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All Business Is Personal

Rob Peters
Jul 28, 2017 · 6 min read

The famous quote from the Godfather “It’s not personal, it’s just business” has done great damage to trust building and collaboration with customers, employees, and other key stakeholders in our hyperconnected and transparent world of social business.

For too long, acceptable behavior was defined by whether it was business-related or personal. For example, “he was a ruthless businessman but a devoted father.” This was somehow accepted as OK. Today, most people do not respect this type of behavior. You should be the same at work as you are with your friends. It use to be that there was a separate personal sphere and a business sphere, but those have fused.

My Epiphany

I started my professional career at IBM and I learned “The IBM Way” for Selling. We learned to be customer-centric in our selling approach and the IBM value of performing with excellence in everything we do. At its core of IBM’s approach, considered then to be the best in the world, was the structured sales call. For years I mentored this methodology to fellow DePaul University MBAs and business partners who really appreciated its structure and professionalism. In 2008, after completing a Skype sales mentoring session, it came to my attention by a mentee “that we don’t sell that way anymore”. She was correct. It was a wake-up call for me. We do not sell this way anymore.

The world of business to business sales as changed. Customers don’t want to spend 60 minutes telling you about their problems and then you will tell them if you can help them. Also, social media has changed the sales landscape. The B2B decision-maker does over 80% of their research on their needs before a salesperson comes into their view. So as a B2B seller, if you want to engage these decision makers on Linkedin for example, it is about building a relationship by sharing compelling content that influences them and keeps you and your point of view and solution top of mind when they are ready to buy. Business is very personal indeed.

Everything is Personal. Just as the 2 Billion people on Facebook.

All social interactions are personal. If all relationships are personal, then morality reawakens because personal relationships are all about responsibility. When business relationships are personal it means being a bit more vulnerable because people see your strengths and weaknesses. A personal relationship requires you to embrace transparency and walk your talk. In other words, you actions must be in alignment with your intent. A true personal relationship with another means its “not all about you”.

You listen to the other person not just because you require something in return, but because you care about that person. If you truly care about this personal relationship, then you will support them. Yes, separating business behavior from personal behavior is just not how millennials and generation-x think. I am a late baby boomer and I take my business relationships very personally.

Let me show you how personal business is

  • Collaborating with clients and customers is based on the perceptions of the individual, and that makes it a personal experience.
  • Working with peers at your company is a personal experience
  • Working with your team leader or manager and senior leaders is also a personal experience.
  • Collaborating with business partners is personal.

This digital and social world has allowed employees to discover more about their leaders. Social media has suddenly given people the permission to enter a leader’s personal boundaries; a place they were previously forbidden from entering. We have entered a period by which people want and expect their leaders to be more human, less perfect, and at times a bit vulnerable regardless of their hierarchical power. This need for transparency in society is at historic levels. People would rather “see” a video blog than “read” a blog. They want to see a leader’s facial expressions, eye contact and body language. Employees want to evaluate whether someone is acting or being authentic.

Tell A Story

The days of working in isolation without collaborating with a team are over.

Personal stories have the power to influence and move people. They challenge, educate, inspire, and motivate. They help us learn and gain knowledge. Want to share a perspective or put an issue in the spotlight? Tell a story.

Stories are everywhere. They are inspires us by grabbing us at a very personal and emotional level. Our demand for stories is at the core of what it means to be human. We have an innate need to to ask questions and understand why are we here and where are we going? Stories are the way to connect to people and start the journey to building trust and relationship capital.

Many of us are comfortable with the traditional approach to to communicating concepts and ideas. The Microsoft Word and PowerPoints we create are just not connecting and moving people. This has spawned the phrase “Death By PowerPoint”. In our hyperconnected world, we all have the opportunity to take the “stage” and tell a story. This social power requires us to “up our game” by creating content that is engaging to your audience. It requires us to have deep empathy and understanding of the desires, wants, and needs of the recipients of our stories. You can free the energies of others and make a difference with the power of a well told story.

Conclusion

For leaders and managers of business organizations, it’s time to be more open and transparent by becoming more personally engaged with your employees via face-to-face and/or video interaction and with greater frequency. This will not only earn relationship capital trust, but also more importantly create a new cultural dynamic in the organization and nurture a culture of proactive trustworthiness and positive perceptions that will flow throughout the organization and its ecosystem of customers, partner, and suppliers..

Today, your stakeholders want to have a relationship with you and your business, They want to know that you care about there problems and will go the extra mile to solve them and prevent them from happening in the first place. Whether you are a retail bank, airline, food manufacturer, consulting firm, or grocery-store chain, you are in the people business and that is very personal.

www.StandardofTrust.com

Sources:

https://www.amazon.com/Standard-Trust-Leadership-Transforming-Relationship/dp/0692206965/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1499252274&sr=8-1&keywords=standard+of+trust+leadership

http://www.forbes.com/sites/lisaquast/2012/03/18/my-most-hated-workplace-comment-business-is-business-its-not-personal

Originally Published on April 2nd, 2015 on Linkedin Pulse

Rob Peters

Written by

Relationship Capital | Gamification | Co-Creator of Peer SaaS Platform | HR Tech and Workplace Culture Strategist | CEO| Author of Standard of Trust Leadership

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