Your outlook upon life, your estimate of yourself, your estimate of your value are largely colored by your environment. Your whole career will be modified, shaped, molded by your surroundings, by the character of the people with whom you come in contact every day.
Everything in life and business is relationships. Everything you accomplish or fail to accomplish will be bound up with other people in some way. Your ability to form the right relationships with the right people at every stage of your life and career will be the critical determinant of your success and achievement and will have an inordinate impact on how quickly you achieve your goals.
The more people you know, and who know you in a positive way, the more successful you will be at anything you attempt. One person, at the right time, in the right place, can open a door for you that can change your life and save you years of hard work.
A key part of goal setting is for you to identify the people, groups, and organizations whose help you will require to achieve your goals. To accomplish goals of any kind, you will need the help of lots of people. Who are they?
There are three general categories of people whose help and cooperation you will require in the years ahead. These are the people in and around your business, people in groups and organizations outside your business or social circle, and your family and friends. You need to develop a strategy to work effectively with each group.
Start with your business. Who are the most important people in your business life? What is your plan to develop higher quality relationships with them? Make a list of everyone who works inside and outside of your business—your boss, colleagues, coworkers, subordinates, and especially your customers, suppliers, and vendors. Which of these people have the greater ability to help you or hurt you in the achievement of your business or career goals?
Sometimes I ask my audiences how many of the people present are in customer service. Only a few hands go up. I then point out that everyone is in the business of customer service, no matter what they call it or what they do.
A customer can be defined as anyone whom you depend on for success and advancement in your job or business. A customer can also be defined as anyone who depends on you in any way. By this pair of definitions, almost everyone around you is a customer in some way. For example, your boss is your primary customer at work. Your ability to satisfy your boss will have more of an impact on your future, your income, and your career than any other single skill you have. If you displease everyone else but your boss is delighted with you, you will be safe and secure in your job. If you please everyone inside and outside your company but your boss is unhappy with you, that problem alone can short-circuit your future.
One of the best strategies you can use is to make a list of everything that you believe that you have been hired to do. Answer the question, “Why am I on the payroll?” and write down everything you can think of. Then take this list to your boss and ask your boss to organize this list in order of his or her priorities. What is most important to your boss? What is second most important? What is third most important? And so on.
From that moment onward, discipline yourself to work on your boss’s top task all day long. Make sure that whenever your boss sees you or talks to you, you are working on what he or she has told you is his or her top priority for you. This will do more to help you in your career than any other single decision you make.
In a survey reported in Success magazine a few years ago, 104 chief executive officers were presented with twenty qualities of an ideal employee and asked to select the most important. Eighty-six percent of the senior executives selected two qualities as being more important for career success and advancement than any others. First was the ability to set priorities, to separate the relevant from the irrelevant. Second was the ability to get the job done fast, to execute quickly.
Nothing will help you more in your career than to get the reputation for being the kind of person who gets the most important job done quickly and well.
But here’s the catch. Many people are working very hard at their jobs, but they are not working on what their boss considers to be the most important job. The sad fact is that if you do an unimportant job very well, this could hurt your career and even threaten your job.
As conditions change, keep the lines of communication open with your boss. Be sure that what you are doing today is still your boss’s top priority. And then make a game of doing it fast.
Your coworkers, who also depend on your work, are your customers as well. Go to each one of them and ask if there is anything that you can do to help him or her. Ask if there is anything that you could do more of or less of, anything that you could start or stop doing that would help each one do his or her job better.
The fact is that people think about themselves and their own jobs all day long. Anytime you offer to help people to do their jobs better or faster, they will be wide open to helping you later.
The Law of Sowing and Reaping is not the Law of Reaping and Sowing. There is a particular order to this law. First you put in, and then you get out. First you sow, and then you reap.
You should look for every opportunity in your work to help people and to do nice things for others. Every honest effort you make to help other people will come back to you in some way, at some time, and often when you least expect it. The most popular people in every organization are those who are always willing to lend a helping hand.
The more the people next to you, above you, and below you like you and support you, the more you will get paid and the faster you will be promoted. Develop a reputation as a “go-giver,” as well as being a go-getter.
Look for ways to be a valuable resource to the people around you and they will automatically look for ways to help you and support you when you most need it.
Perhaps the most important quality you can develop for long-term success in your business is that of being a good team player. To do so effectively, always come prepared to every meeting. Sit opposite and in direct eye contact with the person who is running the meeting. Speak early and ask questions. Volunteer for assignments. And when you offer to do something, do it quickly and well so that it is clear who the go-to person is in your department or company.
You can create a positive, attractive force field of energy around you by developing a reputation for being the person whom everyone can depend on to get the job done. As a result, you will be given more and bigger jobs and both the authority and the rewards that go with those jobs.
Take time to get to know your subordinates and the people who are below you on the corporate ladder. Talk to them and ask them questions. Offer to help them if you can. Be especially kind and courteous with them. Go out of your way to compliment them and recognize them for their work. You will be amazed at the difference this makes in your career.
In every organization, the person who knows the most people is usually the person who, like cream, rises to the top. Initially, it may seem that relationship building takes a lot of time. But it will pay for itself over and over again in the months and years ahead.
Outside of your business, you should get involved with your industry and with your industry associations. The most successful executives and sales professionals network regularly with other businesspeople and in other business groups. They keep expanding their professional contacts and friendships.
Look at the business organizations in your community. Select one or two organizations that contain people it would be helpful for you to know in the years ahead. Attend their meetings and introduce yourself to them. Once you have decided that it would be useful for you to be a member of one of these organizations, join up and begin attending every meeting.
