter Drucker, one of the first business leaders to be called a guru, famously said: “More business decisions occur over lunch and dinner than at any other time, yet no MBA courses are given on the subject.”
It’s slightly less true today as networking is a recognised subject in many courses, but curiously it’s a topic in which women are only earning a C+. “Many women feel that getting ahead based on ‘connections’ is a dirty tactic and that hard work alone is their ticket to the top,” according to Sylvia Ann Hewlett in the Harvard Business Review. Controversially, she went on to argue that it’s failing to network with men that’s holding women back.
“Women have traditionally networked with other women, but the broader and more diverse your network the better,” says Michelle Mendelsson, co-head of diversity and inclusion at Credit Suisse in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. She runs the bank’s Mentoring Advisory Group which oversees a new way for women to network where they are “sponsored” by senior, often male, executive board members.
Women have traditionally networked with other women, but the broader and more diverse your network the better
“Mentors provide advice, but a sponsor will open doors,” she says. “Research has shown that men are more likely to have broader networks and sponsor relationships than women. It’s interesting to see the impact of that. Without the support of those networks and sponsors it’s harder to advance. It doesn’t matter if the sponsor is male or female – different people offer different skill sets.”
All of this may seem counter-intuitive. Women are all about the interpersonal skills, surely, while its men who struggle to make small talk. And women-only networking groups are flourishing for a number of reasons. Kim Graham-Nye, founder of gNappies, loves the quote from Gloria Steinem: “We’re not crazy. The system is crazy.”
“And that’s huge because we were, in the past, made to feel like there was something wrong with us if we didn’t accept less pay,” she says. Having somewhere women can discuss, pitch and network without judgement is important in developing confidence.
Either way, there’s something about hard-core professional networking that can seem distinctly un-British, concedes Cara Ward, co-founder and director of Pure Public Relations. “The first event I ever went to was horrible – transplanted from the US it was a breakfast where, if you wanted to come back you had to bring new people and tell ten people about the event,” she shudders. “Having said that, in the digital age we can spend too much time e-mailing – nothing beats getting face to face.”
Judith Clegg, founder of start-up networking event company Glasshouse and digital consulting agency Takeout, has some tips for making events work: “Think of it as a community, not just an evening where you can grab a few business cards – that almost never works. Just as in any community, the best way to get started is by offering to help. Go down with that as your first idea – who can I help and how? You’ll see how quickly people respond to that.” Soon they’ll be teaching an MBA course on that.
