Synopsis

There’s a perception in the media that people hate networking. But when Dr. Misner conducted a survey of 12,000 people for his book Business Networking and Sex–Not What You Think, only 6% said they were not comfortable networking. That means 94% of people surveyed like networking.

So why is there a perception that people hate networking? Dr. Misner attributes it to the proximity effect: people tend to take on the beliefs of the people they hang out with. Newspaper writers hang out with other writers, not with entrepreneurs and salespeople. They aren’t exposed to people who like networking on a regular basis.

Also, because we don’t teach networking in colleges and universities, we often see people doing networking wrong.

Moreover, behavior bias convinces us that we are better at what we do than others are, and it’s easy to assume that people who are not good at something won’t like doing it.

Brought to you by Networking Now.

Complete Transcript of Episode 455-

Priscilla:

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Official BNI Podcast, brought to you by NetworkingNow.com, which is the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. I am Priscilla Rice, and I am coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkeley, California. I am joined on the phone today by the Founder and the Chief Visionary Officer of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner. Hello, Ivan. How are you today?

Ivan:

I am doing great, Priscilla, and I am spending some time doing some writing projects this week, so I am doing what I love doing most, writing and doing a podcast.

Priscilla:

Oh great. So you found a lot of people who hate networking?

Ivan:

I thought it would make an interesting podcast because, no, actually. I haven’t. But it is a perception that exists out there, especially with the media. I have over the years often been contacted by the media. I remember early on when BNI first started. When say first started, I mean the first five or ten years of BNI. The media would call and say- one of the first questions was, “This networking thing is a fad, right?”

Ten years into BNI, I was like, “We have been doing this for 10 years. That is the longest fad I have seen running.”

I don’t see that as much anymore, but what I do see are people, particularly the media, saying that people hate networking. What makes me do this podcast is that I had a reporter not long ago from a major US newspaper reach out to me and said, “Look, I wonder if you could point me in the direction of some research that shows why so many people don’t like networking.”

I looked around on the web just to see if there wan anything. I knew the question in advance. My publicist told me what the question was. I looked around and I found a lot of stuff out there about why people hate networking.

But what was interesting is that I had actually done a survey of my own, related to a book that I did, which I have talked about on my podcast before. You know, the gender book- Business Networking and Sex- Not What You Think. As part of that book, I did a pretty comprehensive survey of almost 12,000 people.

One of the questions that I asked in the survey was, “Which of these statements most describes you about networking?” Over 17% of almost 12,000 people said they loved networking. 39.8%, almost 40%, said they are really comfortable networking. 37% said they are comfortable networking. Only 4.9, just under 5%, said they were really uncomfortable networking.

Less than 1% of the people surveyed- and this was a survey not just to BNI members. It was to business people all over the world. Less than 1% said they didn’t like networking at all.

So let’s review. 17.4, 39.8 and 37.