Why Are Relationships Important To Success?

[highlights from Relationships 101 by John Maxwell]

Everyone likes being around a leader that loves people and connects with them. He/she understands that relationships are the glue that holds the team members together – the more solid the relationships, the more cohesive the team.

Just about everything you do depends on teamwork…The question is, will your involvement with others be successful? Your best chance for leadership also depends upon connecting with those on your team. Here is how you know whether you have built solid relationships with others. Look for the following five characteristics in your relationships:

1. Respect – When it comes to relationships, everything begins with respect, with the desire to place value on other people. Human relations author Les Giblin said, ‘You can’t make the other fellow feel important in your presence if you secretly feel that he is a nobody.’

The thing about respect is that you should show it to others, even before they have done anything to warrant it, simply because they are human beings. But at the same time, you should always expect to have to earn it from others. And the place you earn it the quickest is on difficult ground.

2. Shared Experiences – Respect can lay the foundation for a good relationship, but it alone is not enough. You can’t be relational with someone you don’t know. It requires shared experiences over time. And that’s not always easy to achieve. For example, right after Brian Billick, coach of the Baltimore Ravens, won the 2001 Super Bow, he was asked about the team’s chances for repeating a championship season. He commented it would be very difficult. Why? Because 25 to 30% of the team changes every year. Newer players don’t have the shared experiences with the team that are needed to succeed.

3. Trust – When you respect people and you spend enough time with them to develop shared experiences, you are in a position to develop trust. Trust is essential to all good relationships. Scottish poet George MacDonald observed, ‘To be trusted is a greater compliment than to be loved.’ Without trust, you cannot sustain any kind of relationship.

4. Reciprocity – One-sided personal relationships don’t last. If one person is always the giver and the other is always the receiver, then the relationship will eventually disintegrate. The same is true of all relationships, including those on a team. For people to improve relationally, there has to be give-and-take so that everyone benefits as well as gives…Show others you care about them.

5. Mutual Respect – When relationships grow and start to get solid, the people involved begin to enjoy each other. Just being together can turn even unpleasant tasks into positive experiences.

How are you doing when it comes to being relational? Do you spend a lot of time and energy building solid relationships, or are you so focused on results that you tend to overlook (or overrun) others? If the latter is true of you, think about the wise words of George Kienzle and Edward Dare in Climbing the Executive Ladder: ‘Few things will pay you bigger dividends than the time and trouble you take to understand people. Almost nothing will add more to your stature as a leader and a person. Nothing will give you greater satisfaction or bring you more happiness.’ Becoming a highly relational person brings individual and team success.



What Do I Need To Know About Others?

If your desire is to be successful and to make a positive impact on your world, you need the ability to understand others. Understanding others gives you the potential to influence every area of life, not just the business arena…

Understanding people certainly impacts your ability to communicate with others. David Burns, a medical doctor and professor of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania, observed, ‘The biggest mistake you can make in trying to talk convincingly is to put your highest priority on expressing your ideas and feelings. What most people really want is to be listened to, respected and understood. The moment people see that they are being understood, they become more motivated to understand your point of view.’ If you can learn to understand people – how they think, what they feel, what inspires them, how they’re likely to act and react in a given situation – then you can motivate and influence them in a positive way.

Lack of understanding concerning others is a recurrent source of tension in our society…If we could reduce the number of misunderstandings, the courts wouldn’t be so crowded, there would be fewer violent crimes, the divorce rate would go down, and the amount of everyday stress most people experience would drop dramatically.

If understanding is such an asset, why don’t more people practice it? There are many reasons:

Fear – Seventeenth-century American colonist William Penn advised, ‘Neither despise nor oppose what thou dost not understand,’ yet many people seem to do exactly the opposite. When they don’t understand others, they often react by becoming fearful. And once they start fearing others, they rarely try to overcome their fear in order to learn more about them. It becomes a vicious cycle.

