The new networking: Run clubs, pickleball, and the end of awkward small talk

In other words, you might meet the person who helps you land your next job while doing something that has nothing to do with finding one.

Kristi Herold, founder and CEO of adult recreational sports company JAM and author of It Pays to Play, has watched relationships form this way for 30 years. JAM began as the Toronto Sport & Social Club in 1996 and has grown into one of the world’s largest adult recreational sports league providers.

Herold says the appeal of activity-based communities is partly that they remove the pressure that comes with conventional networking.

“It’s like a low-stakes, low-pressure way to meet new people because you’ve got a distraction,” she says. Instead of “standing in a conference room with a drink in your hand, trying to force small talk,” you’re playing a game, learning a sport, or talking about the thing you just did together.

That distinction matters. Walk into a networking event and everyone knows, to some degree, why everyone else is there. There can be an implied agenda: Who do you work for? What can you do for me? Should we connect on LinkedIn?

Join a run club and the first question is more likely to be about your pace.

When networking isn’t the point

Herold believes taking networking off the agenda can actually make people better at it.

“There’s pressure” in traditional networking, she says, describing working a room and introducing herself to strangers as awkward and exhausting. By contrast, when people come together around something social, “You’re bonding over a shared playful activity. And then the networking comes from that.” 

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Herold has seen that play out in tangible ways. JAM participants have met partners through its leagues, but they’ve also found jobs and professional opportunities through people they met while playing sports.

“It happens all the time,” she says. “It’s a beautiful part of putting yourself out there into this new type of a community that networking happens so naturally.”

There may be another reason these relationships stick: you get to know someone before you need something from them.

Herold argues that shared activities accelerate trust because people laugh, problem solve, and see each other as humans. Play can even flatten workplace hierarchies. A junior employee and CEO playing on the same soccer team are, at least temporarily, teammates. Employees from marketing, finance, and HR who rarely interact at work can become friends outside it, making it easier to approach each other later.

“Both vertically and laterally, the silos and the hierarchies break down when we connect through play,” Herold says.

Online networking isn’t dead

This doesn’t mean deleting LinkedIn and relying solely on your pickleball team to forge professional connections. Herold uses LinkedIn regularly and sees value in it as a tool for sharing ideas, maintaining relationships, and spotting opportunities.

She recently saw a friend post about launching a protein powder in Whole Foods in the U.S. She congratulated him, then asked whether sampling through JAM might make sense. That casual interaction eventually led to a business opportunity.

The key was that the relationship came before the pitch.

That’s markedly different from the unsolicited copy-and-paste messages cluttering many inboxes. Herold uses a phrase borrowed from her friend, speaker and author Ron Tite, for this particular networking offence: getting “pitch slapped.”

“No one likes to be pitch slapped,” she says. When someone has clearly done no research, sends a generic sales message, and follows up repeatedly despite getting no response, she says the approach becomes annoying rather than relationship-building.

The lesson for young professionals isn’t that digital networking is bad. It’s that the same rules increasingly apply online and off: be a person first.

Comment on someone’s work because you actually found it interesting. Congratulate them because you mean it. Join communities you genuinely want to be part of. Ask questions. Get curious. And don’t treat every new acquaintance as a potential transaction.

Don’t ruin the run club

There is, of course, an obvious danger to declaring run clubs, sports leagues, and hobby groups the “new networking”: people could start showing up and treating them just like the old networking.

Herold says JAM has deliberately avoided positioning itself as somewhere to find a partner or a job. It promotes an active, healthy, and fun way to meet people. The other stuff happens precisely because it isn’t the stated objective.

“The pressure’s almost gone from it,” she says.

That might be the most useful networking advice of all.

Your next professional connection could be beside you at Pilates, chasing down a pickleball, or showing up to the same run club every Saturday morning. But rather than walking in wondering what everyone can do for your career, start by learning their names and enjoying your mutual shared interest.

Make the friend first. The networking can come later.

About Alicia Tyler

The Toronto-based journalist has 20 years of experience as an editorial leader in digital and print media, specializing in consumer and service journalism. Her work has appeared in Money.ca, MindBodyGreen and Hone Health.

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