poorly managed professional networks alienate people. It is equally important to understand poor practices as much as best practices. As networks scale, contamination is a real risk. Hurting the network highlights a few myths and practices.

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Hurting the Network Part 3: Alienating Your Professional Network
A professional network takes a long time to build, orchestrate and exchange value with. It is a living thing which
needs to be nurtured, poor practices can quickly diminish this value. Further to Parts 1 and 2, here are a few
additional thoughts from my personal experiences.
Introduction
our network is where you communicate and
amplify your brand, building an effective
network allows you to “pull and push” your
value proposition from and to it. A common
misconception is that a network is about extensive
reach and the number of the people you know, this
is the biggest myth you will have to deal with, you
really want people committed to you.
Good, robust and value exchanging professional
networks take time to build and maintain. They can
wither away when you stop exchanging value or use
practices which alienate people.
There are lot of things that appear obvious but, are
much harder to practice. There are many kinds of
professional networks ranging from subject matter
experts, corporates, clients, governments call my
media com academia etc. There are different things
that lead to engaging and building each of these
networks, but what alienates them is generally
common across the board. We will examine and
analyze a few themes which diminish your
professional network.
Perception vs Reality
As I have mentioned in prior parts of this series,
there is good networking and bad networking. At
times, people think they are networking and
building relationships, but the effect is the exact
opposite. Let us explore a few myths below:
▪ Many people do not have much value to
provide e.g., younger, and junior
professionals
▪ An unsolicited and untargeted pitch on
LinkedIn creates positive vibes and will
result in responses or sales immediately
▪ Knowing many people high up in
organizations creates meaningful value
exchange
▪ Just because you know many people, you
can burn social capital at will
▪ More number of connections in any
configuration works, quantity matters and
contamination can be managed
▪ Many people connect with you when you sit
in positions of influence of power, decision
making or buying – this means a network
forever
▪ Showing up and engaging the network when
you need something works well and yields
instant results
Let us explore the impact of the some of these
issues in the sections below.
Y

3. 2 | P a g e
Alienating Your Network: Situations and
Tactics
Network Control
There are people in the network who make
connections easily, they are good engagers but
also closely guard their networks limiting
introductions and exposure to others. Many people
tend to also control interactions between parts of
their network. This “control freak” mindset is a turn
off to people, it also limits interactions, diminishes
value exchange and constricts flow of information;
people can see through this quickly and most of us
know that control freaks tend to have a
psychological need to oversee things and people
around them. But the approach can be a serious
impediment to nurturing and growing your network.
I have learned with experience that protecting your
brand and reputation is important in the network,
the network grows and enriches itself through free
flow of information, generous introductions, and
value creation. Different individuals can help each
other in ways that you may not even intuitively think
about, being a connector has its advantages as you
can also benefit from the collective value of a
growing professional network. A mindset of
insecurity and control will have people tolerate you
a couple of times but will soon gravitate out of your
circles.
Distractors
I would be surprised if you have not heard several
times, “network yourself into your next job”. If you
are starting your networking efforts when you need
a job, it is too late. Not everyone in the network is
helpful when it comes to landing you a job. People
are not exactly waiting to have coffee with you
many times over and keep listening to your needs. If
you have genuinely engaged the network,
relationships evolve organically, and you just put
out feelers. Seasoned veterans of the network
orchestration game already know that your urge to
have coffee will end with you landing the job. Try
not to be that over distracting personality with
constant approaches for introductions, lunches,
coffees, and drinks only when you need something –
it will disengage your professional network slowly
but surely. Do not be a distraction and do not fall for
distractions either.
Network Eject
There is usually some issue when people do not
respond to you. You have reached out to someone
and you do not hear back, a follow up yields the
same result. Sounds familiar? My first instinct is to
generally give a benefit of doubt i.e., people must
be busy, traveling, ailing etc. and not to write
people off as such. You also must accept that at
times people eject you from their networks. If
people do not respond to multiple different
messages over a period including specific
questions asked of them, then it is abundantly clear
that they have ejected you and are not going to
keep up with you. I have been ejected many times
from people’s networks and I have ejected people
as well as I did not want to engage with them for a
variety of reasons. Such is life and one must move
on.
Nurturing Contamination
While controlling the professional network is not
good, protecting your brand is a must. To protect
your brand personally and professionally, you must
be very sure of who you bring on board. It is also
important to understand their motives, personality
types and ability to exchange value with your
existing professional network. It is perfectly alright
if different personalities do not get along in your
network you do not have to put them together and
this happens frequently. Having said that, bringing
in people who will diminish your brand instead of
enhancing it, annoy the network, have questionable
ethics, play politics, and disrespect people etc. has
a very steep price. Getting wrong people into your
network leads to rapid network contamination and
impacts your personal brand. As your professional
network grows, it is very important to manage it for
scale. For example, 1% of bad apples of 100-person
professional network is only one person, but 1% of
1000 people network is 10 people and your
contamination rate can become 10 X.
Burning Social Capital
Once a professional network gets large enough, it
needs to manage differently and in a more systemic
manner – one-on-one stuff can be only work with a
select few people. Engagement through social
media, events, conferences, and dinners etc. must
become more frequent and planned. At the time,

