Leveraging Your Human Design for Sustainable Business Networking

 Unpacking Traditional Networking Strategies

When it comes to networking strategies, the conventional advice many entrepreneurs and leaders receive is to meet as many people as you can and offer your services to them. THere’s an emphasis placed on the quantity of your connections versus the quality of your connections. Additionally, conventional advice encourages entrepreneurs and leaders to move these connections through a fast-paced, urgent journey to become a paying client or resourced referral partner. This leads to transactional relationships instead of human-centered relationships.

These conventional strategies are all rooted in oppressive, extractive systems of white supremacy, patriarchy and capitalism. As we shift the nature of business away from these oppressive systems towards decolonized practices, tools like Human Design can support the transition.

Your Energy Centers and Your Surroundings

When you look at your Human Design chart, you’ll see nine shapes on your bodygraph. Those are your energy centers.

Defined Centers

If the shapes are colored in, the energy you experience there will feel more defined as yours, and more consistent to access.

Undefined Centers

If the shapes are white or transparent, the energy you experience there is undefined. Undefined energy centers can also be referred to as open. It may flow inconsistently, and be susceptible to the energy you take in from the people and surroundings you encounter.

Networking with Undefined / Open Energy Centers

If you’re trying to grow your business by attending large scale networking events or meeting a lot of people in a short amount of time, but you’re feeling overwhelmed, exhausted and lost in the shuffle, you can look to your Human Design for a strategy that will work better for you.

When you have open, undefined energy centers, it’s like having an open window into your aura which allows energy to come in.

For example, if you have an undefined Emotional Solar Plexus, you will empathically receive the emotional energy from people around you. This energetic sensitivity could explain why you feel emotionally drained.

A more energetically supportive approach to networking might be switching your strategy to focus more on one-on-one networking. You could also build in a recovery time after networking events, which allow you to rest, recharge your energy and discharge the energy you’ve taken in.

Another more energetically supportive approach is to space out the frequency of attending large networking events. If you’ve been going out multiple times per week, you can try once or twice per month and see how that feels.

These approaches will take more time for you to make connections and nurture relationships, which means slower, sustainable results instead of get-rich-quick results.

Ultimately, slow and sustainable networking will support your energy levels and reduce symptoms of burnout.

Conclusion

There’s more than one way to network. There’s more than one way to make connections, build relationships and meet potential clients.

Honoring your energetic openness and sensitivity isn’t typically addressed or considered when it comes to taking business advice. However, it can be a refreshing alternative to conventional advice that encourages rapid, large-scale growth where the quantity of your connections is valued more than the quality of your connections.

Moreover, the conventional business advice has proven to be detrimental to mental health, physical health and will most likely lead to burn out.

Business success is often built upon human-centered relationships, not transactional relationships. Your business success starts with centering your human needs as the owner of your business. If you’re too exhausted to network, that’s not a sustainable strategy.

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