During the last three years, I’ve been reading mainly biographies of business and social leaders. The reason, curiosity about how they live and what similar features I could find regarding their success.
One person, Ray Dalio, mentioned the concept of Meaningful Relationships. This means building unique and authentic relations with your colleagues, partners, clients, suppliers, investors, etc. How boring could it sound? I don’t have time for that, I’m too busy with the daily pressure, financial performance, achieving budgets and keeping things under control. That was my first thought.
Later on, another biography, a similar concept of building key and long term relationships (Phil Knight), having fun with your partners and team while pursuing big dreams.
But! I had a but. Steve Jobs was not very keen with personal relationships. We hear about his inpatient behavior with new teams and people in different pages. How come was he so good at the same time as he was not a people oriented person? It took me weeks to conclude that he was excellent but as everyone, he also had things to improve.
What does “Meaningful Relationships” mean? You could be a business person, entrepreneur, engineer, singer, soccer player, whatever. But along your way there is something you will always meet: people. People are like a sea of stories, possibilities, backgrounds, cultures, languages, among others. They are like keys to doors in an endless map. You are also one of those possibilities to others.
The true is that it is up to us to build a nice network of people around us. Relatives, friends, colleagues and professional contacts. When you interact in a relax, honest, attentive way, you are exposed to having deeper connections with others. Some of those will later become your close friends, husband or wife and business partners. Building authentic connections is not an action (you can’t force yourself) but an attitude or principle in your life. When you are able to build nice links with people, you will live happier. These links are built with time through spaces of helping each other, caring for others and having fun in the process of achieving a goal. When you care for people and you are able to help, the feeling of happiness is nothing to compare with anything else.
It is an attitude that later on becomes into a principle that improves our life and then you realize that the structure of your life is highly supported by your closest people.
David Perez 