Networking For Introverts in 2025: Three Ways To De-stress Meeting New People

My name is Jeffrey and I am an introvert!

I make my living leading brand messaging workshops and speaking to audiences. Yet while presenting to hundreds of people energizes me, I find the networking reception afterwards exhausting.

Does this sound like you, or someone you know?

Many other marketers and professional communicators are secret introverts. Although the introvert stereotype is quiet and shy, the truth more nuanced. Either a true extrovert or a “performing introvert” can be very comfortable “on stage.” The difference is how they recharge after the show.

A true extrovert may recover by going out with a bunch of people. In contrast, an introvert will find rest in being alone, because a big social group would just be another thing to recover from.

This would be fine(ish) if not for three key facts that it took me the first 10 years of my career to discover.

1. Success depends on connecting with people. And entrepreneurial success lives or dies by those connections.
2. Digital and social media have amplified, not eliminated the need for those connections.
3. Your next close friend, mate or essential business contact may be right in front of you, IRL.

What’s an introvert to do? Find ways to connect with people that work with, rather than against your nature. Connecting in ways that are authentic to you will likely lead you to people you actually want to know and business opportunities most likely to lead to success. In that spirit, I’d like to offer fellow introverts a starter set of approaches that have worked for me.

Get a Dog!

“I’ve lived in this neighborhood for three years and met almost nobody,” one of my lower Manhattan neighbors shared. “Now I’ve had a dog for three months, and I’ve met everyone.” He’s not alone. Pets relax us, give us something to focus on beyond our own self-consciousness and give others an easy and human way to connect. I would be lucky to meet one new person a day in New York City on my own. Walking Grady the wonder dog, a dozen people come up to me a day with smiles on their faces and hands extended to pet. If they have a dog too, we are often literally pulled together. At my co-working space, Grady holds court and I meet people constantly without stress or effort.

Pets lower social barriers

The marketing automation expert?who invited me to chair a conference track (thanks Inga Romanoff), my PR manager and many other business and personal connections first came to me at the other end of a leash. Friends who are parents tell me that kids work for this too, though I’d caution anyone against having children solely for networking!

Get A “Job”

For me, nothing dispels the discomfort of meeting strangers like a role to play. Ideally, it’s a job that puts me in front of people but offers the comfort of a specific function.

Dread standing around with a glass in your hand? Help pour the drinks. Uncomfortable tooting your own horn? Become visible by promoting other people.

A defined role relieves networking stress

This is exactly the role I took on in at the Digital Marketing World Forum. As track chair, I promoted the speakers on my track. Even before the conference, I had already come to know those twelve people. And by the end of the day, via that structured visibility, many others were introducing themselves to me.

Your brain can either focus on how you’re doing or what you’re doing, not both. Therefore, nothing blows away self-consciousness like the gentle armor of a defined role.

Talk To One Person

“Would you be willing to introduce yourself to one stranger before you go?”

Carol Lempert, an extraordinary trainer in executive presence, asked me this near the close of the Digital Marketing World Forum. “Just one, and then you can go home.”

Every crowd is made up of individual people

Hmm. One person? My other coping mechanisms were off the table. Oddly, the Brooklyn Expo Center did not consider pets essential to conferences. My track chair duties were over, so no “job” to do. Except for whatever residual “I’m with the band” aura a speaker’s badge might convey; I was on my own. A group of a thousand strangers was just the kind of networking situation I like the least.

But hey, meeting one person even in this unstructured setting seemed like a stretch worth doing. After all, who knows when that next person might be just who you need to meet?

So, I found somebody to talk with. We chatted. We talked a bit of shop. We exchanged cards. Then I went home.

Every crowd ultimately consists of individual people. Cut just one from the herd! If I can do it, you can too.

What About You?

If you’re an introvert, what are your networking strategies. If you manage introverts on your team, how do you help them succeed in making connections?