A new study has revealed that professional networking or schmoozing can leave some people feeling "dirty".
Study co-author Tiziana Casciaro said that the dirty feeling can hold people back from networking more, reducing career opportunities and lowering job performance. In professional networking, "people feel that they cannot justify their actions to themselves, and the lack of justification comes from the difficulty people have in framing some forms of networking as motivated by a concern for other people versus a selfish concern.
According to the study, people who had more power in the office were less likely to report feeling dirty when it came to networking, and engaged in it more often. That effect can make it harder to penetrate existing power structures, because it means those already in power are more comfortable with networking and continue to reinforce and advance their positions. By contrast, those with less power feel more tainted by networking-even though they need it the most -and may have a harder time advancing themselves or improving their job performance.
The researchers added that those negative feelings can be overcome when people start to see networking as being about more than just themselves, such as an opportunity to develop the networker's knowledge of their industry, with the benefit being passed on to whomever they work with.
