Professional Relationships - Investments Worth Making

My hope is that you, reader, haven’t had to experience the loss of a loved one, but if you have, you know that nothing is truer than the world goes on, time passes and its up to you to keep those people alive within your world.? Yes, yes, this is a post about professional relationships, I promise.? But today is the day that comes every year without fail, it’s the day 3 years ago that my close friend Earl died.? He was a beloved father, husband, son, friend, uncle, caregiver and beyond.

Earl and I had many conversations about personal things, but we also had tons about work! He had big ideas and dreams of changing healthcare for the better – he was a stat nurse at Harborview Medical Center for close to 30 years. ?I got a lot of professional inspiration from him and the way he was always trying to be better. ?To make processes better.? To connect people together. Last year, I wrote about some of the lessons he taught me.

This year, I want to focus on something I have come to believe strongly that he reinforced: your reputation at work, and the relationships you make there matter the most.? My network has come to my rescue many times, presented opportunities galore and, also brings me joy in the sense that I have created relationships that matter.? I can source opinions from people I trust and have invested my time in.?

Some may argue that your reputation is all that you truly have.? I might not go that far, but it matters. Making people want to work with you is a critical driver of success.? I started researching to validate some of these opinions (or disprove them!) and found some interesting data from Harvard Business Review that indeed did confirm:

“In today’s high-tech economy, it’s not just quant skills and R&D know-how that confer competitive advantage. Relationships still matter—maybe more than ever, as social media turbocharges old-fashioned networking.”

A?new study?mapped LinkedIn connections among firms woven out of 2 billion individual employee relationships at 7,715 public US companies representing 19 industries. The researchers found that companies whose real-world employee connections put them at the center of their professional communities performed better than peer companies whose workforces were less well-connected and, as a result, on the periphery of the same community.

So, relationship building? ?Not just good for employees, also good for business.

Earl was the ultimate connection builder.? I unearthed some amazing “reviews” of his work from colleagues after he died.? There were many themes, but some of my favorites were that he made his co-workers feel safe, listened to and calm in stressful situations.? He had a diplomatic way of managing up to doctors he worked with.? He made relationships at all levels, from the person who served him coffee, to the security guard, other nurses, doctors, administrators, EMTs.? He valued their time and opinions, and understood they had lives outside of the hospital. ?

No one is ever going to remember the eBook that I wrote last week, but hopefully they’ll remember that I was fun to work with, that I cared about my job and I cared about them.

Maintaining a network takes effort and time, investments that are well worth it.? Just look at what Earl left behind.

Follow Earl's lead and reach out to some of the people in your network this week and beyond!