It's possible that I'm writing my thoughts on this topic in the wrong venue as I assume most who read this are looking to become better networkers and do so in a positive and respectful way. Whether that's true or not I hope that my thoughts and the resulting conversation will prove to be helpful.

Since I've had such an incredibly positive experience with my own networking relationships I'm sometimes surprised by the negative reactions that people can have at the mere mention of the word "networking." Over time I've come to understand this reaction more and more. It appears to come primarily from some very negative experiences when they first went to some type of networking event.

Just a couple of weeks ago I had a friend who invited me to an event with the following qualification: "It is informal and is NOT networking. Everyone is running a company (focus on tech, but we have organic pioneers, power companies, agency founders, etc.), and just looking to connect and learn what others are up to. If something comes out of it where one business helps another great, but our true goal is to have a good drink and fun evening." This statement, from someone who's actually a VERY good networker, drove me absolutely crazy. If you remove the first sentence about the vent NOT being a networking event the rest is a great description of what real networking is all about.

Again, my general thinking about why people have this negative reaction is because of some bad experiences. Perhaps they attended an event where nobody was really interested in getting to know them. Instead they experienced a bunch of random people coming up, barely saying a word and pushing their business cards on them. Worse yet they had quick conversations where the other person seemed to be trying to figure out whether or not they were important enough to network with. This and all sorts of other tendencies of the Nasty Networking variety would easily leave someone new to networking with a very bad taste in their mouth.

So what do we do about it? This is a significant goal I have around NetworkInAustin which is simply to improve the quality of networking. For some that may be the basic education around what real networking is all about. For those who are more experienced it may be focused on taking your efforts and level of success to another level.

Now it's your turn. Why does networking sometimes have such a bad reputation? What are the causes and perhaps more importantly, what can be done to improve the landscape? I've posed this question in the discussion section of the NetworkInAustin.com LinkedIn group. Please do me a favor, and take a couple of minutes to share your thoughts.

I'm eager to see what you have to say, and what we can do to help everyone see how powerful and enjoyable quality networking really can be.

Happy Networking!