Networking
Networking makes knowledge, trust and opportunities accessible.
Competency 9: Networking
Networking is the behavioural competency through which someone seeks relevant contacts, maintains relationships and connects people, information and interests. The quality, diversity and timing of those relationships determine how quickly knowledge, support and collaboration can be mobilised.
In this article
A recognisable workplace situation
A change programme is progressing according to plan in terms of content, but decisions are delayed. IT, operations and sales each consult their own contacts, informal key people are involved too late and external partners only hear what is changing after decisions have been made. The visible problem appears to be coordination. The underlying problem is that relationships have not been maintained and activated in time.
A manager who maintained contact with the teams involved even before the project knows who has the relevant knowledge, who is trusted and who can connect different interests. As a result, information, support and room for action emerge more quickly.
Networking is often only noticed when it is missing. Knowledge remains trapped within departments, new employees struggle to find informal routes and good ideas reach the right decision makers too late. The competency is therefore not about knowing many people, but about building and maintaining relationships in such a way that collaboration becomes possible as soon as a situation requires it.
What is networking?
Nieuwenhuis defines networking as seeking, building and maintaining contacts and collaboration with colleagues, customers and other potential relationships that are important to the goals of the organisation or organisational unit (Nieuwenhuis, 2010).
Networking consists of three related behaviours: maintaining existing contacts, creating new connections and expanding a professional and influential network. The result is social capital: access to information, expertise, support, reputation and influence embedded in relationships. A large contact list is therefore no proof of strong networking behaviour. What matters is the quality and diversity of relationships, their reciprocity and the ability to activate them appropriately.
The competency is goal-oriented, but not purely instrumental. Sustainable relationships require genuine interest, reliability and contribution before an immediate result is needed. Networking therefore connects communication skills and empathy with initiative, organisational awareness and environmental awareness. These relationships between competencies are universal; how someone expresses them in practice depends on role, context, learning style and personality pattern.
Role, skill or behavioural competency?
Networking often appears in job profiles for sales, recruitment, project management and leadership. Yet it is not a role and it is more than a standalone social skill.
Role
Roles determine who contact is needed with and for what purpose. Networking describes the behaviour through which someone shapes those relationships.
Skill
Starting a conversation, listening actively, making introductions and following up are trainable skills within the competency.
Behavioural competency
Networking combines skills with initiative, timing, reciprocity, contextual awareness and a longer relational horizon.
Assessment should therefore focus on observable behaviour: does someone seek relevant contacts, continue to invest when there is no immediate need, connect people and information, and create mutual benefit? Extraversion may make initial contact easier, but it does not prove that relationships are maintained in a reliable, relevant or sustainable way.
Scientific foundation
Gibson, Hardy and Buckley (2014) define professional networking behaviour as goal-directed behaviour within and outside the organisation aimed at creating, maintaining and using interpersonal relationships. Their review links this behaviour to visibility, influence, job performance, access to strategic information and career success. The mechanism is not the contact itself, but the resource to which that contact provides access.
Social capital theory makes that mechanism more concrete. Nahapiet and Ghoshal (1998) distinguish a structural dimension, who is connected to whom, a relational dimension, the quality of trust and reciprocity, and a cognitive dimension, shared language and goals. Networking is effective when these dimensions reinforce one another. Many connections without trust generate little collaboration; close relationships without bridges to other groups generate little new information.
Granovetter (1973) explains why less intensive contacts can be important: weak ties more often bridge different social circles and therefore provide access to new information. Burt (2004) additionally shows that people who bridge otherwise disconnected groups are more often associated with valuable ideas. This supports tactical and strategic networking behaviour, but requires nuance: a bridging position provides access and influence, not automatically sound judgement or careful use of that position.
The evidence is also relevant to personal effectiveness and development. In longitudinal research, Wolff and Moser (2009) found relationships between networking behaviour and both objective and subjective career success. A later review by Woehler and colleagues (2021), however, shows that similar network characteristics do not yield the same outcomes for everyone. Gender, status and professional context influence who gains access and how much benefit a network position provides. Assessing networking without that context can frame existing inequality as an individual shortcoming.
