Are you getting the most from your relationships? Could they be more successful?

Posted on 1 February, 2018 by Lyndsey Segal in Business Coaching

With the Valentine’s Day cards in the shops and romantic dinners advertised in restaurants, our thoughts inevitably turn to St Valentine’s Day and therefore to our relationships.

Are we gaining the most from our relationships and are we investing as much into them in order for them to be happy, healthy and successful?

We are partners, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, daughters, sons, friends, employers, employees, neighbours and acquaintances. We form and sustain relationships all the time. It’s what makes our world go round but it is the relationship we have with ourselves that requires the most investment and nurturing as from this one, our other relationships can flourish.

Our relationships aren’t only with people. We have relationships with time, money, food, exercise, alcohol, vices and these inevitably have an impact on our human relationships.

There’s no denying it. Relationships are hard work and intense. They require time, commitment and energy. Resources that are time consuming and at times very limited. So I wonder if we can use and maximise our successes in our personal relationships with our loved ones, families and friends to help develop and strengthen our professional relationships and vice versa?

Conflict and criticism occur in our personal and professional lives but it is our ‘resilience’ – it’s how we respond and bounce back from them that helps us to learn and move forwards. It’s our willingness to listen, to lose our defences, to be open and to reflect that help us to grow.

So what strategies and resources can we use from our personal relationships to help our professional relationships and vice versa?

  • Triggers – identify your strategies of response to your thoughts, feelings and behaviours.
  • Empathy –  stepping into someone’s shoes and knowing what it could be like for them, rather than what you think it should be like helps to gain perspective.
  • Objective Observation – this can be achieved by trying to remove yourself from the heat of the situation. This allows you to step out of the ‘content’ of the disagreement and begin to understand the structure of the responses that you are having with another person.
  • Rapport – how do you create and maintain rapport to help support and develop your relationships?

As a Personal and Professional Coach I am particularly interested in the interconnection between the way in which our personal lives affects how we perform professionally and how our professional performance affects us on a personal level.

If you would like to explore the impact that your personal and professional lives are having on you and your relationships, please get in touch.