In This Chapter

“United we stand, divided we fall.”

“Birds of a feather flock together.”

“No man is an island.”

“Either we all hang together, or we all hang separately.”

Partnering with those around you can mean the difference as to whether or not you accomplish something big that you’d like to get done. There is something encouraging, stimulating, and even inspiring about partnering with others who are seeking to achieve the same types of goals that you are.

This chapter will show how it helps if you and your partner(s) proceed with the same intensity to get something done. It also helps if you’re striving for the same goal at the same time, but it doesn’t matter what you call yourselves. A classic example is two workers studying for a career-related exam, such as the CPA Exam.

Of all the possible others with whom you could combine forces, your professional peers are your easiest to identify and join in partnership. Your peers consist of co-workers, other people in your line of work, and others with whom you have a rather natural and easy communication channel.

Peer group partnerships tend to be more fluid, though potentially as powerful as any of the other types of groups. Undoubtedly you already belong to one or more peer groups consisting of two or more people.

What follows is a sampling of the names attributed to peer groups, although what you call your affiliation is not nearly as important as how you work together and what you’re able to achieve.

Managers and staff people in other departments and other divisions who have no formal role in what you’re working on may serve as valuable resources. Depending on their education, background, and experiences in general, you may find selected individuals who can serve as ad hoc trail guides, at least pointing you in the right direction.

Consider this: a quick, well-delivered phone call to one of these valuable contacts, a one-line e-mail, or a brief encounter in the hallway could result in you getting the right input at just the right time to propel your project or task forward.

In the professional services arena, accountants, attorneys, dentists, doctors, engineers, and real estate agents traditionally initiate firms as business partnerships. Changes in tax, liability, and estate planning have combined to make the corporate form of organization far more viable for many professional service firms. Still, even in the smallest of informal groups, the two-person group, it is often preferred to have one person who is in charge.

When two friends form a partnership, trouble can loom because their friendship itself can get in the way. If they’ve gotten along well for years, each may assume that the same relationship is possible in a business setting; however, it’s wise to be wary. Partnerships at work are a different animal.

Despite the pitfalls, there’s something special about having one other person with whom you partner that can draw out the best in both of you.

As long as partners respect the capability or contributions of the other, partnerships can go on and on, independent of what type of relations the individuals have otherwise.

Partnering with customers or clients can prove to be highly rewarding as well. From the standpoint of achieving effective solutions, how often do you consider the knowledge, operating experience, and resources of some of your organization’s best customers or clients?

When it comes to getting things done, customers can offer fresh perspectives and keen insights that could mean the difference in the case of, say, developing a new product or service. Also, customers or clients may have policies and procedures in place which may be worth emulating.

People respond to high appeals for participation. When Colin Powell assumed leadership at the U.S. Department of State in January 2001, his closed-door 90-minute session with the top agency officials reportedly was the stuff of which legends are made. Although Powell didn’t allow a recording of it, allegedly lifelong State Department employees re-dedicated themselves to the agency’s work in an unprecedented manner. Now that is recruitment. Likewise, you hear of coaches who give half-time pep talks that rally their teams on to victory despite the shellacking they took in the first half.

You may not possess legendary alliance-building skills, but elements of your personality and communication style undoubtedly can be harnessed to win people over, and get them to partner with you. You can start on this road, the very next time you attend a meeting or business function within your organization or outside of it. You can even start with total strangers!

Those who have achieved success at work or in life often seem to know something special about connecting with other people. They say the right things, and associate with the right people. They have a knack for keeping up with what is going on, and they find many ways to use that knowledge to form alliances.

High-octane persuaders can adapt their styles depending on degrees of formality, levels of seriousness, and the people involved. They have subconscious ideas of their desired outcomes in the back of their minds. These ideas might range from negotiating a business deal to successfully completing an involved project.

