At the onset of the pandemic, from my contacts, I made a list of my top 100 business relationships: respected, trusted, influential leaders who would return my calls and emails within 24 hours. I've learned over the years that highly talented knowledge workers know lots of facts; they use a great deal of information to do their work and deliver results. But, beyond the information you access, synthesize, analyze, and share, much of your success will come from connecting to, nurturing relationships with, and leveraging other people.
One of my favorite relationship-centric exercises with any team is to ask them to graph their success to date. Use the horizontal x-axis to track time—teens, twenties, thirties, and so on—and the vertical y-axis to plot however you define success (Figure 2.1).
Figure 2.1Is my success journey to date. Hoping yours will look different, I have a few questions.
First, how did you define success? For many, it's graduating from college, that first job, the first promotion, getting married, having children, and so forth. They subconsciously categorize key milestones as buckets in their lives—I made more money with this job, I moved to where we live some 20 years ago, or I had children. I submit that it's our personal and professional growth. Graduation, new jobs, career progressions, and even watching children ...
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