The relationship with work happiness runs mainly through relatedness and social resources. Ryan and Deci (2000) describe relatedness as a basic psychological need; the Job Demands-Resources model identifies social support, feedback and access to help as resources that can support motivation and functioning (Bakker & Demerouti, 2007). Networking therefore does not automatically contribute to well-being. Its positive effect arises when relationships provide safety, support and meaning, not when constant visibility or reciprocity is demanded.
For leadership, the perspective shifts from individual position to relational influence. Carter and colleagues (2015) show that leadership in networks emerges through patterns of relationships between individuals, teams and organisations. A leader may have formal authority yet have little effect when information, trust and support flow through other nodes. Networking reveals where leadership is actually shared, strengthened or blocked.
Networking works through access, trust and shared meaning. The competency is strong when someone not only has relationships, but can connect different groups and use that position reciprocally.
Why this competency has such impact
Organisation charts divide formal responsibilities; informal networks often determine how quickly knowledge, trust and influence actually move. Networking therefore affects three outcomes at the same time.
Effectiveness
Questions reach the right expertise more quickly and departments duplicate less work.
Development
Feedback, role models, assignments and career opportunities become visible sooner.
Organisational capability
Signals, ideas and support move across team and organisational boundaries.
The impact also has a downside. Networking can concentrate information among a few central individuals, reinforce homogeneous circles or disadvantage people outside informal channels. Organisations therefore need not only strong networkers, but also distributed access, transparent decision making and recognition for employees who connect others without always being visible themselves.
The three levels of networking
Nieuwenhuis distinguishes maintaining contacts, establishing new contacts and expanding a professional and influential network (2010). In the Voice Your Future interpretation, these forms of behaviour correspond to the operational, tactical and strategic levels.
The levels do not form a hierarchy. They describe different time horizons and effects; the appropriate profile is determined by the work.
Operational
Meaning and behaviour. Operational networking keeps existing relationships accessible. Someone follows developments within the network, shows interest, listens actively, reconnects and is present where relevant contacts come together.
Key strength
Continuity. Regular and genuine contact builds trust before time pressure or dependency arises.
Relevant pitfall
Maintaining contact can become routine and superficial. Someone who mainly nurtures familiar relationships may also miss new information and different perspectives.
Practical example
An HR adviser also speaks with team leaders outside formal meetings. As a result, she hears early where workload is increasing and can intervene before absence or turnover occurs.
Tactical
Meaning and behaviour. Tactical networking creates new connections around a specific issue. Someone draws on their own network for information, connects people, assesses backgrounds and interests and seeks collaboration based on mutual benefit.
Key strength
Connecting power. The distance between a question and the required expertise becomes smaller and collaboration is established more quickly.
Relevant pitfall
Relationships can become transactional when someone only makes contact when something is needed. Without operational maintenance, willingness to help decreases.
Practical example
A project manager connects a product specialist, a customer contact and a data analyst. In one conversation, assumptions are tested that could otherwise have caused three separate escalations.
Strategic
Meaning and behaviour. Strategic networking builds relationships with a longer horizon. Someone anticipates developments, creates partnerships that strengthen organisational goals, uses the network for others and encourages colleagues to develop their own contacts.
Key strength
Future value. The organisation already has trust, partners and information in place before an opportunity or risk becomes urgent.
Relevant pitfall
Positioning can become more important than the relationship itself. A focus on influential contacts can exclude signals from less visible groups and increase dependence on a small circle.
Practical example
A director maintains relationships with educational institutions, industry associations and regional employers. When new expertise is needed, a shared agenda already exists and trust does not need to be built under pressure.
The three levels reinforce one another
Maintain, connect and build ahead
Operational behaviour keeps relationships reliable, tactical behaviour activates them around an issue and strategic behaviour broadens the network for future goals.
Without operational maintenance, tactical networking quickly becomes transactional. Without tactical activation, a network remains social but of limited practical use. Without strategic expansion, the network remains focused on familiar people and current questions. Development therefore does not automatically mean moving to a higher level, but learning to add the missing movement.
