Networking Habits that Could Transform your Business or Career in 2026!

Imagine your network where referrals and opportunities fill us. Where each morning, lunch or evening networking feel like possibilities. Where we’d go to battle for our networking club. That group of people exists. And it starts with the choice to forget teams ready – made for others and start building teams that you are a part of with your trusted circle in mind.

Being an advocate, we coin a phrase that Simon Sinek loves to cite, and it reveals everything about what makes teams truly great. Teams of average performers beat teams of high performers. Consistently.

Lots of networkers obsess over big networking events filled with the top 1% individuals with killer résumés and metrics or turn- overs. We chase the people who shine brightest in the crowd, who have the most impressive achievements listed on LinkedIn. But here’s what happens when you stack them together without trust and comradery, they fracture. They compete internally, hoard wins, focus on personal glory. The business community dies faster as it was built.

Average folks? They prioritize the team. They serve each other, share credit, cover weaknesses. That’s the secret sauce for real outperformance.

The “Great Performers” burn bright alone but dim in ensembles. The everyday players, bonded by mutual devotion, win marathons, win business and win 2026!

Why This Matters this New Year

We’re entering 2026 carrying the hopes of the year ahead. We’re eager and new and standing at the fresh starting line again. Our teams are hopeful too. And in that spirit, there’s a temptation to look for the hero, the superstar who’ll save us all then few fall into oblivion and underperform.

In reality, salvation doesn’t come from one brilliant person. It comes from many good people choosing each other, again and again. In one well interconnected network.

According to BforB club results, stacked top performers on one team will fight over credit, and complain about slackers. “My referrals, my one to ones,” my attendance and guests introduced to my clubs in the KPI system which shifts fasts at really high inflation and fluctuation ratio that exhausting everyone in the process.

The average team? They covered for each other, focused on the group grade. They won every time because they trusted, they worked together.

Why does this surprise us? Because Leaders uses metrics to worship individuals. Habitually celebrate the person who closed the biggest deal, hit their numbers, got the lead. Leadership’s job is to find the crowned winners to help others. It’s to build the container for collective magic. It’s to create the space where people feel safe enough to serve something bigger than themselves. That’s a winning network.

 The Winning Habit is to Ask at Least One Question Every Time

Demonstrating your interest in others as leadership habit that will transform your 2026, and it’s beautifully simple: every time someone on your network has a win, ask them one question: “Who helped you?”, What’s your biggest lesson?”

Said in a genuine manner and avoid gestures of it as an afterthought or being too casual including the first response to every completed action.

Then habitually and as critically, publicly recognize those helpers by name with endorsement or expert lessons learned. Include it in the network meetings or in the “slack” channel or chats channels. In your email to leadership or executive teams.

Make the assist or the lessons as visible as the goal.

When Gillian closes the big client, don’t just celebrate Gillian. Ask her, “Who helped you?, what’s your biggest lesson or tip” Then send a message: “Gillian landed this client, and she says it wouldn’t have happened without Jake’s research, Jenny’s introduction, and Tom covering her other accounts. That’s what winning network looks like here.”

Do this every single week. Every win. Every milestone. Every success or lessons.

Watch what happens.

Your colleagues at the networking clubs will start helping each other more because they know it will be seen. The hoarding of information will stop because collaboration gets recognized.

The quiet contributors, the ones who always made others better but never got noticed, will finally feel valued. And your stars? The good ones will lean into it. They’ll realize their legacy isn’t what they achieved alone, but who they brought up with them.

What can Get Better

This one question reshapes everything. It shifts you from scorekeeper just to guard a culture. It changes what members of the networking clubs compete for. Instead of fighting over individual glory, they’ll compete to be the person others named when asked who helped and given the best lesson learned.

You’re teaching your network what you value. And when you consistently value mutual devotion over individual brilliance, you build the trust where average networking group choose to serve each other. That’s how you create a real networking team at BforB, on top of Leaders working together.

Networking as a club of trust and open- mind outperform everyone every time.

In conclusion

As we head into 2026, most leaders will keep doing what they’ve always done. They’ll chase the next superstar company. They’ll celebrate individual metrics. They’ll wonder why their talented teams at networking underperform.

You can choose differently.

You can be the leader who builds something rare: a business networking team that actually cares about each other. Where members show up not just for the "paycheck", but for each other. Where the work matters because we’re doing it together.

A great network doesn’t need more stars. They need you to see the constellation they’re already forming. They need you to illuminate the connections between them, to make visible all the quiet acts of service that make the magic possible this year and beyond.

One question. Every win. “Who helped you?”, “What lessons and tips can you share?”

That’s how you transform your networking 2026. That’s how you build the world where network fills us.

To find out about getting started email: centralservices@bforb.co.uk or Best DM us today.

Networking Habits that could Transform your Business and Career in 2026 at BforB. AI Retouched Images