Why the Best Business Connections Happen When You Stop Trying to Network

Let me paint you a picture you'll probably recognise.

You're at a networking event. There's a name tag on your lapel that feels slightly ridiculous. Someone approaches you with a handshake that's just a little too firm, makes eye contact that's just a little too intense, and asks what you do with the energy of someone who's already decided whether you're useful to them before you've finished answering.

You do your rounds. You collect some business cards that will live in your jacket pocket for three weeks before ending up in the bin. You leave having spent two hours talking to people, and somehow feeling more isolated than when you arrived.

Sound familiar?

Traditional networking (the forced, badge-wearing, elevator-pitch variety) has always been a bit of an act. And I think most CEOs and senior leaders know it. You show up because you feel like you should. You work the room because that's what you're supposed to do. But genuine connection? That's rarer than it should be.

Which is why I found a recent piece of research from Eventbrite genuinely interesting. Their 2026 Social Study identified a trend they're calling ‘Soft Socialising’, and while their research is focused on consumer events and Gen Z nightlife, the underlying insight translates directly to the business world. The finding is simple: people connect better when connection isn't the point.

What Soft Socialising Actually Means

The idea behind soft socialising is that the best social experiences are the ones where there's something else going on. A shared activity, a common focus, a reason to be in the room that isn't just each other.

Eventbrite's data shows that attendance at things like puzzle nights, flower arranging classes, and book clubs has surged, not because people have suddenly developed a passion for jigsaws, but because those formats give people something to do with their hands and their attention, whilst connection happens naturally in the background.

When the activity is the focus, the pressure to perform socially disappears. You don't need an elevator pitch for someone you're sitting next to at a cooking class. You don't need to justify your presence to someone you're competing against in a trivia night. The conversation starts itself, and it starts from a real place rather than a transactional one.

Now take that principle and apply it to business.

The Problem with Traditional Networking for CEOs

Here's the thing about being a CEO or senior leader: everyone in the room knows who you are and what you represent. The moment you walk into a traditional networking event, you're not just a person, you're an opportunity, a decision-maker, a potential client or referral source. People approach you with an agenda, even when they're trying to hide it.

That dynamic makes a genuine connection almost impossible. You spend the whole evening on guard, parsing whether someone actually finds you interesting or whether they're working towards an ask. It's exhausting. And it means that most of the relationships built in those rooms stay shallow, because they were built on a foundation of mutual assessment rather than genuine human interest.

I've had more valuable business conversations at the side of a barbecue, at a golf day, at a lunch where the agenda was ostensibly something else entirely, than I have at any event where networking was the sole purpose. And I don't think that's a coincidence. When the pressure is off, people show up differently. They're more honest, more relaxed, more themselves. And that's when you actually find out whether you want to work with someone.

What the Research Is Really Telling Us

Eventbrite's finding that most people prefer socialising not to be the main focus isn't just a consumer behaviour quirk. It reflects something deeper about how human beings actually build trust.

Trust doesn't come from a well-delivered pitch. It doesn't come from a firm handshake and a memorable business card. It comes from repeated, low-stakes interactions over time. From someone seeing you in different contexts, noticing how you treat people, hearing how you talk about your work when you're not trying to sell it.

That kind of trust is built in the margins. Over a coffee that runs long because the conversation got interesting. At an event where you both happened to find something funny at the same moment. In the ten minutes before a presentation starts, when you're both just killing time and end up in a genuinely good conversation.

These aren't accidental moments. They're what happens when you design the right environment, one where people aren't there to network, but end up connecting anyway.

What This Means If You're a CEO

If you're running a business and you're relying on traditional networking events to build the relationships that grow your company, I'd gently suggest you're making it harder than it needs to be.

The most connected CEOs I know aren't the ones working the room at industry conferences. They're the ones who have built genuine, warm networks over years of showing up in the right places: dinners, sports events, interest groups, informal industry catch-ups where the conversation wanders wherever it wants to go. They're the ones who send an article to someone they met six months ago because it reminded them of a conversation they had. They're the ones who invite people to things that have nothing to do with business, because they actually enjoy their company.

That's soft socialising in a business context. And the returns, in trust, in referrals, in the kind of relationships that lead to real opportunities, are significantly better than anything a name tag and a room full of strangers has ever delivered.

A few things worth thinking about practically:

Seek out activity-based formats. Golf days, cooking classes, sports events, industry lunches with a guest speaker, anything where there's a shared focus beyond each other. The activity gives everyone permission to relax, and relaxed people connect.

Invest in smaller gatherings. A dinner for eight is worth ten times a cocktail event for a hundred. The intimacy forces real conversation, and real conversation builds real relationships. If you're running events for your own network, deliberately think about scale.

Play the long game. The coffee you have with someone today might not turn into anything for two years. That's fine. The point of soft socialising isn't to generate an immediate pipeline, it's to build a network of people who genuinely know you, trust you, and think of you when the moment is right.

Show up consistently, not strategically. The temptation with networking is to only attend things when you have a specific reason - a new product to promote, a role to fill, a problem to solve. But the people who build the best networks show up all the time, for no particular reason, and let the relationships develop naturally.

What We're Building at Cemoh

This is actually something we think about a lot at Cemoh. Our business is built on relationships, between our consultants and our clients, between the senior marketers in our network, and between us and the broader business community we serve.

We've run events in the past, and what we've learned is that the ones that work best are never the ones where networking is the explicit agenda. They're the lunches where someone interesting is speaking, and the conversation carries on long after they've finished. They're the informal catch-ups where people from our consultant network compare notes and end up finding unexpected common ground. They're the smaller, more deliberate gatherings where there's something worth showing up for beyond just "meeting people."

This year, we're being more intentional about building that into what we offer: webinars, partnership events, lunches, social events that bring together the kind of people who should know each other, in environments where they actually can. Not networking events. Something better than that.

If you're a CEO or senior leader who's tired of working rooms and collecting business cards, that's the kind of thing we're building. The best connections we've ever made, for our clients, for our consultants, and for ourselves, have always happened when we stopped trying to network and started just getting good people in a room together.

The rest, it turns out, takes care of itself.

Simon Dell is the CEO of Cemoh, Australia's fractional marketing network, connecting businesses with experienced fractional CMOs and marketing professionals. Find out more at cemoh.com.