Why some networking events feel effortless (and others don't)
“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.”
You know the feeling. You walk into a networking event and you're on. You remember names, people laugh at your jokes, you leave feeling like you could take on the world. Then a few weeks later, you walk into the same room and you can barely string a sentence together and are dreading speaking to anyone. You want to leave the second you arrive.
You're the same person, with the same skills, in the same kind of room. Yet the experience feels completely different.
How can we be two different people? The answer may be hormones.
That was the subject of a brilliant masterclass I hosted earlier this month with Liz Turner Bate. Liz and I worked together at Gunnercooke for a few years before she left law to retrain as an ICF accredited career coach, and she now works exclusively with women lawyers on their health, their careers and their energy. She spent almost 25 years in practice before that, including running a property litigation team, teaching property law at Leeds Beckett University, and a stint in-house, so she has a huge amount of experience of our profession and its unique challenges.
The four phases
Her session was on cyclical living: using your menstrual cycle, or the lunar cycle if you don't have one, together with the actual seasons of the year, to work out when you have the most energy for which kind of task. Liz made the point that this isn't new information. Before roughly 150 years of artificial light and indoor working, women's cycles ran with the moon as a matter of course. We didn't need to be taught it. Somewhere along the way, we lost it.
Liz's session focused mainly on what each phase is good for, so here's how to actually work out which phase you're in. Day 1 of your cycle, and day 1 of winter, is the first day your period starts. If you have a fairly typical 28-day cycle, the four phases roughly break down as below. Your own cycle may be shorter or longer, in which case the phases compress or stretch by the same proportion, but the order stays the same.
If you don't have a period, whether through menopause, perimenopause or contraception, use the moon instead. Day 1 of winter is the new moon itself. A couple of tools make this easy to track: Yasmin Boland's Moonology Diary maps the whole year of moon phases out in one place, and the Weather app that comes as standard on an iPhone will actually tell you the current moon phase too – scroll down the app and you’ll see it.
The four phases
Liz breaks the cycle, or the moon cycle if that's the one you're working with, into four phases, each mirrored by a season of the year.
Winter: your period, or the dark and new moon (roughly days 1 to 6)
Energy is at its lowest here, but insight and big-picture thinking are at their best. Good for:
Reviewing a file or matter that has stalled
Billing, admin and clearing outstanding balances
Thinking about where your career is actually heading
Liz's advice for this phase is simple: skip the networking if you can, and don't judge yourself for wanting a quiet night in instead.
Spring: your follicular phase, or the waxing to full moon (roughly days 7 to 13)
Energy and optimism start climbing here, along with your appetite for new ideas. Good for:
Drafting, brainstorming and learning
Starting the project you have been putting off
Working with other people, since your communication is sharper too
Summer: ovulation, or the full moon (roughly days 14 to 16)
This is peak energy, confidence and verbal fluency. Good for:
Hearings, mediations and negotiations
The meeting you have been dreading
Networking, since you will have far more resilience for it here than in winter
During ovulation, your body is essentially trying to reproduce. That's the whole biological point of this phase. So it makes complete sense that you feel more sociable, more confident and more verbally fluent right now: your body is engineered to want you out there making connections. It's rather brilliant design, once you see it that way.
Autumn: your luteal phase, or the waning moon (roughly days 17 to 28)
Energy turns inward here, but your eye for detail sharpens. Good for:
Contract review, drafting and proofreading
Finishing what you already started, rather than beginning something new
Streamlining your workflow before energy dips further later in the phase
Liz also pointed out that the actual season of the year adds another layer on top of this. Your summer phase is magnified in actual summer more than it would be in the middle of a cold and wet November, because you are nature, not just cycling through it.
I admitted in the session that I am an entirely different person depending on where I am in my own cycle. In one phase, I could talk to absolutely anyone, and enjoy it as well. In another, please, just don't talk to me. At all. My poor husband is only too aware of this phase and has learned to read the signs and keep his distance!
What to actually do with this
You do not need a perfect system to get value from this. Liz's advice was refreshingly low effort:
Keep a one-line note in your diary for a month: energy high, energy low, nothing more detailed than that
Look at what's coming up and see what you can move to a better phase
Before saying yes to a networking invite, ask whether you'll have the energy for it, not just whether you're free. Capacity and energy are not the same thing
Aim for 20 to 40% of your tasks in the right phase, not 100%. That's already enough to notice a difference
If you don't have a cycle, whether through menopause, perimenopause or contraception, the lunar cycle works the same way. There are free apps and calendar add-ons that will track it for you, so you don't have to
I loved Liz's point that this used to be knowledge women had and somewhere along the way, we lost it. We are cyclical beings. Every time we try to perform at exactly the same level every single day, we are working against our own nature. Trust me when I say – learning and using this will change your life.
Enjoy the rest of your week.
Rachel
P.S. One more thing while I've got you: the price of Female Lawyers' Club membership is going up in October. If you join before then, you'll stay on the lower rate for as long as you're a member, whatever happens to the price for new joiners after that. If joining our fabulous community has been on your list, now is a great time to do it before the price increases. Join here: femalelawyersclub.com/join