# My Network: What Counts as One, and How to Use What You Already Have Canonical URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/networking/my-network/ Markdown URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/networking/my-network.md Entity type: Article Last updated: 2026-07-07 Language: en Primary audience: professionals improving networking at work Owner: Headway Skills Contact: https://headwayskills.com/contact/ ## Short answer Your network is bigger than you think. What actually counts as my network, the five kinds of connections in it, and how to reopen ones that have gone quiet. ## Key facts - Title: My Network: What Counts as One, and How to Use What You Already Have - Category: Networking - Primary skill: Networking - Related skills: Influence, Communication - Primary keyword: my network - Source page: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/networking/my-network/ ## What this page covers - Your network is bigger than you think. What actually counts as my network, the five kinds of connections in it, and how to reopen ones that have gone quiet. - Practical guidance for my network - How this topic connects to Networking ## Detailed explanation Most people who go looking for advice about their network start from a quiet assumption that they don't really have one. It's usually wrong. My network is every relationship that carries career relevance — former colleagues, classmates, people from past jobs, contacts I've lost touch with — not just the handful of people I speak to regularly. Its usefulness comes from variety, and from [being tended](/knowledge/networking/maintain-professional-network/) before there's anything to ask for. What makes that hard to see is that a network isn't one thing. ## What actually counts as my network There's a whole genre of career writing that exists purely to correct the undercount. Goodword's piece on why your network is bigger than you think defines a professional network as the subset of your relationships that carries career or business relevance: former coworkers, clients, classmates, collaborators, and dormant relationships that still hold recognition and trust. The reason people undercount is mechanical rather than modest — they tally only the contacts they deal with on purpose, and quietly write off everyone they've stopped speaking to. University career centers work around this with a mapping exercise. You put yourself at the center and then work through categories you would otherwise forget: former colleagues, friends and family, alumni from your program, professional associations or community groups, [existing LinkedIn connections](/knowledge/networking/how-to-network-on-linkedin/), volunteer and extracurricular contacts. Done honestly, the list usually runs several times longer than the number you had in your head. Career-service material, such as eCampusOntario's careers guide, then tends to describe networking mainly as a job-search instrument. That's fair as far as it goes, but it also explains some of the discomfort: if the only stated purpose of a network is to get something out of it, every message looks like a request. It's more useful to see the thing as having several distinct parts, each doing a different job. ## The five kinds of connections in a network Two of these categories describe what a group of people is *for*; the other two describe how close you are to them, and cut across the first three. ### Operational network The people your current job requires you to deal with — your manager, immediate colleagues, peers in other units, and the internal or external players who can hold up or unblock your work. In the framework Herminia Ibarra and Mark Hunter set out in *Harvard Business Review*, this is the layer almost everyone builds first, because you don't choose it. Your role hands it to you. That's also its limitation: it's the part of your network that largely evaporates when you change jobs, which is why a network can feel busy and still be no help at all when you need something new. ### Personal network Discretionary connections, mostly outside your workplace, held together by something you have in common rather than by shared work: people from your program, past jobs, associations, volunteering, a sport. Ibarra and Hunter's point about this layer is that its power is referral potential — it reaches into places your employer doesn't. For someone early in their career, this is usually the largest and most neglected part of the map. ### Strategic network Ties, lateral and vertical, to people who can show you where things are heading: other functions, more senior perspectives, adjacent industries. It's the deliberately built layer, pointed at where you want to be rather than at what's on your plate this week. Almost nobody has one at the start, and its absence is what people are usually sensing when they describe their network as thin. ### Weak ties Acquaintances rather than confidants — people you know slightly, scattered across all three layers above. The recurring finding in this literature, summarized in TimeTrex's write-up on weak ties in the labor market, is a clean division of labor: strong ties supply support and trust, weak ties supply discovery. The person who opens up a new field or role to you is rarely the person you talk to every day. So if you've been maintaining only your three closest work friendships, the problem isn't the number of people. It's the lack of range. ### Dormant ties People you once knew well and simply lost touch with. These are the most undervalued entries on anyone's map, and the most interesting: as the Cornell INFO 2040 course blog summarizes the research, a dormant tie can carry the advantages of both kinds at once. They still remember your actual interests and strengths well enough to pass you something relevant, yet they've moved into circles you're no longer part of, so what they know is new to you. The stated condition is simply that the contact lapsed without any bad feeling, which covers the vast majority of cases. The silence you're embarrassed about is not the disqualifier you think it is. ## How to tell whether my network is any good Not by size. On the evidence above, two questions are more diagnostic than the count: does it reach beyond the people your current job forces you into, and does it include enough people who aren't