Worried about your network post COVID?

The vital role of your ‘weak ties’ with others

In an interesting piece of research conducted before the pandemic, social scientists Gillian Sandstrom and Elizabeth Dunn asked participants to count how often they interacted with a stranger or an acquaintance (i.e. as opposed to a close friend) during the course of a normal working day.

They found that, when all the chance meetings and ‘water cooler’ conversations were added up, the average professional interacted every day with between 11 and 16 people that they didn’t know particularly well. It seems that the accumulation of these small, positive interactions makes people feel happier and leads to a greater sense of belonging. A human community, they theorised, isn’t just built around having a certain number of intimate relationships. It also relies on what the authors termed the ‘surprising power of weak ties.’

Quite often, these chance encounters contribute vital information. It’s about those connections that help to ‘oil the wheels’, especially in project work. Knowing who to ask or who could help can make a significant difference to your ability to be effective, especially under pressure.

In fact, this point about ‘weak ties’ goes to something fundamental about how networks operate. Think of your network as a series of concentric circles, moving out from the centre (you), in rings of decreasing emotional intensity. The innermost circle, closest to you, contains the roughly five or so people you feel you’d turn to in times of severe stress or personal challenge. You can envisage confiding in these people and leaning on them.

In contrast, the outermost ring is where you’d locate your much larger number of ‘weak ties’ – those people you engage with less personally. It seems the narrowing down of our lives during COVID has caused that outermost ring to shrink while, in contrast, more intimate relationships have, in many instances, become stronger.

This turns out to be the case even in tech companies where, arguably, employees might be expected to be more at ease with digital or virtual interactions. As an example, Ethan Bernstein of Harvard Business School surveyed a range of tech companies. He found that exchanges among close collaborators increased by 40% as a result of the pandemic’s push towards the new hybrid workplace. But this increase was at the expense of 10% less communication among more distant colleagues.

Bernstein argues that, over the longer term, this erosion of opportunities to interact with your ‘weaker ties’ leads to network shrinkage and interferes with problem solving. Ideas, information and possible solutions become less well integrated, he found.

A healthy network is dynamic. There is movement, churn and renewal. Marissa King’s research demonstrates that too often we try to grow our network without understanding some of these dynamics. You need the concentric rings. You need old friends and you also need new acquaintances. You benefit, professionally and personally, from having a broad and diverse base, made up of connections who can fulfill a wide range of roles in relation to you, your life and your career.

In our programs about how to build your network, we typically find that these insights are quite new for people. We look at more than a dozen role types and push people to start taking a more strategic approach to their network. Post COVID, there is now a particular need for this to be intentional. But it does require some particular approaches and skills. Let’s look at some of these.

It’s time to reconnect and reach out!

Without some focused and intentional effort to regenerate your network, your world risks staying smaller even post COVID. It’s time to reach out to people you’ve fallen out of contact with. It’s worthwhile taking some care of your network, so it can take care of you when you need it!

Our clients often say that this sounds like a great idea and just what they know they should do. But they feel hesitant and awkward. They’re not sure how to make a first move when that move is, necessarily, going to be virtual and deliberate i.e., not simply being open to those lucky, chance encounters that were such a feature of the old work place.

The key is to bear in mind the ancient ‘law of reciprocity.’ In other words, when you make a small effort towards another person, this primes them to reciprocate. It might not work with everyone but it does with most people. In fact, some economists (for instance, Samuel Bowles) have argued that we should rename our species. We shouldn’t be called ‘homo sapiens’ but ‘homo reciprocans!’

Here are some suggestions our UGM clients have employed to help them tackle this challenge of network shrinkage post COVID.

• Is there someone (e.g., an old mentor, colleague or manager) you feel grateful towards? Send them a brief email outlining your appreciation.
• Have you read or listened to something recently that you found interesting? Can you think of someone you used to know who might enjoy this too?
• Is there someone whose help or advice you’d like to request? The assistance should be something quite modest. Most people are flattered by such requests and the mutual sense of purpose this generates is a powerful connector.
• Pick up the phone and call an old friend or a previous colleague and ask how things are going. Your unexpected brief ‘check in’ could make a genuine difference to their day and reinvigorate the connection.
• Set aside 20 minutes each week for a virtual coffee with someone who is at risk of disappearing from your network’s vital outer ring. Remember these weak ties matter!

Using LinkedIn to support your post COVID networking

LinkedIn offers a great opportunity to grow your network virtually. You can track trends, make relevant new connections and keep your digital profile up-to-date. But our clients often comment that, despite putting some effort in, they feel they don’t realise much in the way of benefit. This is generally because they are making one or more of the following mistakes:

• They haven’t thought through exactly what they want and why they are seeking this particular new connection.
• They put their own needs first and make a request without clarifying what might be in it for the other person.
• Their overture was too general and too dull! For example, ye olde, “I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn,” is hardly exciting!

So how might you craft a message that’s more likely to elicit a positive response?

• Be direct and specific about what you’re asking and why.
• Be confident but also courteous.
• Mention a referral or an existing connection if there is one.
• Ensure any request is modest and reasonable.
• Read the person’s profile with some care so that your overture is specifically tailored to them and their interests.
• Consider cultivating a longer to and fro connection before you make a request. What could you share that might be relevant to that person’s profile and career trajectory?

Yes, you’ll likely get some silences and some rejections too. Growth of any kind comes with risks. But you’ll learn from each attempt and improve along the way!

Do you feel a sense of connection and belonging?

In 2022, Gartner surveyed nearly 3,500 employees about their connections. They found that when organisations help their people to build connections intentionally, people were five times more likely to belong to a high performing team and twelve times more likely to feel connected to their colleagues. Your network is a powerful asset and, like any asset, it needs to be cultivated. Our post COVID world offers some great opportunities to do this, if you’re willing to be adaptable and a bit experimental as well. By harnessing the power of networks, you’ll feel happier and your work will benefit too!