If you don't like making smalltalk and you struggle with networking then Maria Granovsky has some great news for you. Introverts can have great networks too. So whats networking for introverts all about?


About Maria Granovsky
Maria Granovsky helps professional women who hate face to face networking build successful careers through network via social media.

This subject is near and dear to Maria. In the past, she found herself driving to a networking event, not getting out of the car and driving right back home. It was social anxiety.

She had always been able to create relationships via writing, via LinkedIn or Twitter or email. After a while, Maria realised that she had found the way to network that was really comfortable for her.

Which made her consider all the other people, who for one reason or another are not networking. There are a lot of people, with a lot to contribute, who are not in a conversation. Maria’s aim is to bring those people into the conversation. Networking for introverts.

Maria Granovsky - Social Media Networking for Professional Women
What is networking and why is it important to us?
Networking is the building of relationships. Getting to know other people. Building connections.

Networking has got a bad wrap, because of the idea that, you go to networking events, you exchange cards and everyone is in it to see if they can sell you. But, in reality networking is about the people you know. Especially in todays’ economy, where so many of us are in flux, jobs are insecure, it is really important to know a wide variety of people.

Every job Maria has had, came with the help of someone she knew. Be it directly, handing her resume (CV) to the person in charge, or recommending a really good head-hunter.

Even more broadly than that, unless your goals in life are to be a hermit, and to subsist on rainwater and berries, you are going to need the buy in from other people. So, if you want to:

Publish a book
Change careers
Get a promotion
Get a seat on the board of a non-profit.

The worst thing you can do is to put yourself into a position of HAVING to know someone to achieve your goals. “Who are you again?”. If you want a referral, a recommendation, the referee needs to be able to know you in advance.
If we are no-good at networking, what’s the first thing we should do?
Maria advises that we should EXPLODE the first myth. That you are not-good at networking. There are very few people who are congenitally incapable of networking. If you survive family holidays, if you have friends, if you have wooed a romantic partner, YOU CAN NETWORK.

We ascribe a very different meaning to business relationships but realistically they are not that different.

It’s all about:

Give and take.
Thinking what the other person may need or want.
Being agreeable as a person.

The rest of it is technicalities. Technology has made it very easy to meet with other people. Just as we are doing on Skype right now. We have never met before. And prior to the conversation, we had a back and forth via email and Maria got a slight sense of Graham’s personality. Enough to get on a call and not be quite so shy.

The original connection was made by our friend Marina Darlow. Maria met Marina on LinkedIn and eventually they spoke on Zoom. Here’s Marina’s profile: http://vision-framework.com/about/
Do you help men too?
Maria tends to work with women, they tend to have a few issues with the way they communicate. They have been socialised to avoid being aggressive.

If you get an email from a woman and it starts “I think maybe…” – Maria suggests it is NOT that she’s unsure, but she’s often been socialised to think that if she started with the FACT, then it would come across as aggressive.

These are the linguistic quirks that give many women a disadvantage. As they are not seen as the experts that they are. They are not seen as being absolutely certain of what they are saying.

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