Unfortunately, fear is evident in the workplace when it comes to employees’ reactions toward their leaders. Yet in a healthy work environment, if you give others the benefit of the doubt and replace fear with understanding, everyone can work together positively. All people have to do is follow the advice of President Harry Truman, who said, ‘When we under stand the other fellow’s viewpoint – understand what he is trying to do – nine times out of ten he is trying to do right.’

Self-Centeredness – When fear isn’t a stumbling block, self-centeredness often is. People are not self-centered on purpose; it’s just in the nature of humans to think of their own interests first…

One way to overcome our natural self-centeredness is to try to see things from other people’s perspectives. Talking to a group of salespeople, Art Mortell, author of World Class Selling, shared his experience: ‘Whenever I’m losing at chess, I consistently get up and stand behind my opponent and see the board from his side. Then I discover the stupid moves I’ve made because I can see it from his viewpoint.

That’s the challenge for everyone of us, no matter what our profession. The following quote reminds us of what our priorities should be when dealing with other people:



A Short Course In Human Relations

The least important word: I

The most important word: We

The two most important words: Thank you.

The three most important words: All is forgiven.

The four most important words: What is your opinion?

The five most important words: You did a good job.

The six most important words: I want to understand you better.


Failure To Appreciate Differences – The next logical step after leaving behind self-centeredness is learning to recognize and respect everyone else’s unique qualities. Instead of trying to cast others in your image, learn to appreciate their differences. If someone has a talent that you don’t have, great. the two of you can strengthen each other’s weaknesses. If others come from a different culture, broaden your horizons and learn what you can from them. Your new knowledge will help you relate not only to them but also to others…

Failure To Acknowledge Similarities – We all have emotional reactions to what’s happening around us. To foster understanding, think of what your emotions would be if you were in the same position as the person you’re interacting with. You know what you would want to happen in a given situation. Chances are that the person you’re working with has some of the same feelings.

Knowing what people need and want is the key to understanding them. And if you can understand them you can influence them and impact their lives in a positive way. What I know about understanding people can be summed up in the following list:

1. Everybody wants to be somebody – There isn’t a person in the world who doesn’t have the desire to be someone, to have significance. Even the least ambitious and unassuming person wants to be regarded highly by others…Everybody wants to be valued by others. In other words, everybody wants to be somebody. Once that piece of information becomes a part of your everyday thinking, you’ll gain incredible insight into why people do the things they do. And if you treat every person you meet as if he or she were the most important person in the world, you’ll communicate that he or she is somebody – to you.

2. Nobody cares how much you know until he knows how much you care -- The moment that people know that you care about them, the way they feel about you changes. Showing others that you care isn’t always easy. Your greatest times and fondest memories will come because of people, but so will your most difficult, hurting and tragic times. People are your greatest assets and your greatest liabilities. The challenge is to keep caring about them no matter what.
You never know which people in your sphere of influence are going to rise up and make a difference in your life and the lives of others.

3. Everybody needs somebody –Contrary to popular belief, there are no such things as self-made men and women. Everybody needs friendship, encouragement, and help. What people can accomplish by themselves is almost nothing compared to their potential when working with others. And doing things with other people tends to bring contentment…

4. Everybody can be somebody when somebody understands and believes her -- Once you understand people and believe in them, they really can become somebody. And it doesn’t take much effort to help other people feel important. Little things done deliberately at the right time can make a big difference.

When was the last time you went out of your way to make people feel special, as if they were somebody? The investment required on your part is totally overshadowed by the impact it makes on them. Everyone you know and all the people you meet have the potential to be someone important in the lives of others. All they need is encouragement and motivation from you to help them reach their potential.

5. Anybody who helps somebody influences a lot of bodies – The final thing you need to understand about people is that when you help one person, you’re really impacting a lot of other people. What you give to one person overflows into the lives of all the people that person impacts. The nature of influence is to multiply. It even impacts you because when you help others and your motives are good, you always receive more than you can ever give. Most people are so genuinely grateful when another person makes them feel special that they never tire of showing their gratitude.