“I hate the word networking, but that’s what it takes,’’ announced a successful professional woman, whom I have admired for years recently, and I was struck by my own ick of the word. It infers sucking up to people you don’t know to get something from them, or buddying up to people you otherwise might have nothing in common with for professional gain. Disingenuous somehow.  

However, on stage talking to 150 Year 10s later that day (a sea of 15-year-old faces is an intimidating prospect - *wow*), as I scrabbled about for fashion anecdotes that might help them forget I was 1000 years older than them, I realised that the art of networking was the single most important career skill I could encourage. Asked by their teacher to give them one thing to focus on during the summer holidays, my (male) co-panellists wowed them with advice about building their digital profiles, or deep diving into the possibilities of AI while I realised that at their age what I’d needed most, professionally, was to cultivate the confidence to talk to people I didn’t know about things I didn’t know about and, if relevant, ask for assistance.  

 If they start early, the muscle memory they stand to hone will benefit them through the triumphs, disappointments and pivots that will ensue. And it’s a gift that keeps on giving despite a common reluctance to ask for help that even in midlife can hold us back. Because once we discard our inner critic and unbind ourselves from the cringe factor, people are generally happier to help than we might imagine. Positioned differently, networking is a form of human connection that serves us from work experience to board level whether you’re giving or receiving.

If you don't believe me, ask Miranda Priestly. Twenty years ago she reduced her assistants to tears in stairwells and considered an apology beneath her. Now, with Runway's future on the line, the balance of networking power shifts: it’s Miranda picking up the phone to Emily Charlton, the very assistant she once ran ragged. The woman who never needed anything, who simply expected, finally must do the asking. Networking is not a hierarchical endeavour.  

Since launching my book, Leaving The Ladder Down, https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ladder-Down-Dolly-Jones/dp/0008431388 to galvanise and support parents who want to keep working at all stages of family life, I’ve rekindled plenty of professional relationships with people I’d not been in touch with for years to engage support for it. Every time I’ve had to goad myself into action: break down imposter syndrome, or shyness, or will-they-even-remember-me-in-this-context misgivings. And it’s been a whole new source of joyful confidence.  

 So many people have helped. From David Gandy, who took to the stage with me to talk about (among other things), the insult that Daddy Pig represents to a positive, modern representation of masculinity, to my former boss, long time Vogue editor Alexandra Shulman who contributed to the book then wrote about it at length in her Mail on Sunday column, despite our different takes on the parenting-at-work conversation. While former colleagues and professional acquaintances have been kind regardless of my not having worked with them for some time, plenty of people I’d never previously met – either introduced by friends or having cold-called them via Instagram – have surprised me with unhesitating offers of help and encouragement. theALLBRIGHT's own Editor-in-Chief, Alice Olins was full of ideas despite not having met me since her own attempts at networking when I gave her early career advice decades ago during a meeting on the roof terrace of the now sadly defunct Vogue House on Hanover Square. A satisfyingly full circle moment. 

The if-you-don’t-ask-you-don’t-get adage is helpful when lack of confidence can paralyse us for any number of reasons – a career break after motherhood, midlife challenges, ill-health or simply a drive to pivot without quite knowing how.

It’s worth buoying yourself to rally the connections you’ve made throughout your career which can be fruitful even if they’ve been dormant or you’re flexing them in a new role. “Wake up… Put on your confidence like make up,” sings Sophie Ellis-Bextor on her 2025 Perimenopop album. Cross your fingers and prepare to be surprised.  

Olins has been delighted by how many of her journalism contacts have proved fruitful in her theALLBRIGHT role, turning the industry’s allegedly unfriendly reputation on its head. Years after I’d left Vogue where I’d worked often with Niki Scordi as CEO of Browns, she pinged me via Linkedin to ask if I’d join the board of the domestic abuse charity, Advance, where she had landed as CEO - an incredibly rewarding opportunity that I could not have foreseen.  

You never know where any relationship might take you, so it’s worth nurturing the potential in everyone you meet. 

I advised the Y10 students to create a “mental rolodex” [before cringing inside as I explained what a rolodex actually was] of all the people they come across who might feasibly translate across industry/sector/project in a way they couldn’t possibly predict.  

Even different opinions or personality clashes don’t negate potential for later success; as Stephen Fry said recently, often the greatest gift you can give someone is asking them for help. We might feel awkward about making an approach, only to be met with gratitude that we’d thought of them. And if the opposite is the case, the worst that can happen is silence which, after all, reflects more on them than it does on you.  

There is no harm in trying.