Manage Your Relationships

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Every important relationship requires work. Your ability to manage your relationships is critical to your success and happiness.

1. Manage your relationship with your significant other. Consider finding a few hours a week one-on-one, no kids, no friends, just the two of you. Take the time to really listen and focus on each other. Make sure you communicate effectively. If something is bothering you and you don’t discuss it, it will fester into resentment. Communicate often and get things out before they have a chance to build into something bigger.

2. Manage your relationships with your customers. Don’t assume that just because someone is currently doing business that it will continue indefinitely. It’s a competitive world. There is always someone looking to convert your clients into their clients. My mentor once told me that sales people get fired by their customers all the time, but those same customers always find ways to do business with friends. Become friends with your clients. Go beyond their expectations. Put yourself in the shoes of your customer. Are you doing everything in your power to ensure that your client is loyal to you? What can you do to make that relationship bulletproof? Do it now and continue to surprise them with your service and friendship.

3. Manage your relationship with your business partners and bosses. One of the biggest destroyers of business is the inability of the key people to get along. Like any other relationship, it is important to ensure that those around and above you are satisfied with the work you do and with the way you interact.

4 . Manage your relationship with your employees. The best bosses I’ve had understood that they worked for their employees. If the boss can make employees more productive, everyone wins. Job satisfaction is directly tied to productivity. If people enjoy their work they take fewer days off, are more engaged in their tasks, and are more loyal to their employers, causing turnover to stay low.

6. Manage your relationship with your kids. When my kids were very young my wife convinced me to take them to a place called “My Gym” every Saturday morning. It’s one of those kids places with ball pits, toys, and games. This became sacred time that I spent with my girls. It brought me closer to them and I’m convinced that my relationship is stronger today because of the bonds that formed early on.

It’s important to take care of things that are very important to us. We take time to ensure our cars are running as they should. We ensure our homes are in good repair. Managing relationships is more important than both of those yet we rarely think about doing it.

Think about the people around you that you cherish. What about the people that help make your life easier? These are your critical people. The way to ensure that they stay in your life is to manage your relationships.