Understanding The Quid Pro Quo, Part 2

Stop Sabotaging Your Career: 8 Proven Strategies to Succeed - in Spite of Yourself
by Lois P. Frankel, Ph.D.

(Page 4 of 9)

As we chatted, I learned that she was now working in the international training department at ARCO. The training director from ARCO Indonesia was coming into town and was looking for someone to conduct management training programs from a Western perspective. My former colleague wanted to know if I would be interested in meeting with him to discuss the training programs I had developed. Her call came at a time when I was struggling to get my business off the ground and having difficulty meeting my financial objectives. I wound up meeting with the man, and within a few weeks I was in the exotic city of Jakarta conducting training. Over the years I developed a clientele in Indonesia with several multinational firms that have provided me with a steady stream of business, income, and friendships - and all because I took the time to do a favor for one administrative assistant with no expectation that it would ever be returned.

Besides covering at meetings, conducting research, or referral to potential clients, what else gets traded in the workplace? You would be surprised. Here's a list that participants in one workshop came up with in less than five minutes:

• Information
• Lunch
• Gossip
• Priority
• Muscle/brawn
• Gifts
• Heads-up (advance notice)
• Quality service
• Friendship
• Technical know-how
• Raises
• Influence
• Public praise
• Promotions
• Quick turnaround time
• A listening ear
• Help
• Feedback
• Personal concern

It's important to remember that once you need a relationship, it's too late to build it. This is what makes building relationships on an ongoing basis so important. Again, it can't be done simply for the purpose of knowing that you might have to call on it at some time. It must be done because you value people and your relationships with them. Absent this, others will detect a lack of genuineness, and perhaps a bit of manipulation, and never fully engage in a healthy and productive professional relationship with you.

Every so often, I hear someone claim that he or she just doesn't care about building relationships. It always strikes me as oddly incongruous. The same people who claim not to care frequently exhibit behaviors that indicate they care very much. I've come to learn that it's simply their defense mechanisms speaking. After years of being hurt by others or not having much success in building relationships, they build impenetrable walls that they dare others to break through. In other cases, people who claim not to care about others are the same ones who don't care much about themselves. They don't pay attention to their own needs and certainly don't expect others to fulfill them. Whatever the reason, it is critical to overcome real or perceived indifference to the people with whom you interact. Once technical competence has become a given, the foundation on which successful careers are built is genuine, mutually rewarding relationships.

Look at the person at the very top of your own organization. It's unlikely that he's a rocket scientist or that she could find a cure for cancer. In fact, there are probably many people smarter, and perhaps more technically capable, than your CEO. Despite this lack of genius, he or she found the way to the top most likely due to basic competence combined with the relationships that were built throughout a career.

Then there are those who build good relationships - but only with people at levels in the organization that are higher than their own. It's a clever move, but one that usually proves a fatal mistake in the long term. You can probably identify people like this in your own organization. They're like heat-seeking missiles. Watch them in a room full of people - they'll gravitate toward those with the most power. The only problem is that power shifts. Those in power today may be out tomorrow. Or the person in power may delegate day-to-day operational responsibility and decision making to a direct report. If you stepped on the toes of this direct report on your way to the power source, it's going to be a lot harder to get your needs met.

I once worked with a woman who built her career on relationships with people in power. She managed up quite successfully, but she overlooked the importance of gaining the commitment of colleagues and staff. Because of her relationships with senior management, she traded favors to become exempt from the grunt work the rest of us had to do. It worked for a while, but then, as in most corporations, the power shifted. Her protectors were out, and a new wave of power brokers swept in. Many of the new people in power had, at one time, been this woman's colleagues. They had long memories and short tolerance for what she had put them through over the years. Within months, the situation was so uncomfortable for her that she was out looking for another job.

Fear of losing your job should not be the primary reason for building relationships with people at all levels of the organization, however. A wealth of information resides within the rank and file, and at some point you will have a need for it. It's a lot easier to gain access to information when you already have a relationship in place at the time you need the information, rather than trying to pry it loose from someone with whom you never took the time to speak in the hallway or the coffee room. Besides, you spend nearly a third of your life at work - building warm, collegial relationships can make it even more fulfilling.

Once you have achieved technical competence, building relationships is the most important thing that you can do to continue along your successful career path. How do you do it? The remainder of this chapter tells you, but if initially in your life or career you received more reinforcement for task accomplishment than for relationship building, you won't find it particularly easy or comfortable. Like Sam, whom you read about earlier in this chapter, you may have to take some risks and be willing to stop hiding behind your technical competence. One thing is for certain, though: The profit will outweigh the risk in the long term.

Copyright © 1998, 2007 by Lois P. Frankel

About the Author

Dr. Lois P. Frankel is the president of Corporate Coaching International as well as the author of several books and numerous articles. She is internationally recognized as an expert in the field of workplace behavior. With over twenty years of experience in human resources development, she is a frequently invited guest on talk radio, television, conferences, corporate workshops, and retreats.