The exhaustion of performative networking events.

What changes when you stop performing and start attending.

I attended a lot of networking events in my corporate years, not as many as I probably should have, and I'd spend most of them gravitating toward people I already knew for a good ol catch-up rather than meeting anyone new.

I found the questioning from strangers a little overwhelming and I was never sure what anyone wanted from me. And the LinkedIn inbox that followed would fill up with requests - introductions to the C-suite, demo pitches, hire-me messages. I understood it, I really did. For every twenty messages sent, one might land at the right time and context. But despite being a social person, they kind of wore my battery out.

(Side bar, my most favourite piece of advice to corporate workers who might need some fresh inspiration, is to attend a start-up event every now and then and listen to what people are up to outside of corporate. Super valuable and an easy way to get some different conversations into your life).

Back to the story. Outside of corporate, I did expect networking to feel different. In some ways it does, but the energy in a lot of networking rooms can still wear you out - perhaps more so.

You can feel it the moment you walk in - some spaces feel aggressively desperate.

People moving fast, collecting LinkedIn connections like points on a scoreboard. Someone requesting your "pitch" before they've asked your name, sizing you up mid-sentence - can I get anything from this person vibes - while their eyes scan the room for the next target.

Perfectly rehearsed introductions delivered without much belief behind them, certainly no heart. Someone asking you a question and not listening to a single word of your answer, already somewhere else.

You get the idea.

When this happens to me, I withdraw completely, not out of rudeness, because everyone has a different style and a different need and I genuinely respect that, but something in me just makes me want to protect myself.

Soon enough, I started dreading going to networking events - they were making me feel a bit shit about myself actually. This wasn't ideal given I'd moved countries and was building a life from scratch in a city where I didn't even speak the language fluently.

So I made a decision.

In 2025, I stopped going to networking events to network.

And that's when they got good.

I started going purely to meet interesting people, to hear what they were building, where they'd come from, what actually mattered to them. I'd find the person standing alone, because that never feels good, and I'd go and talk to them. I'd listen properly to whoever got up to spontaneously speak and make a point of congratulating them afterwards. I didn't hand out my business card unless someone asked for it. I started doing my best to support someone's posts on LinkedIn, knowing what they were navigating behind the scenes from our exchanges.

Connections and opportunities followed rather effortlessly from there, the way they tend to when you stop chasing them and build relationships instead.

Something else happened too. By listening properly - aka by asking real questions and hearing the answers - I started to understand what people actually needed in new ways.

Two things I'm genuinely proud of came directly from those conversations.

The Continuum Process Workshops. As I spoke with people at these events and they opened up about what they were navigating, I kept thinking about how wonderful it would be to gather women like them in a small group and move through some self-discovery and self-reflection activities together. Something designed to bring people back to themselves rather than sharpen their pitch. So I held a few workshops, I'll likely do more, and they were magical.

Content Club. So many people I met were struggling with the same thing - how to show up consistently and talk about their work in a way that felt true rather than performed. Given my background in brand strategy and marketing, people had questions and I had a lot to offer about overcoming the challenge of showing up online. When a friend opened a co-working space, I suggested we open the doors once a month and co-host a space where people could come and commit to their content together, in good company. Six months in, it's one of my favourite things about my month and there is more to come after such positive feedback.

What I notice every single time in both spaces is when people walk in and are greeted with warmth and genuine interest, their spines soften.

They exhale.

They realise they don't have to perform within seconds - that nothing will be asked of them. They just get to hang out, chat, and be themselves.

And that's the thing about performative rooms, they make everyone in them perform, whether they want to or not. The antidote isn't a better attitude or a sharper elevator pitch. It's someone deciding to truly attend to the people in front of them, to be curious without agenda, to expect nothing in return and mean it.

Most rooms reward performing, especially in the entrepreneur space. So this is a reminder that you can choose to build ones that don't, and you can choose how you show up in the ones you didn't build too.

You don't have to perform just because everyone else is.

I'd love to hear from you. What's your experience of networking events? Have you found a way through them that works, or are you still searching for one?

Tell me in the comments.

And if you want to try something, here's a small challenge - find three events near you in the coming weeks and go to them with one intention only. Beyond the natural back-and-forth of introducing yourself, try not to talk about yourself at all. Make the whole conversation about the other person. Ask where they've come from, what they're working on, what's got them excited or kept them up at night.

See what happens, and come back and tell me.

You KNOW I'm cheering for you :) Alice