Are the People in Your Network Also Your Friends?

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Networking is a little like pornography, it’s hard to describe but you know it when you see it. Unfortunately, that can make the lines between networking and other things a little fuzzy. (“A little fuzzy” probably also applies to a fair amount of pornography.)

People often ask about the distinction between your friends, and people in your network. Are you friends in your network? Are people in your network also your friends? Where do co-workers fit in?

The upside of the fuzziness is that there’s no rule you must follow. Consider your co-workers; are they your friends? At some companies everyone is very close; people do ski weekends and BBQs together outside of work. For others, your coworkers are just people you co-locate (or these days virtually coordinate with) with during periods of work. It’s not uncommon to have coworkers you’d consider a friend, but you probably don’t do things outside or work, and these might be people who post co-employment, you rarely see again. Are they friendships or really “workships,” friends that last for the duration of the work.

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Are you friends in your network? Are people in your network also your friends?

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The concept of a work spouse (also work husband and work wife) dates back decades, referring to a colleague with whom you have a close, even intimate relationship. Unlikely your regular spouse, however, it's strictly platonic. In this case, a romantic spouse and a work spouse have some similarity in terms of closeness, but differences in terms of romantic, physical, financial, and other connections.

Consider the spectrum of your friends. You may have some very close friends, but others are less close or more acquaintances. Until she passed away my best friend was someone who lived in my building; it wasn’t uncommon for us to go to the other’s apartment at 11pm at night and hang out to talk, even if the other person was wearing sleepwear (we were strictly platonic, our “and chill” was talking). I can’t imagine I’d be able to do that with most of my friends, even some of my closer ones. There are other people who I might see regularly on the New York City social scene, but we never proactively get together as just the two of us.

I give these examples because networking is simply relationship building. Just as a friendship can have different levels of connectivity and closeness, so too can your networking relationships.

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As with your friends and co-workers, there’s a spectrum of network relationships.

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Like your friendships you will be more or less connected to people in your network. As with your friends and co-workers, there’s a spectrum of network relationships. For some people, if you're in their network, you’re their friend. For others, someone in your network is someone you can call for help or advice, but you may never engage socially. Just as my friends fall into different circles of how close we are and what activities we do, e.g., hang out at 11pm at night versus meet up for dinner versus run into each other, so, too, do different people in your network fall into different categories. We intuitively know this recognizing the size of the ask we can make to people in our network can differ.

One thing to be mindful of is two-way dynamics. In the very funny, award-winning TV show My Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Darryl Whitefeather recognizes that he is not the best friend of the woman who he considers his best friend, “and that’s ok”. He sings, “I love you like a sister and you love me like a second cousin.” It works because they are both aware of relationship dynamics. If he expected, instead of simply just hoped, that he would be the best friend to his best friend, it would have led to disappointment.

If someone considers everyone in their network, or all of their co-workers, to be their friend, and the other person sees a different boundary on the relationship, one primarily related to work topics, that’s where you can get into some missed expectations. Just be conscious of this. If it feels like expectations are not aligning it’s ok to be explicit about them, as we should with any type of relationship, professional, friendship, or romantic.

When it comes to your network, the line between personal friend and professional colleague is undefined by society. This gives you the option to draw the line you want. The flip side is that others may draw the line differently from you. That’s generally a good thing, but it can lead to misunderstandings. Recognize you have the option to create the relationships that work for you. Most importantly, remember that networking is about relationships, and not about transactions; that will get you 90% of the way there no matter where you draw the line.

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