Relationships With Your Team

I love to ask people what is the best advice they have ever received and who gave it. It is a blast to learn so much from such a small question to others. For me, the best advice came to me at a much younger age by one of the best mentors I have ever had. When I was transitioning out of being a high-end Engineer and into Leadership, many things were not apparent to me, especially coming from the Engineering world where it is dominated by a lot of black and white facts, little grey area. My mentor who became one of my closest friends told me, 'Larry, if you really want to connect with people and have tremendous relationships with them, you need to follow three things:'

1 - Value People

2- Believe in People

3- Unconditionally Love People

Why these three? Because it is all about the people. You want to believe in people in today's world, as honestly, most people do not believe in themselves. They are just looking around and waiting for someone to look at them with a little bit of confidence and say 'I believe in you.' You will see a spark in their eyes and a pep in their step.

If you really want to connect well with your team and others, you will really want to value them, and you will want to do this in a public setting as well if you can to add more impact to it. The reason for this is most people really do not feel valued. They may feel they have not or cannot meet someone else's expectations or someone else's ideas. Just value that person for who they are, not for what they do or bring to the table, just the fact they are 'God's' creation. Value people.

Unconditionally love others is probably the hardest out of all of these. Most people have never been unconditionally loved. They have been loved with conditions, 'If you do this or that, wow we will give you all the love there is, or if you hit this goal, boy the love you will receive will be something.' Don't you see there is a difference? Very few people know what it is like to be loved, period, because they should be loved, nothing else.

These three simple items have stuck with me for many years, and I do my best to conduct myself in business and personal with this foundation. It may rub some people the wrong way, however for me and the teams and people I have been so fortunate to lead and engage with, this is the best advise I was ever given. By doing my best to follow this foundation, the team's I have led and many others have spoken to me in such an endearing fashion it just re-enforces my heart. By following these three simple steps they will truly have an impact on your team and other people and this has humbled me more than you can imagine.

What is the best advice you have been given and do you make it a foundation of who you are as a person?