‘Cause You Gotta Have Friends

This week’s question, which I received from a student recently but have heard too many times to count over the course of my career, makes me want to scream. OK, maybe just rant and rave, which I will now do, but I hope you will quickly come to understand why.

Q: As MBAs, we are constantly being told to increase our networks. Unfortunately, I’m an introvert, and connecting with people I don’t know makes me feel incredibly uncomfortable. How would you suggest I go about expanding my circle of associates?

A: First, and very lovingly, by never saying “networking” or “circle of associates” ever again. I hate those words, and I think they are dangerous and dumb.

Second, by understanding that your career is not going to be helped by knowing more strangers. That’s not how business works.

And third, by accepting how business does indeed work, and careers do indeed excel, which is through the power of friendship.

Stopping for a breath here.

Now, to explain. I too was urged to “network” as a Harvard MBA back in the late ‘80s. I too accepted this advice as the gospel truth, but unlike you, I am extroverted, to put it mildly, and grabbed this guidance with gusto. But guess what? I also found networking activities incredibly uncomfortable. I despised events like, “Liberal Arts Majors in Consulting,” and the annual conference for business school professors that I attended as an editor at the Harvard Business Review. I felt like both of these events – heck, every networking event I attended –was just one mercenary “What can you do for me?” conversation after another.?

Years went by and my career began to thrive in ways that made me proud and happy, but also made me wonder, “How’d all these good things end up happening to me?” It took me about a nanosecond to realize that 99% of the events that had contributed to my “climbing the ladder,” if you will, were related to hard work, luck, and, importantly, the wonderful, authentic relationships I had forged along the way with people at work who I had helped or who had helped me, for no other reason than we liked each other a lot.

In other words, friends.

In 2001, I met my late husband Jack Welch , whose career success had already spawned a cottage industry of books, articles, podcasts, and business school classes hypothesizing how he did it. Well, I can answer that question. He was insanely smart. He surrounded himself with diverse thinkers and listened to them. He was a clear, forceful communicator. Oh, and he had a jillion-billion friends. He loved people. A lot of people say that, but Jack lived it. The minute he met you, he was asking you about your childhood, and your dreams, and your mother’s health, and none of it was phony. Some of these “connections” stayed light and occasional. But others – many others – developed into real bonds. The picture above is Jack with a perfect example, David Zaslav, who started working for Jack at NBC in the 1990s, but quickly grew into a close friend, decades before David became CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery Jack and David talked all the time, sometimes about sports and kids and politics, but also about strategy, leadership, and finance. For years and years and years, they helped each other’s careers out of affection, trust, and respect.?

That, dear readers, is how business actually works.?

And so it was about fifteen years ago, when I was asked your question during a speech, I blurted out, “You have to stop networking and just make friends.” Jack literally leapt out of his seat and cheered. He was like, “Hell, yeah,” because that had been his unspoken motto for decades. Later, he asked me, “How’d you know that?” And I said, “You taught me!” Which is true, but so did life.

So please, to conclude my rant, follow this advice! I realize as an introvert, making friends is no walk in the park either. But my introverted friends assure me it’s easier than networking. And better for your heart (and career) too.??