The accurate use of names is crucial in greetings, and alliance builders are especially adept at remembering and using them. Some naturally have good memories; many others take memory-enhancement courses to learn and practice the many tricks for remembering. They know how important this skill can be. Addressing someone you have recently met with confidence, without mixing up his or her name, opens the door of opportunity.

One manager at an electronics company instructs his assistant to make calls before a meeting and create a list of the names of people who’ll be in attendance. He studies the list prior to the event so that he’ll be at his networking best when everyone arrives.

At a business reception small pockets of people congregate between the bar at one end of the room and the table at the other end. The opportunity for making new business contacts here is ripe.

You’ll spot at least one person, smiling and gracious, moving around the room fluidly, shaking hands and introducing himself with direct eye contact and a warm smile. This person spends some time with each individual he or she greets, listening carefully while the other talks. This person’s ability to form alliances and partnerships is head and shoulders above the others in the room.

Whatever his job title, he understands a critical factor in human relations, described by Dr. Adele Scheele in Skills for Success—the importance of exhibiting host behavior. In other words, such people don’t wait around to make connections. They know when to take the initiative to make others feel comfortable in a meeting environment.

To make new quality contacts, you have to take advantage of the opportunities that come your way. When you have the chance to meet someone in person, first introduce yourself. Some alliance builders have a focused agenda and seek occasions for making business contacts or improving business relations.

Alliance builders seldom have the problem of having nobody to talk to; if left alone momentarily, they have a knack for acting in a commanding manner. Rather than sinking into the woodwork, they stand straight and, sipping a drink, survey the room with a look of alert interest and even slight amusement. They’re never left out because they don’t act left out!

Some people, myself included, rely heavily on empowering people to gain the kind of insights, input, and feedback that enable us to propel ourselves forward. These people include peers, affiliates, and a wide variety of others, drawing from the best of those you might encounter at work and in life, as well as coaches.

Essential to having empowering people in your career is to be open to having them! This sounds simple enough, but many career professionals don’t embrace the notion. Think about anyone from work who always:

Is this the kind of person you want to be around? Of course. That’s the kind of person I am to my empowering people. They know that I want to hear from them and that I value what they tell me. I often act on what they recommend so rapidly that they’re amazed how quickly their advice took effect.

People who empower you are also empowered by you in some way. Otherwise the relationship would not continue. The way that you empower them often can vary. Perhaps simply valuing what they say in a way that few others do fulfills a need in them that prompts them to want to keep the relationship going. Here are other ways you may be empowering those who empower you:

You can find empowering people in your career nearly everywhere you turn. Your peers, the list of groups earlier in this chapter, the next function you attend—all represent fertile arenas. Here are some more ideas:

Obviously you can only connect with so many people on a regular basis. The relationship with each of your empowering people requires some type of sustenance. What efforts will you undertake to maintain the relationship?

I have an advisory board of directors and I suggest that you devise one as well. Your initial response might be, “Okay, Jeff, you’re an author and a speaker. I can see why people might want to be a member of your advisory board. Me? I simply work at XYZ organization assembling computer chips. Who would want to be on my board?” There are lots of people who would like to be on your board!

If you poll most people whom you know, you’ll find that they’ve never been asked to be on a board in their entire lives. They’ve heard about people on boards, but they’re never asked.

Begin to look for people in your immediate surroundings who can be members of your advisory board. These could include people in local associations, one or two people from work, perhaps somebody from your church or community group, perhaps a mentor as well.

I’ll briefly describe my advisory board so that you’ll have ideas as to whom you might choose to be on yours. I have two people from radio, a radio host and a radio manager. I also have a couple of people from associations, both national and local. I have a lawyer or two, a magazine editor and a newspaper editor, a professor, a high school teacher, and three entrepreneurs.

I invite the whole group to dinner twice each year. It doesn’t cost as much as you might think; you can usually feed everyone for under $180.00. I let everyone know in advance what career and business challenges I’d like to tackle at the session.