Effective use starts with the right match
A recruiter needs to be able to open new talent pools and continue to follow candidates carefully. A project manager primarily needs to connect expertise and interests around a temporary challenge. An executive needs relationships that span sectors, policy and long-term partnerships. The same overall score can therefore mean something different in each of these roles.
The stage an organisation is in also changes the need. A new unit benefits from external bridges and rapid access to resources; a growing organisation needs more internal connection between specialisms; during change, trust in informal key people is crucial. A good match therefore specifies which level, network reach and behaviour are demonstrably required.
Learning style then influences how someone develops the competency. A doer learns by deliberately practising new contacts and follow-up moments, a thinker by first analysing the network and information flows, a reflector by evaluating conversations and a decision maker by linking networking actions to a concrete result. No learning style determines networking potential; it mainly determines which development route feels useful.
Why organisations often assess this competency incorrectly
The first mistake is equating networking with extraversion. An extraverted candidate may make contact easily, while a more selective or introverted professional may be less visible yet build highly reliable bridges around content. In selection, therefore ask for behavioural examples: which contact was maintained, what new connection was created, what was the mutual benefit and what result followed?
The second mistake is confusing the size of a network with its value. A large, homogeneous network may keep repeating the same information; a smaller network with bridges between disciplines may unlock much more new knowledge. The third mistake is automatically valuing strategic behaviour more highly. For service, onboarding and team cohesion, consistent operational contact may be more important than external positioning.
A competency score is an indication of visible behaviour during a certain period, not a fixed personal trait and not proof of access to influential circles. Role, opportunity, power position and inclusion also determine which networking behaviour is possible and rewarded.
Demand for networking is increasing
Work is becoming more dependent on collaboration across functions, organisations and digital systems. The World Economic Forum (2025) identifies leadership and social influence, as well as collaboration, among the skills employers expect to become increasingly important through 2030. In the same study, 63 percent of employers identify skills gaps as a major barrier to transformation. Networking is not a substitute for professional expertise, but the competency that makes distributed knowledge usable.
The OECD describes in A Skills-First Labour Market (2026) how recruitment, development and mobility are increasingly organised around demonstrable skills. This increases the importance of professional networking behaviour: informal learning experiences, transferable expertise and internal opportunities need to become visible and accessible. At the same time, a skills-first approach implicitly cautions against narrow self-reporting. Networking requires evidence in concrete behaviours and outcomes.
Digitalisation makes contact easier, but connection does not happen automatically. Gallup reports for 2026 that 22 percent of employees worldwide experienced a great deal of loneliness the previous day; among fully remote and hybrid workers, the figure was 24 percent. These figures do not prove a lack of networking competency, but they do show that digital accessibility is not the same as meaningful connection. Organisations therefore need to design informal access and social contact deliberately.
Europe also treats social collaboration as a broad professional and life competency. LifeComp emphasises collaboration, communication and well-being; EntreComp links mobilising others and resources to entrepreneurial action. For recruitment, career coaching and talent development, this means networking is relevant not only to commercial roles, but to employability in complex and changing work environments.
An example: from profile to development direction
An HR business partner scores strongly on tactical networking, average on operational networking and lower on strategic networking. In practice, she is able to connect the right people quickly around a vacancy or change initiative, but she mainly maintains contacts when there is a specific reason. Her high scores on initiative, persuasiveness and organisational awareness explain her tactical strength; a more analytical learning style makes unstructured networking events less appealing.
- Not a conclusion: she cannot network strategically.
- A valid hypothesis: short-term questions trigger her networking behaviour more strongly than relationships without an immediate result.
- Development direction: choose two external themes, build several reciprocal relationships around each theme and plan maintenance before a request for help arises.
- Evaluation: after three months, discuss what new information, collaboration or support became available.
Personality patterns can refine the approach without putting someone in a box. A Helper may invest easily in warmth but be less likely to ask for support. An Achiever activates relationships purposefully but may become impatient without an immediate result. An Observer builds strong content-based relationships but needs to organise visibility more consciously. A Mediator connects others easily but may sometimes need a networking goal of their own. The common thread is that every pattern has both a natural entry point and a counter-movement.
