Destination Success – 3 Weeks to Creating and Cultivating Authentic Relationships

It is widely known, discussed and documented the issues we face today with so much communication coming at us and how we are losing the interpersonal side of relationships. We are relying on "bits and bytes" to develop relationships, not genuine "Hello's" and "How I can help?" conversations and interactions. In fact, it is estimated that each of us receives over 35,000 messages a day in various forms and couple that with the average person speaking over 16,000 words per day...that is a lot of communication with little to no genuine connection or relationship.  

If you stay with us over the next 3 weeks and engage in the actions and activities we highlight, you will have a relationship development plan that will lead to less confusion, better partnering and connection, and more effective time allocation. Bottom line... it will help you and your organization achieve success.  

Week 1 Action Step – Sphere of Influence

Take 30 minutes this week to Identify your personal and if applicable, team’s sphere of influence. (who do you impact and who impacts you on a daily and weekly basis).  It is important to identify all your relationships and determine the impact, importance and time required or committed to establishing and maintaining each relationship.  As we know there is only so much time in a day to devote and not all relationships are equal in impact or importance and deserve the same allocation of your precious time.  So, taking a reflective and honest assessment of where your relationship time is spent is a critical first step.

Areas to explore:

1. Social media relationships and time spent on online interacting
   • LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
2. Cell and office phone histories
   • Who are you calling? Who is calling you?
3. Email inbox and sent files
   • Frequency of communication
   • Importance and impact
4. Personal Calendar
   • What meetings do you have and who are the primary participants that you communicate with in those meetings?
5. Miscellaneous, Ad Hoc, Drop Interactions
   • Who and what amount of time on average are these taking place?

Feel free to download and use our simple but organized Professional Connection Inventory excel document to help chart all of your weekly connections. It definitely helps to see everything in an organized format, and next week we will expand on this document with strategic prioritization.

The path to leading more effective relationships is a deeper understanding of who, what and where are your current relationships today.  Take action this week on getting a handle on your sphere of influence. Understanding is the first step in effectively lead a change in your relationship strategy resulting in more effective use of your time in cultivating the relationships in the right way.

Next week we will take your sphere of influence and apply a method of prioritization to ensure you maximize your relationship investment.

Cornerstone Learning is a performance and leadership consulting organization that has worked with clients all over the world. Our focus is working with individuals and organizations to create performance solutions that deliver top-tier results by inspiring, enabling, and developing employee-led, leader supported, and organization enabled performance. We are able to successfully deliver this through multiple products and services such as employee surveys, online training, performance assessments, and performance coaching. The goal at Cornerstone Learning is to assist our clients in enabling success by developing a dynamic and customized pathway to deliver role model organizational and personal performance.