First we have dinner, usually some kind of smorgasbord or a buffet. Afterward, I pass out the agenda, which is a repeat of the questions I circulated to them before that evening. One by one we discuss the things that I want to get done and they freely give me their ideas. I turn on my pocket recorder and capture it all!

I record everything and later carefully transcribe each of those gems. You might think, “Sure, people will come to my advisory board dinner once or twice, but would they come over and over again?” My board has met 14 times and I almost have to laugh because I get requests from people I’ve never met who have said, “So and so is on your board and suggested that you might invite me to be on it as well.”

What if assembling an advisory board is a bit much for you right now? For whatever you’re trying to accomplish, when you want or need to recruit others, you can appeal to people’s reasons for participating. The following list, origin unknown, frequently appears in chamber of commerce newsletters under the title “inducing people to volunteer”:

The breadth and depth of the items on this list speak for themselves. Note the linkage between many of the reasons cited and the principles of persuasion discussed in Chapter 23.

Have you ever thought about teaming up with a coach to receive the big-picture type of guidance that you might not otherwise be getting on the job? Considering the kinds of things you want to achieve on the job and throughout your career, could a coach be helpful for you? Psychologist Harry Olson, based outside of Baltimore, Maryland, says that virtually all professional and Olympic athletes have personal coaches to help them perform to their maximum potential and deal with competition.

The better such athletes become, and the more elite their status, the more they need and rely on coaches. Why? Because the higher they rise in their fields, the more critical their moves become, and the more vital personal feedback becomes in avoiding mistakes. A personal coach offers the competitive edge!

Olson says that a career coach can help “diagnose and sort out your situation and opportunities, offer new strategies for dealing with office politics and competition, and help you with vital stress management skills.”

A good career coach helps you discover and capitalize on new opportunities, provides new tools to improve communication, and helps chart your goals and career path. A career couch can serve as your personal, behind-the-scenes counselor, confidant, and consultant.

“We don’t question the wisdom of using tools to fix our cars or build wood projects, yet often we balk at using all the resources available to build our careers,” says Olson.

Many achievers value “doing it on my own.” They see using outside help as a weakness, as if they are dependent on the helper; as if using a personal consultant or counselor somehow takes something away from them. Far from it. The career counselor simply works behind the scenes, helping you so that you do your job better.

Self-analysis is limited and faulty because of self-protective “blind spots.” A coach increases your objectivity. Also, because of his or her background and training, a coach can address a broader range of issues than you’d be inclined to do. The coach’s primary role is to be a trainer, a listener, an observer, a motivator, and a sounding board.

What you want to get done is always the foundation of your relationship with the coach. A good coach is committed to helping you succeed. Ultimately you alone decide if a coach or career counselor is for you. However, says Olson, if you encounter any of the following, the answer is probably “yes”:

If you simply have a strong desire to advance in your organization or field regardless of whether you experience any of the above, you could probably benefit by partnering with a coach.

Having a mentor, like having a coach, can be a wonderful thing and can accelerate your path to getting things done. Many books and articles have been written on mentoring, but I can save you a ton of reading. Mentors generally emerge from those people in your career who are already among your empowering people.

Like a coach, a mentor can help to broaden your horizons. He or she might be pleased to introduce you to associates garnered over the years, key and interesting people—the people it may have taken you years to meet on your own.

You may prefer to stick with the strategy of engaging empowering people because problems often arise in the mentor-protégé relationship. One survey revealed that only about a third of mentor-protégé relationships last more than three years. And in the cases in which the mentor was the immediate supervisor to the protégé, many times the protégé ended up getting fired!

The following issues are worth knowing about, at the least, so that you can avoid them:

Some protégés develop accelerated expectations. A mentor can often make things look too easy; he or she simply calls someone on the phone and presto!, wheels are in motion. Realize that it probably took your mentor a decade or more of experience and alliance-building to be able to do that. Also, as with any partner, hold up your end of the relationship to keep it vibrant!