The Higher You Go, the More Your Network Matters
One of the great ironies of reaching the C-Suite is that the moment your network becomes most critical is often the moment you have the least time (or perceived need) to maintain it.
By this point in your career, you have proven that you can build relationships. You know people. People know you. Your calendar is overflowing, your responsibilities have expanded, and there is always something more urgent than having coffee with someone you don’t technically need to see this week.
That is exactly why senior executives can become dangerously insular.
At the C-Suite level, stakeholder management can make or break you. Your success depends increasingly on your ability to align people you do not control, understand competing agendas, anticipate reactions, build support for difficult decisions, and stay connected to what is happening beyond your immediate team. You need people who will tell you what you aren’t hearing, advocate for you when you aren’t in the room, challenge your thinking, and help you understand how decisions will land before you make them.
In other words, networking at this level isn’t about collecting contacts. It is part of the job.
Your Job Has Changed
Most careers leading up to the C-Suite reward individual contribution. Even as your responsibilities grow, a significant part of your success comes from your expertise, judgment, and ability to personally drive results.
That equation changes dramatically at the top.
There is virtually nothing consequential in a C-Suite role that you can accomplish alone. Your ability to personally get things done becomes less important than your ability to get things done through other people. That requires trust, alignment, information, influence, and credibility – all of which are built through relationships.
Consider a major transformation, restructuring, acquisition, cost reduction, or change in strategy. You may have the authority to make the decision, but authority alone will not ensure that people understand it, support it, or execute it well. You need to know who matters, what they care about, who influences them, and what they may be hearing from their own stakeholders.
As I wrote in Mastering the C-Suite, great stakeholder management isn’t simply about the stakeholder. It is about what that person represents and what they need to espouse to avoid disappointing their own constituents.
If you can understand that, you have a much better chance of creating alignment.
But you cannot manage what you don’t know.
The Biggest Networking Risk Is Proximity
One of the easiest traps for senior leaders is allowing their network to shrink around the people they interact with every day.
Your direct reports become your primary source of information. Your closest peers are the people you call. Your boss becomes the stakeholder whose opinion consumes the most attention. Before long, you are getting a surprisingly narrow view of a very large enterprise.
That is risky.
Your network should help you see around corners. It should expose you to perspectives that are different from your own and information that has not yet made its way through formal channels. It should help you understand what customers are experiencing, what employees several levels down are saying, where peer functions are struggling, what your board is worried about, and what is changing outside your company.
And it should contain people who have absolutely no incentive to tell you what you want to hear.
The more senior you become, the more carefully information can be filtered before it reaches you. A deliberately cultivated network becomes an important reality check.
Build a Network on Purpose
This is why I encourage C-Suite leaders to create an actual networking plan rather than assuming important relationships will take care of themselves.
In Mastering the C-Suite, I introduced the Networking Bullseye, a simple way to think about the relationships you need in expanding circles.
At the center is your inner circle: the people you interact with constantly – your boss, direct reports, closest peers, key customers, and others central to your day-to-day work. Beyond them is your casual network: people you regularly do business with but don’t see every day. The next circle is your outer network: people elsewhere in the organization whom you may not know as well but who can provide information, perspective, influence, or advocacy.
Then move outside the organization. Your industry and external network should include people who can help you understand what is happening beyond the walls of your company: industry colleagues, customers, outside experts, trade groups, and executives in similar roles at noncompetitive organizations.
Finally, consider your aspirational network. Who don’t you know yet, but should? Who could broaden your thinking, help you understand a market, expose you to a different perspective, or become an important connection as your career evolves?
The point is not to turn your calendar into an endless string of networking meetings. The point is to be intentional enough that the relationships critical to your effectiveness don’t disappear under the weight of everything urgent.
Put Relationship-Building on the Calendar
Once you have identified the people who matter, decide how often you realistically need to connect with them.
Some relationships warrant a monthly conversation. Others might need a quarterly coffee, an occasional walk through a facility, a quick call between meetings, or a note every few months. For relationships you want to build, identify who can make an introduction and create a reason to connect.
The mechanism matters far less than the discipline.
If you rely on “I should call her sometime,” six months can disappear remarkably quickly. And the worst time to discover that you have neglected an important relationship is when you suddenly need that person’s support.
Strong networks are built before the crisis, the transformation, the board meeting, the promotion discussion, or the high-stakes decision. That is what makes the relationship authentic (and what makes it useful).
At the C-Suite level, networking is no longer something you do to advance your career. It is part of how you lead the enterprise. It helps you stay informed, test your thinking, create alignment, build influence, and develop the sponsors and advocates every executive still needs, regardless of title.
You may be senior enough to believe you no longer need to network.
In reality, you are finally senior enough that you cannot afford not to.
If this resonated, I’d love to hear how you are developing your network in your leadership role. Reach out at jeggers@leadershiftinsights.com or visit www.leadershiftinsights.com.
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