Networking Vs Collaboration - What's The Difference and Why It Matters!!
I love connecting with like-minded people but I’ve never felt a strong pull towards networking groups, even though it has been recommended to me as a way to grow my business, many times before.
Lately I’ve been reflecting on why I feel this way and I’ve realised that what feels “off” for me is that something about the culture of networking carries a subtle undertone of extraction and transaction.
It can feel like:
“ What can I get from this person?” - and can often also feel opportunistic and outcome driven.
Networking - especially in the wellness, coaching, and spirtual worlds - can sometimes feel like circles of exchange based on visibility, aspiration or opportunity, not genuine relationship. The belonging is conditional: you’re welcomed as long as you stay within the energetic terms of exchange.
In principle, networking definitely has its benefits. It can introduce you to new ideas, connect you with like-minded people and support collaboration, when it’s genuinely aligned.
However, when networking becomes a strategy rather than a relationship , its starts feeling like extraction (taking what you need).
Especially in healing spaces, where presence, safety and integrity matter.
Networking can turn into something that feels transactional rather than relational.
I recently went to a book launch to support a friend who had just published her first book. To me, it was a celebration of her voice, her story and years of hard work she puts into writing the book.
At the event, a woman I’d met once or twice before approached me and handed me a flyer advertising her upcoming course and went straight into a sales pitch, inviting me to buy a ticket to her workshop.
She wasn’t aggressive or particularly pushy in any way but if felt “off” to me. I wasn’t there to market myself or scan for opportunities. I was there for celebration and sincere relationship.
The thing is this - the woman was not doing anything wrong - she was doing what networking culture encourages, to maximise the opportunity of being in a room of potential candidates.
The energy felt transactional instead of relational.
And after reflecting on this “off feeling” I finally understood why I’ve always felt ambivalent about the networking culture in wellness space. I always get it eventually!
Why This Matters in Spiritual and Healing Work
Spiritual, coaching, and wellness spaces are sensitive ecosystems. People mostly enter them with vulnerability, loneliness, grief and emotional baggage.
When networking overlays that environment, the nervous system feels it like this:
* I’m connecting but I’m also being evaluated
* I’m seen but I’m also being marketed too
* You are assessing my value
This is personal leverage and is rooted in hustle culture and self promotion, it often lacks soul and safety.
This creates emotional dissonance. And this is why it “feels” off.
On the other hand, collaboration feels like:
* What wants to emerge between us?
* How can we serve the work, not just ourselves?
Collaboration is co-creation, not leverage. It’s built on attunement, curiosity, shared values, alignment and emergence.
Collaboration grows slowly - like friendship. It feels more feminine.
Networking moves faster - like strategy. It feels more masculine.
And yes, of course there is space for both, but for me collaboration feels like a better currency and intention in the healing, coaching and wellness spaces.
This is now my internal barometer:
Does this interaction invite me into relationship and alignment or does it require me to perform usefulness and personal leverage?
And what if we all built our professional, spiritual, and creative ecosystems from relational presence rather than strategic and transactional proximity.
Networking is what happens when we enter a room with an opportunistic agenda mostly to grow our contact list. Collaboration allows us to be more human and create ecosystems of genuine care and shared values.
The choice we make shapes the culture we create.
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