close to you? A wide operational layer with nothing else is a fragile position, however many names it holds. A dozen genuine weak and dormant ties across a few different worlds does more. The second test is direction. Sources on this topic overwhelmingly describe what a network can do for you and say very little about [what you put in](/knowledge/influence/whats-in-it-for-me/), which is exactly the imbalance that makes people stall. ## Reaching out after a long silence Reconnection gets treated as its own move in only a few places — Foundr and Business Health Trust both make the case that reopening a dormant relationship is where the unexpected insights and openings actually come from — and it's the least-served part of this whole subject, despite being the step most people are stuck on. What unsticks it is having something to offer rather than a favor to request. That can be small: an article that speaks to something they mentioned, a name they should know, congratulations on a move, a straight answer to a question in your area. This is also where an honest read on your own capabilities helps more than another networking tip — it's easier to reopen a conversation when you can [see what you bring](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/) to it, and those capabilities are all learnable rather than fixed. Then [the first message](/knowledge/networking/networking-email-template/) is unremarkable by design: where you crossed paths, one line on what you're doing now, and a real question about them. ## The skills that make a network worth having Read back over that and very little of it is about events, platforms, or being naturally sociable. It keeps coming back to a small number of things you do, or don't do, over time. **Networking**, in the sense this article has been using, is relationship-building treated as personal connection rather than transaction — investing before you need anything, giving value without keeping score, and thinking in circles: an inner group you actively maintain, a middle group that will still respond to you, an outer group gone quiet. The discomfort of reaching out is part of the skill rather than evidence you're bad at it, and it shrinks by starting with easy contacts rather than by becoming a different person. **Influence** is what determines whether being in your network is worth anything to the other person. It's built on a well-earned reputation — delivering what you said you would, being known for something specific, staying straightforward — because that's what your contacts pass on when they describe you to someone else. It also covers the willingness to ask at all, since the worst available answer is no, and the habit of framing a request around what's in it for them rather than what you need from them. **Communication** decides how each of those touchpoints actually goes. Choosing a conversation when the point is rebuilding trust and writing when the other person needs time to respond; leading with the main message; keeping it short; genuinely wanting to hear the answer rather than waiting to deliver your ask. A network is mostly a long series of small exchanges, and this is what makes people want the next one. None of these three is a temperament you either have or you don't — they're behaviors, which means the gaps are movable. The free Work Skills Test covers twelve of them, so instead of guessing which part of this you're weakest at, you can find [which one to build first](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/) and work on that rather than on all of it at once. ## Where this leaves you Some of this is probably already in your habits without the label — the former colleague you kept up with, the introduction you made because two people obviously ought to meet, the message you sent when someone changed jobs. Doing more of that, deliberately, is most of what building a network amounts to; it doesn't ask you to become louder or more strategic than you are. It does tend to matter more later than it does now, because relationships take time to become useful and can't be assembled on demand — which is a good argument for closing any gap here while nothing depends on it, and a small one to close, given that every behavior involved is learnable. You've also just done the part most people skip: taking an actual inventory instead of assuming you had nothing to work with. What's missing is an honest read of your own starting point. ## A quiet first step Fittingly, the next move needs no one else. The Work Skills Test is a **free** self-assessment of your work skills — about 7 minutes of questions, taken alone at your desk — and it shows where you stand across all twelve, including the three this article kept circling back to, and which one would repay attention first. Nowhere to turn up, no one watching; just a clearer sense of what you're bringing to the people you're about to get back in touch with. **[Take the skills test](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/)** *Free, about 7 minutes, and nothing to prepare.* ## Who this is for - Professionals building practical workplace skills - Readers looking for specific, usable work advice - Managers, educators, and coaches supporting career readiness ## Common questions ### What is this guide about? Your network is bigger than you think. What actually counts as my network, the five kinds of connections in it, and how to reopen ones that have gone quiet. ### Which Headway skill does this connect to? This guide connects primarily to Networking. It also relates to Influence, Communication. ### What is the recommended next step? Use the free Work Skills Test to reflect on which work skill to improve next. ## Related pages - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/networking.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/influence.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/communication.md - https://headwayskills.com/work-skills-test.md ## Citation guidance Use the canonical page when citing this content: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/networking/my-network/ Preferred summary: "Your network is bigger than you think. What actually counts as my network, the five kinds of connections in it, and how to reopen ones that have gone quiet." ## Change log - 2026-07-07: Content collection version published.