In today’s fast-paced, hyper-connected world, meeting new people has never been easier.
LinkedIn messages arrive in your inbox, networking events seem to appear every week, Zoom calls can introduce you to someone on the other side of the country—or even the world—social media groups create communities based on shared interests, and casual introductions from friends or colleagues happen more often than we realise.
It is almost effortless to expand your network, and the advice we are constantly given is to take advantage of every opportunity. The reasoning is simple: the more people you know, the more doors will open. And there is certainly truth to that, but it is only part of the picture.
The real value of connecting with others does not lie in how many business cards you collect or how many LinkedIn connections you can boast about. It lies in the depth of those relationships, in the human bonds you create when you meet someone without a hidden agenda. There is an overlooked flaw in the way many of us approach networking. Too often, when we meet someone new, there is an unspoken question lingering just beneath the surface: “What can this person do for me?” At first glance, it seems practical. After all, business is about leveraging relationships, is it not? We want our connections to be useful, to help us grow, to open doors to opportunities we might not otherwise access. But when every interaction is filtered through that lens, we risk missing the most valuable part of connecting with another person: the chance to truly see them.
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