Leadership

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Strong business relationships have always been important, but today maintaining relationships is far more challenging than in the past. As business becomes increasingly complex and global, managing relationships has to cross time zones, stakeholders, matrix alignments and morphing levels of authority. There is a need to create new ways of connecting and building communities that drive results. Camaraderie among co-workers, vendors, clients and industry leaders fuels many aspects of business including revenue generation, recruiting, retention and productivity. Today, building emotional infrastructure must be intentional.

The old business model of hiring employees and managing the employee life cycle from “hire to fire” is becoming obsolete. Next hiring models evolved to just in time employment and are now moving to shared resources outsourcing for non- core functions. The future will ultimately include more independent and contracted employees. The average employee tenure is only 4 years. If every four years we have relationship and institutional knowledge turnover it becomes challenging to build a foundation that can expedite the next level of success. The concept of property, plant and equipment being the primary asset has changed to people and their knowledge being the primary asset. Handling and leading today's primary asset requires emotional intelligence as well as intellectual discernment.

This paradigm shift places a higher premium on capturing the heart and mind of employees. Talent pools are constantly changing in skill set, size and demand. Individuals are more self-directed and motivated for their professional development and companies that create a learning culture are more likely to foster loyalty and a healthy network of business relationships.

Relationships are personal and people that learn how to develop lifelong relationships have network currency of inestimable value for the organizations they represent. Consulting firms are the best at understanding the power of relationships and how to invest in life long relationships from internships, integrated work teams, client intimacy and alumni clubs that involve people at all phases of business including retirees.

Adopting technology such as social networking tools helps foster sustained and informed relationships. Building sites similar to facebook for related employees or customers regardless of where they are in their business lifecycle is a great way to build bridges and connect. Employer/Vendor affinity makes these sites a trusted and safe environment to share, transfer and exchange information. These sites help people know about openings, skills demand and contracting assignments. The number of “re-treads”, people that are rehired is increasing and the former stigma of going back to a previous employer is disappearing. In fact, these rehires are attractive because they hit the ground running because they are already familiar with the culture, the people and how to get things done.

The line between work and life is blurring and it has been proven that employees who have friends at work are more satisfied. As they feel a sense of purpose, team and meaning increases, and they invest more of themselves. The 100 best places to work documented the correlation between performance and employee relationships. The more connected people are personally the more they produce.

At the center of quality relationships is quality communication. A leader’s ability to create an environment where relationships and communication thrive is one of their core responsibilities. Marketing laws have taught us it takes 18 impressions before we can recall a single message. Import this principle to business communications and we see that it takes more than one town hall to get people on board and feeling connected. Providing employee training, timely e-mails, town halls, brown bag lunches, award ceremonies, intranets with “news”, and monthly leadership meetings with cascading messaging are vital to connecting people and fostering an environment that prioritizes communications and relationships. One on one meetings, water cooler exchanges and informal office chats are encouraged to connect people professionally and personally. The more involved we are in each others lives the more likely the bonds of relationships will grow deep improving employee, customer, and vendor loyalty.

If every year each employee was tasked with forming 5 new relationships where the level of intimacy involved exchanging business and personal aspirations and a commitment to help the other succeed, the outcome would be astounding. The morale, attitude, performance and results of employees connected intellectually as well as emotionally are outstanding. Relationships are part of almost every employee evaluation yet the criteria is subjective and the “how to” training is almost non-existent. Some people have a greater propensity for forming relationships and building alliances, but the degree to which relationship development becomes a core competency of an organization will be directly linked to the long term success of a company.

Identifying and serving business and personal agendas is at the crux of strong business relationships. AdviSoar’s team of executives has built their consultancy on relationship excellence. To learn more about how to build a culture of relationship excellence contact us at www.advisoar.com.

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