What this means for organisations
Recruitment. Define in advance which level and reach the role requires. Use structured behavioural questions and ask candidates to describe how a specific relationship was created, maintained and what result it produced. Do not assess social ease, name recognition or access that mainly stems from background and status.
HR and talent development. During onboarding, make visible who holds knowledge, decision-making power and informal influence. Develop networking behaviour through real assignments, such as validating a stakeholder map, creating three new bridging contacts or organising a knowledge exchange. Measure not only activity, but also diversity of sources, reciprocity and useful collaboration.
Team management. Look at where information gets stuck and which employees repeatedly function as the only bridge. Overloading central connectors makes teams vulnerable. Rotate representation, organise contact between disciplines and also recognise the maintenance work that keeps others connected.
Senior management. Treat networking as organisational infrastructure. Innovation, change and reputation depend on relationships both inside and outside the organisation. At the same time, safeguard inclusion: informal networks should not replace formal transparency and equal access to opportunities.
How Voice Your Future makes this competency visible
Voice Your Future does not read networking as one fixed label, but as a distribution across operational, tactical and strategic behaviour. This distribution shows where someone’s attention naturally goes: maintaining relationships, activating contacts around a specific issue or building a network for the longer term.
The relationships between competencies are universal, the specific expression is personal and the profile report makes that personal expression visible.
Scores gain meaning in context. Communication skills, persuasiveness and organisational awareness are closely related because they support relationship quality, positioning and insight into influence. Empathy, engagement, collaboration and environmental awareness strengthen reciprocity and relevance. Initiative, courage, flexibility and self-confidence also help determine whether someone actually creates new contacts and activates the network.
A lower score is therefore not a diagnosis of inability. The role may have required little networking behaviour, the context may have limited access or other competencies may shape the behaviour differently. Combining the score with learning style, personality pattern and concrete work situations helps determine which movement comes naturally, which requires energy and which development is genuinely needed.
The essence of networking
Networking determines how people create access to knowledge, support, influence and opportunities they cannot generate alone. The competency becomes visible in three movements: maintaining relationships reliably, creating new connections purposefully and building a network that enables future collaboration.
The mature form combines purposefulness with reciprocity. It makes relationships useful without reducing people to a means and expands access without reinforcing informal exclusion.
For professionals, networking supports learning, effectiveness and career development. For leaders, it connects formal direction with actual influence. For organisations, it forms the infrastructure through which knowledge, support and innovation move. The right question is therefore not how many people someone knows, but which relationships they maintain, which boundaries they bridge and what shared value this creates.
References
The sources support the definition, scientific mechanisms, current labour market context and European competency frameworks used in this article.
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Burt, R. S. (2004). Structural holes and good ideas. American Journal of Sociology, 110(2), 349-399. https://doi.org/10.1086/421787
Carter, D. R., DeChurch, L. A., Braun, M. T., & Contractor, N. S. (2015). Social network approaches to leadership: An integrative conceptual review. Journal of Applied Psychology, 100(3), 597-622. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0038922
European Commission, Joint Research Centre. (2016). EntreComp: The Entrepreneurship Competence Framework. https://joint-research-centre.ec.europa.eu/entrecomp-entrepreneurship-competence-framework_en
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Granovetter, M. S. (1973). The strength of weak ties. American Journal of Sociology, 78(6), 1360-1380. https://doi.org/10.1086/225469
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Nieuwenhuis, M. A. (2010). The art of management (Deel 2, 10e herziene druk). Uitgeverij Lulu.
OECD. (2026). A Skills-First Labour Market. OECD Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1787/2e1b85f0-en
Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist, 55(1), 68-78. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.55.1.68
Woehler, M. L., Cullen-Lester, K. L., Porter, C. M., & Frear, K. A. (2021). Whether, how, and why networks influence men’s and women’s career success: Review and research agenda. Journal of Management, 47(1), 207-236. https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206320960529
Wolff, H.-G., & Moser, K. (2009). Effects of networking on career success: A longitudinal study. Journal of Applied Psychology, 94(1), 196-206. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0013350
World Economic Forum. (2025). The Future of Jobs Report 2025. https://www.weforum.org/publications/the-future-of-jobs-report-2025/
