The Word Is No Longer ‘Networking’.
I sat on a panel last night with Amanda Ma of Innovate Marketing Group, moderated by Claudia Bodan of BMO Commercial Bank, produced by the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, and hosted by architectural agency Gensler at Gensler Los Angeles. The theme was “The Room Where It Happens: Power, Access & Influence in LA,” and the conversation kept circling back to a moment every one of us knew well.
You walk into a room full of people who all seem to know each other. Three or four small circles have already formed, heads leaned in, laughing at something you weren’t there for. You’re holding a drink you don’t want, scanning for a face you recognize, and the word running through your head is “networking.” No wonder it feels awkward. Networking was never the point. Relationship building is.
Why Does Walking Into a Room Feel So Hard?
The discomfort is real, and it isn’t a personal failing. Rooms like this are built around existing relationships. People cluster with the folks they already trust, because that’s easier and more comfortable than reaching out to someone new. If you’re the one standing at the edge, it can feel like the room has a closed door and you weren’t given the code.
Worth noting here: being the newcomer in that room has nothing to do with how long you’ve been in business. You can have run a company for twenty years, sat on boards, built a strong reputation, and still walk into a room where your usual people aren’t there. Your tribe, the community you’ve built up over years, isn’t in that room with you. You’re standing in front of a group of strangers, all the same, trying to build relationships with people you don’t know yet. That’s not a beginner’s problem. That’s every one of us, at some point, in some room.
But here’s what gets missed: the responsibility for that door doesn’t sit only with the person walking in. It sits just as much, maybe more, with the people already inside.
Whose Job Is It to Make the Connection?
We’ve built an entire culture around “networking” as a skill the newcomer has to master. Work the room. Have your elevator pitch ready. Collect business cards. That framing puts the entire burden on the person who is already the most uncomfortable one there.
A better question: if you’re already comfortable in that room, in that clique of three or four, what would it cost you to notice the person standing alone?
It costs almost nothing. Excuse yourself from your group for thirty seconds. Walk over. Introduce yourself first. Ask their name, ask what brought them here. Then walk them back into your circle and introduce them to everyone by name, with a detail that gives them an easy opening: “This is Maria, she just launched a nonprofit doing incredible work with foster youth.” You’ve just turned a closed clique into an open conversation, and you’ve done it by setting yourself aside for a moment to make room for someone else.
That’s not networking. That’s hosting. That’s relationship building.
What Is a Go-Giver, and Why Does It Matter Here?
Bob Burg and John David Mann wrote a book called The Go-Giver that reframes this entire idea. The premise is simple and, honestly, a little countercultural in a business world that trains people to walk into every room asking, “What can I get here?” The Go-Giver philosophy flips that question: what can I give?
The book lays out what Burg and Mann call the Five Laws of Stratospheric Success, and the throughline across all five is that your value, your influence, and eventually your success are determined by how much you give before you ever think about what you’ll receive. Not as a transaction. Not as a strategy to look generous so people will like you more. As a way of showing up, period.
Walking into a business event with that mindset changes everything about the experience. Maybe it’s making an introduction that has nothing to do with you at all. Maybe it’s asking someone a real question about their work instead of pitching yours. The go-giver mindset takes the pressure off you, because you’re not performing. You’re just paying attention to someone else.
How Do You Practice This at the Next Event?
A few ways to bring this into the next room you walk into, whether you’re the newcomer or the one who’s been in the room for years:
- If you see someone standing alone, that’s your opening, not theirs. Go say hello.
- Introduce yourself before you ask anything of the other person.
- When you bring someone new into your group, introduce them with something specific, not just a name.
- Ask if there’s anyone in the room they’d like to be introduced to, then go make it happen.
- Think past the room. In true go-giver fashion, ask yourself if there’s an obvious business contact or potential partnership of yours that might be worth an introduction. If one comes to mind, offer to make it.
- Ask more questions than you answer.
- Follow up after the event with no ask attached. Just a note that you enjoyed meeting them.
None of this requires charisma or a perfectly rehearsed pitch. It requires a generous spirit and a willingness to set yourself aside for a few minutes so someone else feels welcome.
The Word We’re Looking For
Maybe the word we’ve been missing isn’t a replacement for networking at all. Maybe it’s simpler than that. It’s relationship building. It’s the version of these rooms where the point isn’t what you can extract from the people in it, but what you can offer them, and what gets built when everyone in the room is doing the same.
That’s the room worth walking into.
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About the Author
Dana C. Arnett, Founder and CEO of Wicked Bionic, spent 30 years in the entertainment business before starting the agency in 2015. Los Angeles-based multicultural communications and advertising agency works with government and private sector clients on strategic marketing and engaging media campaigns. Dana has always been drawn to learning from other cultures. That curiosity became the foundation for Wicked Bionic’s approach to culturally responsive marketing – building authentic connections between organizations and the communities they serve.