Building relationships for success in 2014

Published: 16 January 2014

It is a profound truth that life is as much about your relationships as it is about your own personal development. In this newsletter we look into the importance of building and nurturing links with others. In essence, this is participating in the human condition. While acknowledging the importance of developing personal ability and skills, we must also consider that no leader in history really did it on their own. We must realise the importance of surrounding ourselves with people who can support us. Ultimately we also employ people to achieve shared objectives.

We get relationships from everywhere
The greatest place to meet people is through education. When you are studying you are bound to meet people and share your ideas with likeminded individuals with similar interests. Throughout life you may also meet people through events, clubs, parties and many other ways. Every person that you meet and spend time with is a potential relationship. If you take time to get to know someone you may end up meeting them again and again.

Choose your friends and your enemies wisely
Some relationship advice out there suggests we change our relationships and get rid of relationships that do not contribute to our success. The idea is to simply evaluate each person in your network and determine if they add value to you or not. If they do not, you cut them out and make and keep new friends that do add value. Frankly, there is value in every relationship, even the hard ones. It remains important to develop and maintain healthy relationships with a wide spectrum of people including those where you add value and can make a difference.

Building long term relationships
Anyone who has been in sales for an extended period of time will tell you that when you follow-up with an old contact for the 100th time, something magically transpires and a deal or opportunity opens up. Friends you last met 20 years ago may have been promoted in their organisations and when you meet them again they may be highly successful. Linking relationships with sales is natural but also very important for career advancement, growth within an organisation and for learning and sharing with others.

The statement 'lonely at the top' often becomes real when you realise that, as a manager, it is difficult to build confidence among people who work for you. The reason for this is fear of exposing yourself. You then need supporters outside your existing organisation who can guide you and from whom you can learn and share ideas and knowledge with. Even in your organisation, it is important to have sponsors and people who have your interests at heart when decisions are made. The question then becomes what you do to nurture those relationships. The reason why people go back to relationships from their youth, is because those relationships are often untainted with the illusions of where the person is now.

A core network for success
An idea that is developing is that one needs a core network of people to make a team function effectively. In The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell suggests that, as a minimum, you need a maven, a connector and a salesperson to form an effective team. The maven watches the bottom line; the connector links you to the outside world; and the sales person promotes the business. Research also shows that networks are as significant a factor as any other in achieving business success.

The ideal team
The ideal team comprises of a range of players, each having strong relationships with each other. Team managers often ignore the strength and importance of the relationship factor in teams. Some organisations use the Belbin Team Roles or another method to assess a person's roles in a team. They try to build an ideal team to support success. An ideal team is one in which people take one or more roles to build on each other's strengths.

In an ideal team, the roles can be described as follows:

    The Champion
    The Executive Sponsor
    The Devil's Advocate
    The Executor
    The Monitor
    The Sales Butterfly
    The Stakeholder Manager

The Champion: The champion carries the vision and inspires the team with passion, patience, tenacity and the desire to make things happen. They rally people to the cause and manage the effort. The ideal champion sees the big picture and supports the team in managing the information flow. They are good at knowing when to speed things up or to slow things down. In short, they have the experience and nature to operate intuitively and achieve success within the business area. It helps if they care about the cause. Likewise, experience does not hurt either.

The Executive Sponsor: The executive sponsor promotes the cause, ensures that there is funding, and also plays a critical role in representing the project and removing roadblocks in the delivery process. Without a sponsor in your team, organisational change will be extremely painful and likely to fail. When adversaries meet this person in your corner, the likelihood to attack or passively resist your plan will also be smaller. The ideal executive sponsor lights up the scoreboard. They are in the midst of making great things happen in their life. When you need a jolt of creativity, business brainstorming or a push, this is your person. They move fast and do not have much patience for indecision. They remind you that if you miss a shot you must just keep shooting.

