Four Lessons in Relationship Building from 30 Networking Superstars
As research for Kinship — which is a personal relationship aid currently in alpha, as well as this Medium publication — we decided to talk to people who excel at making human connections, to see if we could identify things they do that we might emulate, enable or encourage with our app.
We racked our brains for people who wow (or have wowed) us with their ability to make and maintain strong relationships. When our mental wells ran dry, we asked friends to name people who impress them in this regard.
We looked for people who are seen as great friends, not just great networkers, and we tried to stress relationship quality over quantity. Naturally, however, many of the 30 people on our list came to mind at least partly because they are successful in relationship-intensive fields: real estate; entrepreneurship; venture capital; private equity; wealth management; business development, and sales of high-end goods and services.
We added half a dozen people from the other end of the spectrum too, people we know struggle with building relationships even though they are great at what they do and beloved as friends. We didn’t identify these folks as a control per se, we just thought they too could likely tell us something about the nature of making and maintaining human connections.
We asked our subjects a series of open questions in relatively wide-ranging conversations. What motivates you to make a connection? How do you first meet or initiate contact? How do you re-connect after a first meeting? How do you build a relationship over time? What constitutes a good relationship? Why do you think the relationships that work do so? What do you get out of it? What do they get out of it? And so on.
The conversations lasted around 45 minutes, so the data din could easily have been deafening, yet a handful of signals stood out from the noise. Perhaps most interesting were the four things that were almost universal among successful relationship builders.
- They Put Others First
People who find making new connections difficult, often see it as negatively transactional: “It feels icky to go around trying to manufacture friendships with people, so I can ask for stuff from them,” said one of those we spoke to who struggles with this stuff.
Super connectors don’t feel this way. That’s partly because they anticipate mutually beneficial relationships in the long term, but also because they see the start of a relationship as an opportunity to give. We heard at least a dozen versions of the thought: “I start by looking for ways to help them.” A few saw that as storing up a relationship chit, but for most, they clearly enjoy the act of giving without worrying about whether it will be reciprocated.
The most common act of generosity, perhaps unsurprisingly given these people’s relationship-centricity, was to make an introduction. But several people gave examples of other things they’d done. One worked through connections to help a relative of a new contact get into a medical pilot program; another offered a new contact tickets to a sporting event that he’d gathered they would be excited about.
“Generosity, is your best new business strategy,” said one of our subjects.
2. They Don’t Separate Personal and Professional
There were exceptions to this rule: A successful salesperson who would not pitch a personal connection even if they asked her to; an agency owner with a voracious appetite for industry connections, who said there were no vacancies in his friend network. But the majority of super connectors said they found it difficult, or pointless, to define a boundary between friendships and professional connections.
In the words of a successful real estate leader: “The best professional relationships are friendships.” A journalist commented: “A relationship might start in a professional setting, but the reason that person becomes a great contact over time is because you relate to each other on a human level.”
3. They Remember (Real) Stuff About Their Connections
People who are good at building relationships are conscious of the fact that demonstrating knowledge of a person with whom you want a good relationship is critical. Of course, that should be obvious to any remotely empathetic individual — even spammy LinkedIn pitches sometimes show some cognizance of your business or job title — but the knowledge shown by those who crush at relationships goes way beyond generic references to publicly-available data.
Some people focus on remembering the things they expect matters to the other person. “I try to capture three things,” said one entrepreneur, “the context for where I met you — circumstances, what you said, what you did — as well as anything you share about your family and friends, and anything about an upcoming life event [a major milestone, a celebration, an exam, a health event.]”
Other networkers try to remember the things they have in common with a person. That might be the subject of the last meaningful conversation they had with them. “Next time you see each other, you want to pick up where you left off, not re-tread old ground.” It might be a common passion, “I love sport, so I always make a note of other people’s teams, either as a discussion point, or because I may want to invite them to a game some time.” Or, it might be a business detail that could not be gleaned without personal knowledge of the individual: “I want to know the type of deal they’d be really excited about, or their personal ambition for their career,” said a VC. “Something I may be able to help with that other people won’t know.”
4 Their Secret Sauce: Systems!
It’s tempting to imagine that your friend who always remembers exactly what’s going on in your life, while you can’t even remember his kid’s name, is just biologically better at this stuff than you are. But his or her apparent wonderworking likely owes much to a system of note-taking and reminders.
Most of the super connectors that we spoke to said they hadn’t always been good at this networking stuff, which suggests that relationship conscientiousness is a learned skill, not an innate talent. Many identified a moment in their past when they had become intentional about systematizing relationship stuff, while others just said they’d developed a method almost accidentally and then refined it over time.
Almost all the consummate networkers we spoke to have some sort of receptacle for the storage of notes on people. Most use spreadsheets, Google or Word docs, notebooks, or the notes fields of a contact manager. A couple have even hacked CRM systems generally intended for transactional data designed to power digital marketing, to store their personal notes.
They also use reminders of some type to follow up on people notes that they wanted to act on, and to ensure that they maintain a certain cadence of contact with people they care about. Most of the reminders went in digital calendars, emails, or project management tools, although there were analog solutions too, notably Post-Its, planners and scribbled to-do lists.
But, perhaps the most important thing that these networkers do, is make time for the note taking, follow ups and other relationship meta-work that enables them to build such rich connections.
At the start of this process, I was one of those people, like some of Kaitlyn Tiffany’s interviewees in her piece about personal CRM (an admittedly grim-sounding concept), who thought the idea of actively managing relationships would somehow make me inauthentic. But speaking to people who do it well, you don’t get the feeling there’s anything forced or fake about it at all. On the contrary, it seems like these people are simply working harder than me to show up for the folks they care about. If the end result is that they are happy and successful — and those we spoke to seem to meet those criteria — we probably have a few things to learn from them.
