The realm of business today is global, not just local or national. When Hazel, Frank, and I set out to discover what people thought about business networking, we focused on businesspeople, but in a broad cross-section of the world. Over a three-year period, more than 12,000 businesspeople from every populated continent in the world participated in a survey about gender and business networking, the most comprehensive survey of its kind ever conducted.

The survey was split almost evenly between men and women (50.2 percent men and 49.8 percent women). In their answers to the objective questions, men and women were not light years apart, as might have been expected. They mostly agreed, often quite closely, on the practices, values, and experiences of networking. The differences were oftentimes small, although statistically significant. No controversy there.

Then came a little surprise.

The final question on the survey was an open-ended one: Do you have any story about networking between men and women that you would like to submit for possible use in the book? If so, please describe.

Nearly 1,000 participants responded. And what stories!

When given the opportunity to say something personal about their networking experiences, 545 women and 403 men revealed strikingly different perceptions. Despite their fairly close agreement on the objective questions, male and female businesspeople seemed to live in two different worlds. Many of the women wrote of feeling undervalued, intimidated, ignored, overshadowed, or patronized. Others told of sexual harassment. Some men also had negative things to say about the women they met and worked with.

On the other hand, most of the men and many of the women gave positive responses. Some women even expressed a preference for working with men.

Similarly, quite a few of the men said they enjoyed working with women.

However, almost all the respondents, even those who had positive comments, told us how differently they viewed men and women approaching the art of networking. Most seemed to agree that in networking situations, men were more focused on business and women on relationships.

In their comments, men often cited the different networking styles of men and women but, on the whole, felt women did as good a job networking as men, or better. Their difficulties with women had mostly to do with not wanting to appear sexist.

Why did the opportunity to comment about the gender differences unleash such a strikingly different torrent of opinion?

In a phrase: The exception becomes the perception.

Most women don’t put up sexy photos on their websites. Most men don’t behave like frat boys. But it’s the few who do that stand out. They give us the impression that there’s a lot more of that sort of thing going on out there.

Then why were such a high percentage of the comments about the other sex, on both sides of the aisle, so negative? Because bad news travels faster than good news. (Remember the old saying? “Good news can wait but bad news will hunt you down.”)

So although very few women report having any problems themselves, they have the perception that problems are very common because they’ve heard about them through the grapevine (or the internet). The same goes for men. They like networking with women and rarely encounter problems, but hear stories from somewhere else, often second- or third-hand, about women who are oversensitive to jokes or innocent comments or who imagine they’re being discriminated against. They also hear about women who dress provocatively and women who won’t network with men.

At the end of the day, both the men and women in the survey are strongly committed to networking. They believe in it, practice it regularly, and look for ways to improve their networking-related skills. It works for them. The fact that difficulties arise doesn’t alter their commitment to it.

For the most part, men and women have similar goals for their networking efforts: They want to build their business. This similarity seems to compress some of the common differences that are expressed between the genders.

So when a problem arises and gets in the way of good networking, good businesspeople look for solutions.

Here are some “Gender DOs and DON’Ts” that are derived from the many responses in the survey that can help you to avoid potentially negative gender perceptions as you network:

Some of the things men can do to avoid being perceived as sexist are:

1. Maintain eye contact with women during conversation
2. Stick to conversing about business
3. Don’t get too personal

To stop unwelcome advances from men, women should:

1. Dress professionally
2. Have a firm handshake, and be professional
3. Under no circumstances flirt!

About author:

Called the "Father of Modern Neworking"by CNN, Dr. Ivan Misner is the Founder & Chairman of BNI, the world’s largest business networking organization. BNI was founded in 1985. The organization has over 6,200 chapters throughout every populated continent of the world. Last year alone, BNI generated 6.9 million referrals resulting in $3.1 billion dollars worth of business for its members.

All entries by Dr. Ivan Misner