4. 3 | P a g e
you are in the process of scaling your professional
network, it will initially start to take a toll on your
productivity and maintaining it becomes a task. Lot
of people cannot cross this chasm and give up; they
rarely realize that the benefits of exchanging value
become exponential too and a large network will
start maintaining itself to some degree (but not
without some effort). One important aspect to note
is that just because you have strong connections
and people willing to help doesn’t mean you have to
seek favors and burn social capital all the time, a lot
people start to use sledgehammers on flies and
burn up social capital before it peaks. While this will
not eject you from the network, it will be
challenging to rebuild it quickly.
The “Take and Vanish” Act
The most common phenomenon when it comes to
the network, the proverbial taker. They engage
when they need, they vanish when they get what
they want or even do not want. I have had people
reach out for jobs, connections, funding, invites to
events etc., they want all this instantly or they just
move on – some will even connect with you till they
get what they want and then you never hear from
them. These opportunity seekers are not keen on a
genuine exchange of value but using others as a
steppingstone to someone else. Then, there is the
“hanger-on” crowd, contacts from the past but
never stayed connected but show up after a decade
to seek something that they need, you never hear
from them after again. If you keep taking from the
network and never give back, people see through
this very quickly and start disengaging with you.
Having said, that I have takers come good for me at
certain specific points in time too. It is just that I will
never be one nor advice people to become one.
Engage Right vs Engage Up
Not being genuine is a going to put you out of favor
very quickly, everyone can see through people who
are engaging you only because they need
something from you. If this does not go well with
you, then do not be like this with anyone else. Look,
there is no harm or downside in asking for help, I
call people I trust and like all the time and when it
comes to seeking introductions I always try to have
something up my sleeve that they can benefit from.
Identifying who to reach out to and which
individuals would stand out for you should be really
be analyzed. There are not many Fortune 500
company C-Suites and Boards that I do not
personally know within my sector, however there
are not many of those I can exchange meaningful
value with. I know which ones will stand up for me,
genuinely help me and even take a risk and which
ones will not even with a good relationship
developed over years. You must focus on the right
people for you, not the biggest names. At times, big
names do not help, but genuine connections do.
“Connect and Pitch” on LinkedIn
I have mentioned this before and have a dedicated
article on this topic, you can find it here. This
breach of trust action will get you are ejected out of
the network at first contact.
The new “connect and pitch” tacticians on LinkedIn
have created nuisance in the name of social selling.
Social selling is anything but connecting to
someone leveraging LinkedIn’s promise and then
breach trust with an immediate pitch with
something that you must push on an individual who
does not yet know you or trust you – it just comes
across as a lack of understanding on how much
modern sales has changed or your product is a
commodity which is otherwise not gaining traction.
I have done social selling for many years and
generated multi-million dollars in revenue over
many years. It does take time, no one is on LinkedIn
to be pitched or waiting to buy on first contact.
Build a long-term relationship, trust and exchange
value and business will follow. Genuine relationship
builders and influencers on LinkedIn do not push,
they pull.
Space Management
While it is extremely important to stay engaged with
your professional network, the art also lies in
understanding when to lean back and give people
space. There is a fine line between engagement,
over engagement and hounding people – everyone
is busy, and it is critical to respect their schedules
and give them space. Appending a “non-urgent”
tone and verbiage to a check-in will likely get you a
quicker response than a tone of urgency, the
former will relieve them bringing forth your genuine
intent. Not letting people their space will overwhelm