The Devil's Advocate: This is the person who will find the weaknesses, poke holes in your strategy, ensure that there are no gaps in a plan, and always challenge the base assumptions. They ask the difficult questions that no one else will. In short, the devil's advocate is not afraid to challenge you. You want this person in your team because they are looking out for your best interests. Yet, they can sometimes stand in the way so nothing at all is achieved. The ideal devil's advocate is one who can also come up with practical suggestions on how to solve the problems they identify. In addition, they have good technical skills in the business. When they know how the clock ticks, what is wrong, and what needs to be done to fix it, you will be happy that they shared their knowledge.

The Executor: This individual politely harasses people into accomplishing tasks on time and under budget. The executor is a relentless taskmaster who enjoys crossing things off the list. You need this person: they will execute the strategy that you have set in motion. A great executor is both loved and hated. Their genius is holding you accountable to what you said you would do. They are metric-based and measure success by the progress you do or do not make.

The Monitor: This person is your data whizz. They constantly analyse available information to determine how initiatives are performing, both internally and externally. They bring information that shows actual performance versus expectations and ideally compares this to what is happening in the real world. A good monitor jolts champions into action, gets executives the right information and supports the executors to get tasks completed. They know the health of the situation and have a good idea of what is going to happen. They dig deep and present relevant data that influences decision-making without bombarding team members with irrelevant information or causing analysis paralysis. The ideal monitor is a veteran. They help you to remember what is most important. They make sure you do not mistake the forest for the trees. They know that goals are great and that we sometimes just lose sight of why we are doing whatever we are doing in the first place. You need the monitor to keep you grounded and supported.

The Sales Butterfly: You need an early adopter both internally and externally that lets people know about the cause. Sales butterflies become the face and the poster that reassures everyone that the initiative is still alive. Most sales butterflies already have a lot of followers or they have a personality that attracts people in droves. This person is fond of people and loves company. You can find them speaking to people all the time. They are also fun, smart, and engaging (and it does not hurt to be good looking). This person will be the one everyone else emulates and wants to be like. In short, they are the 'face' of the campaign. Brilliant sales butterflies are both knowledgeable and connected, and work on matching the interests of both the client and the organisation.

The Stakeholder Manager: The stakeholder manager ensures that the internal and external teams are running smoothly. The stakeholder manager is the diplomat, questioner, and nurturer. They like to keep the community healthy and happy so that everyone has the right information to complete their part of the picture – without being a controller. You need the stakeholder manager to create projects that people would want to be part of. The stakeholder manager is one of the most underestimated players in a team. They do the work that many do not see and they do not regularly show up in the statistics. But when they are around, you always seem to be at your best. During tough spells they will support you with perspective and unwavering commitment.

So, the idea of putting together the ideal team is that you will achieve more than the sum of the parts as everyone plays a key role. One of the challenges is that teams tend to change over time and it remains important to build a strong relationship between team players. People also change their roles according to what is required in a team. You may also find that people develop strengths because of other people's weaknesses.

Relationship skills
While we may not all choose who we work with, we can all be better at relationship management. Some of the people skills that may help you succeed are listed below:

Humour. Humour allows you to have something to say, and to diffuse tense situations. Scientists think that humour is a way to relate to people and test what is acceptable in a specific context without overtly challenging the status quo. It also helps to take a joke and never to take things too personally.

Patience. Patience is a very important life skill in relationships. A relationship may not always go anywhere, but with patience it will be meaningful and worthwhile.

Active listening. Active listening requires you to actually take an interest and listen to the other person. This involves making frequent eye contact and taking in the information being presented. It also means showing insight and action orientation in relation to other people's ideas. Active listening is a key relationship skill.

Empathy. You must see a situation from the other person's perspective in order to appreciate where they are coming from.

Being flexible and open. A friendship and a long-term relationship require openness. While it is never a good idea to discuss your salary, it is good to share your ideas and approaches openly with people so that you can both learn and grow together. Agreeing to be honest always helps and forms the basis for strong relationships going forward.

Conclusion
While it is tempting to think that just because someone is your friend on Facebook or a contact on LinkedIn you have a strong relationship, we can all become better at nurturing and encouraging our relationships. You may use Keith Ferezzi's idea of never eating alone and using every meal as an opportunity to build a relationship. Or you can take a simpler approach and ask yourself when last you communicated with each person in your network. This is asking how you can work towards building a relationship with them.
- Regenesys

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