Why Relationships matter more than ever

So much has changed over the past two years, yet one dimension of our human experience has remained constant and become more relevant than ever.

In the ever more disconnected world we are living in, it is our human need for connection and the relationships we foster with others that are key to living a fulfilled life and leading a successful business.

As Keith Ferrazzi, author of the bestselling book "Never Eat Alone: And the Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time", has stated,

Success in Life (and Business) = [The People you meet] + [What you create together]

How to succeed in the NEW Economy

As we are approaching the third decade of the 21st century, a profound shift in the way human beings communicate and coordinate work is underway and this shift has enormous implications for all leaders in organizations, both corporate and public.

1. The value proposition for Industrial Age organizations was focused on making people, machines, and product lines more efficient.
2. In the Information Age, value creation centered on how humans store, access, manipulate and transfer knowledge and ideas.
3. Now we are entering the Collaboration Age, which is all about how networks – both human and electronic – create value by sharing, integrating and co-creating knowledge and ideas.

One of the key leadership competencies of the Collaboration Age is your ability to build highly effective relationships – and the key to building profitable relationships is to leverage the principle of reciprocation which stipulates that you have to be the first to give and to ensure that what you give is personalized and unexpected.

Most people naturally feel a sense of obligation when someone treats them kindly. People will often go along with requests from others who have done them some service, however small.

The Universal Principle of Reciprocation

Professor Robert Cialdini, author of the authoritative work on “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion”, refers to a particular study that was done by a sociologist at the Brigham Young University. One holiday season he decided to send holiday greeting cards to a sample of perfect strangers around the country.

He went to phone books in different cities, closed his eyes, picked a name and then sent these people a Christmas card. He was not expecting much of a response. And he was certainly not prepared for the flood of cards that came back to him from people who didn’t know him from Adam.

This research study led Professor Cialdini to a remarkable discovery that he shared at a Stanford Business Breakfast:

“I had a student a couple of years ago come up to me after class. This was a little different student than most. She was a woman who had raised a family in Scottsdale, Arizona where I live.

She came back to get her degree and said, ‘Prof Cialdini, you have just solved a decade-long mystery in my home. About ten years ago, we got a Christmas card from some people in Santa Barbara, California – the Harrisons – and I didn’t remember any Harrisons!

I asked my husband, he couldn't place the Harrisons. My kids were too young. With a great amount of effort, I resisted sending them a card that year because I was sure it was a mistake. But the following year we got another card from the Harrisons so I sent them a card. We’re now in the tenth year of exchanging cards with these people and I still don’t know who they are!”

The principle of reciprocation works the way it does because every human society that trains its members to play by the rules of reciprocal exchange gains an enormous competitive advantage over other groups.

The reason being that within this group, whoever needs help, resources, time, attention, staffing, or whatever it is, can call on other members of the group to send those resources forward because they are not sending them away. Concludes Cialdini:

This is unique in the history of evolution, since there is no other species that has anything like the idea of future obligation for repayment of gifts or favors and services.

For the first time in the history of development, it has become possible for one individual to give resources to another without giving them away.

The Return on activating Reciprocation

What you get instead is a credit; meaning that when you need something in return you can call on other members of the group who you have helped in the past and they will be willing to assist – in fact, they will be waiting to help because the saddle of obligation weighs heavily on us and we want to repay our debts. We want to give back to those who have given to us.

To finish the story of the lady who had come to Professor Cialdini’s office and told him about the Christmas card story. A few months later, she came back to his office and told him, “Prof Cialdini, I have to tell you the end of this story. My son, Skip, was applying to colleges this year. He’s a very good student so he got into all of his schools including his top choice, the University of California in Santa Barbara.

He’s such a good student that he was asked to be in their honours program and to come to campus a day early for the honour’s convocation. His dorm room wasn’t ready so he needed a place to stay in Santa Barbara.”

She said, “I thought to myself, ‘Who do we know in Santa Barbara?’ The Harrisons, the Harrisons!’” She called them on the phone.

She was the sort of person who didn’t just write a Christmas card or a greeting card. She would also include a letter describing what the family had been up to so the Harrisons knew about Skip since Little League days. They said, “Skip? The Skip man? The Skip-meister? Of course he can come and stay with us!”

How to build your Personal Brand through Reciprocation

Such is the true power of reciprocation – when you provide real value to others (which is many times different from what you believe might be valuable to them), you will create a bank of goodwill and favors that you can call upon when the time has come to do so.?

And reciprocation is key to building a Personal Brand that stands out from the crowd and attracts the right people to you. If you wish to discover how to leverage the power of reciprocation to become a LinkedInfluencer, join my DealMaker Twin Yathin Soni and myself (as well as 1,145 LinkedIn Members to date) at the upcoming LinkedIn MasterClass (details below)

• on Thursday 7 July 2022
• at 15h00 SAST (GMT+2)
• online (register here)