How to network in a remote world

Busi­ness mag­nate Elon Musk is known for lead­ing the way. From online pay­ments to elec­tric cars, Musk is often ahead of the curve. In Feb­ru­ary, he demon­strat­ed his busi­ness savvy once more when he excelled at net­work­ing in a remote world. Using his Twit­ter account, which has 46.7 mil­lion fol­low­ers, Musk sent a tweet to the Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin and asked if he would like to join him for a con­ver­sa­tion on the social net­work­ing app Club­house. Musk received an imme­di­ate reply from the Krem­lin, stat­ing the pres­i­dent was “inter­est­ed”.

Musk proved that in a post-COVID world, the busi­ness land­scape has clear­ly changed. No longer can you organ­ise face-to-face meet­ings, enjoy after­work drinks with clients or gos­sip with your team mem­bers around the water­cool­er. It looks as if it will remain this way for some time. Twit­ter and San Fran­cis­co-based Square said their staff can work from home for­ev­er and a US sur­vey by Enter­prise Tech­nol­o­gy Research of chief infor­ma­tion offi­cers found the num­ber of remote work­ers will dou­ble by the end of 2021. 

But the need to remain con­nect­ed is imper­a­tive, says UK busi­ness psy­chol­o­gist Felic­i­ty Lee of Response Abil­i­ty. “Human beings are social ani­mals and we need con­nec­tion to sur­vive and thrive,” she explains. “Net­work­ing ful­fils in us three core needs: it gives us a feel­ing of belong­ing; it pro­vides us with insight and influ­ence with oth­ers; and it also pro­vides com­mu­ni­ty of sup­port and mutu­al trust.”

No mat­ter where you are on the lead­er­ship lad­der, the abil­i­ty to net­work well, estab­lish rap­port quick­ly, and build and main­tain rela­tion­ships is key to per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al suc­cess. In the post-pan­dem­ic world, net­work­ing mat­ters more than ever.

Networking in a virtual office

Deci­sion-mak­ing meet­ings, sta­tus updates and prob­lem-solv­ing ses­sions are still sched­uled, but instead of gath­er­ing in an office, peo­ple are now work­ing in a Zoom or Webex room and their col­leagues may be hun­dreds or thou­sands of miles away. 

How­ev­er, San Fran­cis­co-based Eat Just chief exec­u­tive Josh Tet­rick warns that com­pa­nies don’t need to organ­ise too many meet­ings to ensure teams stay con­nect­ed. “We prob­a­bly over­did it at the begin­ning. I had this feel­ing that I’m not around some­one, so I need to talk to them all the time,” he says. 

Tet­rick cre­at­ed trust among the remote team by cre­at­ing con­sis­ten­cy. “We have devel­oped a good rhythm of check­ing in, depend­ing on whether it’s a team meet­ing or com­pa­ny-wide meet­ing,” he adds. “Hav­ing the con­sis­ten­cy of know­ing when you are all going to get togeth­er has also been real­ly impor­tant.”

While a tight agen­da may mean staff want to get straight down to busi­ness, to be a suc­cess­ful net­work­er those water­cool­er-style con­ver­sa­tions need to stay. Con­ver­sa­tion in the real world does not only revolve around pro­fes­sion­al top­ics and the same should hold true for com­mu­ni­ca­tion online, says busi­ness coach Car­o­line Ver­non of Intoo. She says: “Get to know your con­tacts and dis­cov­er what you have in com­mon out­side work. Show them they mat­ter to you as more than just a resource.” 

The eas­i­est way to do this is to log on five min­utes before the vir­tu­al meet­ing is sched­uled to start. You can chat with­out hold­ing up pro­ceed­ings and at the same time build rap­port. But remem­ber to say how much you enjoyed this pre-meet­ing catch-up before you log off. It may encour­age oth­er team mem­bers to log on ear­ly for the next meet­ing. This con­nec­tion will cre­ate trust in the team and you will have more col­leagues who will help or sup­port you when you are faced with chal­lenges. It will also stop peo­ple from feel­ing iso­lat­ed and start­ing to look for oth­er jobs.

When you are net­work­ing over a com­put­er screen, you also need to think about how you get your mes­sage across. In a remote world, you need to take advan­tage of every chance pos­si­ble to make a con­nec­tion. This means you need to shrug off your Zoom fatigue and remind every­one why they need you on their project or board. Exec­u­tive coach Austin Iuliano says there is an easy short­cut to rais­ing your ener­gy lev­els. “Look at the cam­era and imag­ine your best friend is across the room. Nat­u­ral­ly, you will lift your voice and project your ener­gy to meet them,” he explains. 

While you can’t attend face-to-face net­work­ing events, you can net­work and make con­nec­tions with­in your com­pa­ny, whether that’s your Lon­don, New York or Hong Kong office. If you want to get ahead, Erdin Beshi­mov, senior exec­u­tive at MIT, says you should sur­round your­self with tal­ent­ed peo­ple. “Ask your­self who are the peo­ple in your field that are doing excel­lent work and will be stars ten, twen­ty or thir­ty years from now and how you can help them excel even more,” he says.

Building cross-industry contacts

While large scale indus­try net­work­ing events might have ground to a halt, com­pa­nies are cre­at­ing inno­v­a­tive ways for their staff to learn from oth­er peo­ple and com­pa­nies in their sec­tor. Bran­don Spears, co-own­er of US mar­ket­ing agency Dou­bleXDig­i­tal, is encour­ag­ing his team to start pod­casts. “Nobody likes being asked ‘Can I pick your brain?’, but pod­cast­ing gives you the excuse to inter­view and build a rela­tion­ship with peo­ple you want to meet,” says Spears. “This one strat­e­gy, when done right, will change your net­work for ever.” 

There might not be any wine-and-cheese evenings where you can hand out your busi­ness card, but you can still search for indus­try events that are hap­pen­ing vir­tu­al­ly. Whether it is in a Zoom room or Club­house, you can still stay abreast of events and con­nect­ed. Although if you do intend to join, make sure you treat it as more than a fact-find­ing mis­sion. 

Net­work­ing expert Megan Boz­zu­to says you should pre­pare a vir­tu­al ele­va­tor pitch you can paste into the chat­box. “Include one piece of con­tact infor­ma­tion – LinkedIn, web­site or email – and think about how you can draw atten­tion to encour­age the con­nec­tion,” she says. This allows you to con­tin­ue the con­ver­sa­tion beyond that one event. 

If you are out of prac­tice at flex­ing your net­work­ing mus­cle after a year of liv­ing in lock­down, exec­u­tive coach Pat Roque sug­gests a vir­tu­al three-way cof­fee will help you get back on track. “Recon­nect with an old friend, col­league or men­tor and intro­duce them to some­one they’d enjoy meet­ing,” says Roque. “This process can cre­ate amaz­ing momen­tum to sup­port an upcom­ing launch or help job seek­ers nav­i­gate their career piv­ot.” 

Don’t wait until those lock­downs have lift­ed. Con­tin­ue to nur­ture the rela­tion­ships you do have and begin to build oth­ers. Who knows what oppor­tu­ni­ties are out there and ready to be dis­cov­ered?