Here is the best strategy of all for networking. Select an important committee within the organization and volunteer to work on that committee. Choose a committee that has other members on it that you would like to get to know over time. Choose a committee that is engaged in activities that will bring you into contact with other key people, both inside and outside the organization.
Once you join the committee, volunteer for assignments. Even though this work is unpaid, these activities give you an opportunity to work with and perform before other key people who can help you in your career sometime down the road.
A large number of new positions are filled in America through word of mouth and personal contacts. The more people you know and work with in your industry, the more doors of opportunity will open for you when the time is right.
Take a long-term perspective on your career. As you read your local newspapers, make a list of the top people in your community. Assemble the names, titles, and businesses of one hundred of the “players” in your city.
As you gather these names, write each of these people a letter and send something that is not business related. For example, send a copy of a small book, a poem, a newspaper clipping, or anything that might be of interest to the person, based on what you have read about him or her.
Each time you see a reason to communicate with that person, drop him or her a note. Sometimes, I will make a phone call or write a letter to an executive who has just done something noteworthy that was reported in the business press. Often, I don’t get through or make direct contact. But I continue to sow seeds, and sooner or later “what goes around comes around.” Eventually, I will meet key people socially or in business and they will remember that I dropped them a letter a week, a month, or even a year ago.
One of my most important clients remembered that I had written him a letter more than three years ago when I met him for the first time at a business convention. He said, “Aren’t you the one that wrote me the letter about such and such?” That led to a conversation, a meeting, and many years of work with his organization.
A rule says, “The more you give of yourself with no expectation of return, the more that will come back to you from the most unexpected sources.”
No effort that you make to expand your contacts will ever be completely lost. Like seeds, various contacts have different periods of germination. Some will yield results immediately. Some will not yield results for many months or even years. You must be prepared to be patient.
Dr. David McClelland of Harvard University researched the qualities and characteristics of high achievers in our society. What he found was that your choice of a “reference group,” the people with whom you habitually associate, was more important in determining your success or failure than any other single factor. As Zig Ziglar says, “If you want to fly with the eagles, you can’t continue to scratch with the turkeys.”
Make it a point to associate with the kind of people that you like, admire, respect, and want to be like sometime in the future. Associate with the kind of people that you look up to and would be proud to introduce to your friends and associates. The choice of a positive, goal-oriented reference group can do more to supercharge your career than any other factor.
There are countless examples where a person working at an average job, getting average results, and earning average pay has changed positions and gone to work with a highly progressive company. In a few weeks, that person’s attitude has completely changed. By continued association with optimistic, results-oriented, go-ahead people, the previously average individual begins to perform at extraordinary levels. This is why almost every major change in your life will be associated with a change in the people you live or work with.
At every turning point in your life, someone is usually standing there guiding you in one direction or another, opening or closing a door for you or helping you in some way. Baron de Rothschild once wrote, “Make no useless acquaintances.” If you are really serious about being the best and moving to the top of your field, you cannot afford to spend your time with people who are going nowhere in their lives, no matter how nice they are. In this sense, you must be selfish with regard to yourself and your future ambitions. You must set high standards for your friends and associates and refuse to compromise.
Many people get into bad relationships and form useless friendships early in their careers. This is normal and natural. Nothing is wrong with making mistakes, especially if you are young and inexperienced. But it is unforgivable to continue to stay in a situation that is holding you back from realizing your full potential. And your choice of the people you associate with will have more of an impact on what you become than any other single factor.
We all need the support of family and friends. It is vital that you invest all the time and emotion necessary to build and maintain a high-quality home life. When your family life is solid and secure, characterized by warm, loving relationships, you will do better in everything else in the outer world.
But if something goes wrong with your home life because of inattention or neglect, it will soon affect your results at work in a negative way. Problems at home distract your attention and drain your energy. They can often sabotage your career.
If you have to work very hard to get started in your field, be sure that you discuss and explain this clearly to the people in your family. Throughout your career you will be required to go to “deliberate extremes.” You will have to work long hours and often many days without breaks or vacations in order to take advantage of an opportunity or to complete a project.
Be sure that you discuss these deliberate extremes in advance with the members of your family so that they understand what is happening and why you are doing it. Arrange to compensate them afterward by taking time off or going away on family vacations. Keep your life in balance.
Once you have decided upon the people, groups, and organizations whose help and cooperation you will need to achieve your goals, resolve to become a relationship expert. Always treat people with kindness, courtesy, and compassion. Practice the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Above all, the simplest strategy is to treat everyone you meet, at home or at work, like a “million-dollar customer.” Treat other people as though they are the most important people in the world. Treat them as though they were capable of buying a million dollars’ worth of your product or service.
Every day, in every way, look for ways to lighten the load and help other people to do their jobs better and live their lives more easily. This will build up a great reservoir of positive feeling toward you that will come back to benefit you year after year.
1. Make a list of the most important people in your work and business life. Develop a plan to help each person in some way.
2. Make a list of the most important people in your personal life. Determine the kind of relationships you want to have with them and what you will have to do to achieve them.
3. Identify the groups and organizations in your community and your field that would be helpful for you to join. Phone today and arrange to attend the next meeting.
4. Make a list of the top individuals in your community, and make a plan to get to know them personally.
5. Look for every opportunity to expand your social and business circle. Send people letters, cards, faxes, and e-mails. Build bridges at every opportunity.