 Does effective networking always have to be personal? In these Engineering Manager 80-20 Shorts videos, we help engineers become better managers and leaders. And in today's video, I'd like to answer a question from a female participant of our recent Engineering Management Accelerator course. In the course, we help engineers learn how to build relationships and network. An effective way to do that is getting to know people, learning about them, not just learning about strictly what they do as an engineer. So this participant asked the question, how can she do that effectively if she's a female and she's dealing with male managers and she's not really comfortable talking about personal things with them? It's a great question and this is what I recommend in that situation. Focus your conversations around that manager's careers or goals as a professional. It doesn't have to be personal. You can ask them how they got their start in engineering. What discipline they're in. What's been their most exciting project that they worked on? By having these conversations about their career, you're gonna learn about them and they're gonna appreciate that and you're gonna build relationships with that person. It doesn't have to be a really personal relationship. It's just a professional relationship that will allow you to work better with that individual. And this can also go for clients or prospective clients or other consultants and other companies that you work with. Learn about their career goals and aspirations and that will build a bond between you that will help you to build better teams and better relationships. Remember we do these videos weekly so please subscribe to our channel here at the Engineering Management Institute and we will help you continue to engineer your own success.