Supercharge Your Network

Boost your career with these insights for intentionally curating your professional relationships.

A woman stands in front of a whiteboard in business attire.

1
Tools for the Right Times

King’s three network styles are most useful at different stages of one’s career. Nurturing an expansionist network is crucial early on, when having many ties could come in handy. Becoming a convener is most helpful at later stages, when trust is especially important.
2
Channeling Kevin Bacon

Most people know around 650 other people, according to King, but successful expansionists may have connections in much higher magnitudes. “Expansionists make the world small,” says King. “They’re the ones who drive the concept of ‘six degrees of separation.’”
3
Duty vs. Downtime

In addition to driving creativity and innovation by bringing together different groups of people, brokers can typically separate their personal and work lives, because their friends and colleagues don’t usually overlap. “This separation also [creates] work-life balance,” says King.
4
Lonely at the Top

CEOs experience loneliness in high proportions. “Everyone needs human connection,” says King. “But their status often seals them off from it.” Convening networks, defined by close ties built on trust, reputational benefits, and emotional support, are crucial in the C-suite.
5
Phone a Friend

King encourages resurfacing old relationships. “When we talk to dormant ties, perhaps someone you haven’t seen in two or three years, they’re more likely to provide better advice on ideas. Reconnection is arguably the most valuable way to make the most of your network.”
6
Create Your Own Success

There are pointed ways we can go about fostering our networks. In addition to switching industries, someone could bolster a broker network by making connections at a conference. For convening networks, offering mentorship is one way to develop close relationships.
7
Conscious Design

The way an organization constructs its teams could determine the kinds of networks that take shape within it. In emergency health care, where teams rotate daily, brokerage networks tend to form. More stable teams usually cultivate convening networks.

Are you making the right mix of connections to help you reach your career goals? “The fact is, the vast majority of people have no idea what their network looks like,” says Marissa King, a health-care management professor and the Alice Y. Hung President’s Distinguished Professor.

Being intentional about building relationships is essential to professional growth, but many people are resistant to the idea. “We hold our relationships sacred, so thinking about them intentionally can be morally off-putting,” King says. On top of that, people often don’t know where to start when it comes to enhancing their networks, or they don’t have the time. To help make the task less daunting, King equips students and executives in her Wharton courses with a simple framework — namely, an understanding of three types of networks that are particularly useful at different career stages. King, who covers the roles in detail in her 2021 book Social Chemistry: Decoding the Patterns of Human Connection, has labeled them “expansionist,” “broker,” and “convener” networks.

Attaining an expansionist network is useful for people early in their careers. “The more people you know, the more likely you’ll acquire information or resources that you need to get ahead,” King says. To become a successful expansionist, she suggests focusing on emotional-intelligence skills and putting a system in place to keep track of a large number of contacts.

Transitioning into a broker network — bringing people from different social circles together — is key to moving up the career ladder. “They may have spent part of their career in marketing and then moved to operations,” says King, who adds that brokers typically count friends as another part of their network. “This creates distinct social groups, and brokers’ ways of managing their different relationships puts them in a prime position to facilitate innovation and creativity.”

Then there are convener networks, which are made up of colleagues, friends, and other individuals who are also directly connected to one another. This style is essential for advancing to the C-suite: “Having a dense web of interactions provides emotional trust that’s critical for moving ahead,” explains King.

To develop in all three ways, she stresses the importance of exhibiting certain behaviors and taking chances based on the type of network you want to achieve. “Do not let your network be an accident,” says King, who is among the faculty speakers at the Wharton Global Forum in San Francisco this June. “By thinking carefully about its structure and how it can benefit you and others, you can make the most of it to advance your career and your organization.”

Published as “At the Whiteboard With Marissa King” in the Spring/Summer 2025 issue of Wharton Magazine.

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