5. 4 | P a g e
and eventually the connection will fade away. I
periodically come across this personality type and I
am very quick to distance out.
Trivializing Connections
Many people mistake that more accomplished and
senior people can give impactful value (advice,
mentorship, funding, access to network etc.) while
younger or junior professionals can only take.
Nothing is further from this truth and I always
advice people to not fall for these myths and traps. I
have gained a lot of value from younger
professionals, this ranges from technical insights,
specialized knowledge and even connections. I
have noticed that a lot of people trivialize
connections based on this bias. Secondly, over the
longer-term people change, gain experience,
accomplish things and move up the ladder. I could
write case studies on how I thought people do not
have anything for me and I was mistaken. People
want to be heard, respected, and helped,
trivializing anyone is alienating them from the
network.
Stress Testing Your Network
The best way to stress test your network is to
create an adverse scenario like a start-up running
out of funds, you being laid-off (lay-off test), having
a crisis etc. If you cannot list those top 10 people
you would call and it has been more than 60 days
since you spoke with them, then your network
engagement needs work.
Here are a few questions to stress test your
professional network, its strength and reliability:
▪ How many people will stand by you,
prioritize your issue and fight for your
cause?
▪ How many of your peers are engaged with
you or will engage with serious commitment
during testing times?
▪ Who would be genuinely upset if you do not
overcome the crisis?
▪ Who are your first three calls you will make,
and will they stand by you?
Analyzing Issues
The above-mentioned issues manifest with
immediate or slower impact from a time dimension,
they also have a high or low impact on alienating
people in your professional network. Figure 1 below
outlines the impact of each issue across the two
dimensions of time and level of impact. While
Network Control and Distractors have lower impact
over a longer period, Network Contamination and
Space Management will manifest themselves
immediately and take its toll on your professional
network.
There are a few high impact issues which impact
over time, these are also the most common issues
i.e., “Take and Vanish”, Trivializing Connections
and Ejection from Networks. If you have been
practicing, noticing your own actions across these
quadrants, then you have some adaptations to
make. If you have only a dot or two in your
execution style, then it is just about fine-tuning your
relationship building style.
Figure 1: Impact Analysis of Issues
There are many great articles written on good
practices by scholars and industry veterans, the
bad practices are rarely called out. You can also
read Hurting the Network Part 1 and Hurting the
Network Part 2 which have a few other aspects
covered.

6. 5 | P a g e
Conclusion
ocial capital is new currency of business and one should not expend it without good reason, be honest,
build genuine relationships, authentic connections and business will follow. There are no short cuts to
value exchange.
As your network scales, your approach to additions, engagement, navigation etc. all need to adapt for scale.
Many relationships in the network come good with time, continue to invest, and nurture the network – engage
the right way. Many times, professional networks are not able to help your objective, recognize this aspect well
too. It is not that people do not want to help you, they just run into their own limitations.
About the Author:
S
Nitin Kumar is a two-decade veteran in the Hi-Tech industry. He is currently the CEO of Appnomic but played a variety
of hands on executive roles ranging from CEO, Chief Growth Officer, Chief Transformation Officer, M&A
Integration/Separation Leader, BU Head and Management Consulting Partner (corporate and PE portfolio companies).
He is considered a business builder, thought leader and pioneer of many innovative approaches. He and was named as
one of the “Movers and Shakers” in 2018/19. Nitin was also named in the “Silicon Valley’s Magnificent Four” for being
one of the most connected and networked executives.