Here's how you can develop essential relationship building skills for mid-career professionals.

An example I've seen is that, active listening has the power to transform relationships and outcomes. It strengthens emotional connections, promotes trust, and fosters mutual understandings. For instance, active listening allows us to more easily see a situation from someone's else perspective and can bring us closer to a shared understanding. To develop this skill, it is important to be fully present in the conversations and be genuinely interested in what the speaker have to share, considering the situation from their perspective. Set aside distractions, refrain from thinking about your response while listening, make short verbal acknowledgements. Active listening helps people get on the same page and creates stronger relationships.

Cultivate Emotional Intelligence: Emotional intelligence is essential for building strong relationships. Develop self-awareness to understand your own emotions and how they impact your interactions with others. Practice empathy to understand and empathize with the emotions and perspectives of others. Build Trust: Trust is the foundation of any successful relationship. Demonstrate integrity, reliability, and consistency in your actions and communications. Be transparent, follow through on commitments, and maintain confidentiality when necessary to build trust with colleagues, clients, and stakeholders. Communicate Effectively: Develop strong communication skills to convey your ideas, thoughts, and feelings clearly and concisely.

As one of my colleagues says, “big ears, small mouth.” According to Daniel Stillman in his book “Good Talk,” the global average pause between when one person stops talking and another starts is 200 milliseconds. Since it takes the average listener 600 milliseconds to formulate a reply, you can see why so many people are thinking of what they want to say next rather than truly tuning in to what their conversation partner is saying. I’ve learned that active listening helps slow the pace of the conversation down to allow time for both people to have a more meaningful, more impactful conversation.

If you made it through half of your career without active listening, you have earned my respect. But then it’s about time now!

The fact is we listen to reply and not yo understand. This is the reason most people find it hard to have supportive conversations :they are anxious to get their thoughts in so they showcase their fix. So to listen to understand you need to truly take in what they are saying. Be able to pause and reflect on what has been shared and be confident with the pause and reflect.

Business dating and personal dating have one major thing in common. You have to start a conversation with another person. To do this, you must learn to control your ME monster—that impulse inside us all that wants to talk about ourselves, our job, our company. Instead, remember to be curious and stay curious. Who is that person, what do they do, what's important to them? Understand that the more you learn about the other person, the more they become interested in you. Leave your ME monster at the office when you go to networking events. Focus not on collecting 200 business cards but on starting relationships with 3-5 people at each activity.

Seeking to understand another person is not the same as agreeing with them. When giving and getting feedback, we often focus on getting the other person to agree with us or listening to hear things we agree with. We need to listen to what they are trying to share. Focusing on understanding them gives you a chance to communicate with someone truly. We have all heard another person say, "You don't understand." You never hear them say, "You don't agree with me". When seeking feedback, try to understand the other person then the other person might try to to understand you.

Learn to lead by example with consistent, micromanagement–free, and reliable practices. Clear cyclic plans, open communication, prompt issue resolution, and follow-through on commitments are #PMBOK principles leaders can rely upon to build trust and high-performing teams in any business sector – remember, it only counts if you are consistently doing the right things #AndyFrisella.

Developing essential relationship-building skills for mid-career professionals involves several steps. 1. Networking actively. 2. Practicing active listening and empathy. 3. Improving communication and conflict resolution abilities. 4. Building trust through reliability and integrity. 5. Collaborating effectively and seeking continual learning and feedback. Consistently practicing these strategies will help mid-career professionals strengthen their relationship-building skills and enhance their professional success.