Make A List Of Your 20 Most Important Relationships

Make A List Of Your 20 Most Important Relationships

Make A List Of Your 20 Most Important Relationships

Copyright © 2024 by Leland Kornegay

All rights reserved

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1 : DONALD O CLIFTON AND PAULA NELSON1

CHAPTER 2 : MANAGE YOUR TIME TO OPTIMIZE

CHAPTER 3 : STUDYING MARKETING OF SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE

CHAPTER 4 : EXTREMELY MISLEADING

CHAPTER 5 : SHAPED BY CIRCUMSTANCES

CHAPTER 1 : DONALD O CLIFTON AND PAULA NELSON1

If we don't have relationships, we either don't care about people or are dead. This, although it sounds trivial, is very true: friendship is the main thing in our lives. And it's also true that professional relationships are at the core of our success. This chapter will discuss both personal relationships and work relationships. We will start with personal relationships, with friends, lovers and loved ones. Then we'll look at proper work relationships.

What do these issues have to do with the 80/20 Principle? The answer is: There are quite a few. There is a tension between quality and quantity, forcing us to make trade-offs and we often do not pay enough attention to the most important things.

The 80/20 Principle makes three provocative assumptions:

80% of the value of all relationships comes from 20% of the relationships.

80% of the value of all relationships comes from the 20% of close relationships we form first in our lives.

We spend far less than 80% of our attention on the 20% of relationships that create 80% of the value.

Make a list of your 20 most important relationships

At this stage, write down the names of your 20 most important friends and loved ones, the people with whom you have the most important relationships, arranged in descending order of importance. 'Important' means the depth and closeness of a personal relationship, the degree to which it is useful to you in your life, and the degree to which it increases your sense of who you are as a person. who and what it will be like in the future. Please do this before moving on to the next section. Let's consider an interesting problem. Where is your lover or life partner on that list? Above or below your parents or children? Be honest (but maybe you should destroy that list when you're done reading this chapter!).

Next, divide the total score of 100 into the listed relationships according to their importance to you. For example, if the person at the top of the list is as important as the other 19 people on the list combined, give that person 50 points. You may need to go back and forth a few times to be able to divide so that at the end of the relationship the total score is exactly 100.

I don't know what your list looks like, but the general trend, which coincides with the 80/20 Principle, has these two characteristics: the relationship at the top of the list (20% of the total) wins the majority. score (perhaps 80%), and there is usually an invariant relationship between each number and the next number below. For example, the second number may be 2/3 or 1/2 the first number in terms of importance; The third number can be the same: equal to 2/3 or 1/2 of the second number; and so on. An interesting thing to note is that the preceding relationship is twice as important as the following relationship. Thus, the sixth number is only approximately 3% of the first number in terms of importance!

Finally, complete this exercise by noting next to each name the proportion of time you actively spend talking or working with that person (not including time spent meeting when that person is not is the focus of attention, such as when watching television or movies). Consider the total time spent with the 20 people on the list as 100 units, and distribute accordingly. Typically, you will find that you spend less than 80% of your time with the small group of people who give you 80% of your 'relationship value'.

So, it's clear what we need to do. Stick to quality rather than quantity. Spend your time and effort to strengthen and deepen important relationships.

But there is another piece of advice, related to the timing of relationships in our lives. It turns out that the human ability to create close relationships is not limitless at all. There is always a compromise between quality and quantity that we need to be aware of.

Village theory

Anthropologists emphasize that the number of important and joy-giving personal relationships we can establish is limited.2 It seems that the general pattern of people in society is to have two important friends from childhood, two important friends in adulthood and two doctors. Oftentimes, there are two people we have sex with that make all the others fade into the background. Most commonly, you only fall in love once and there is one family member you love above all the rest. The personal relationships that are important to everyone are very close in number, regardless of where they are located, what their level of thinking is, and what culture they belong to.

This observation led to 'village theory' in anthropology. In an African village, all these relationships occur within a distance of a few hundred meters and are often formed within a short period of time. For us, these relationships can span the planet and last a lifetime. No matter what, those relationships create a village that each of us has in mind. And once those cells are filled, they are considered to be filled forever.

Anthropologists say that if we have too much experience too early, we are no longer able to establish further connections. This may explain the superficiality often seen in people whose professions or conditions force them to have many relationships such as salespeople, or those who frequently move.

JG Ballard cites as an example a rehabilitation project in California for young women living with criminals. These women were young, only 21-22 years old, and the program was aimed at creating a new social environment for them, mainly middle-class volunteers. These volunteers befriended them and invited them to their homes. Many of those young girls got married at a very early age. Many people have their first child when they are 13 or 14 years old. Some get married three times by the time they are in their twenties. They often had hundreds of lovers and sometimes had very intimate relationships with lovers or had children with people who later ended up in jail or shot dead. They've been through it all – relationships, motherhood, heartbreaks, mourning – and have tasted all the flavors of life as teenagers.

The above project completely failed. The explanation given is that these women are no longer capable of forming new, deep relationships. That ability has been exhausted. The boxes containing their relationship were filled, permanently.

The above sad story is very useful. It also fits with the 80/20 Principle that a small number of relationships account for the majority of emotional value. Fill your emotional boxes with extreme caution and not too soon!

Relationships and alliances at work

We now turn to your employment-related relationships and alliances. At this point, the importance of a few close alliances cannot be overemphasized.

Individuals seem to be able to do extraordinary things – and they do. But extraordinary individual action requires alliances.

You cannot succeed alone. Only others can do that for you. What you can do is choose for yourself the best relationships and alliances to achieve your goals. You really need an alliance. You must treat them as well as you (should) treat yourself. Don't think that all your friends and alliances are equally important. Stay focused and cultivate key alliances in your life. If this advice seems obvious and trivial, ask yourself how many of your friends do exactly that. Then ask yourself if you would do the same.

All spiritual leaders have many alliances. If they need an alliance, so do you. Please cite an example here. Jesus had to rely on Saint John the Baptist to get people to pay attention to him; then based on the 12 apostles; Next are the other apostles, most notably Saint Paul, who can be considered the most talented marketing genius in history.3

Nothing is more important than choosing an alliance and how to build it. Without them, you are nothing. With them, you can always change your life, often change the lives of others, and sometimes, in one way or another, change the course of history.

We can see the importance of alliances by taking a brief look at history.

History is created by individuals who form effective alliances

Vilfredo Pareto, argued that history is essentially the history of the succession of elite groups.4 Therefore, the goal of strong-willed individuals and families is to emerge as an elite group or a part of one elite group that overthrows another elite group (or, if already within the elite, maintains its position in the elite and helps that elite survive). If you follow the class-based view of history from Pareto or Marx, you might conclude that alliances within elites or future elites are the driving force for progress. The individual is nothing but a member of a class; individual in alliance with other individuals of the same class (or perhaps with individuals of a different class) is everything.

The importance of individuals allying with other individuals is clearly shown through major turning points in history. Would the Russian Revolution of 1917 have happened without Lenin's key role? Perhaps it is impossible, and certainly cannot be a revolution that changes the direction of world history for 72 years.

We can play the above historical game over and over again to demonstrate the importance of individuals. The Holocaust and World War II could not have happened without Hitler. Without Roosevelt and Churchill, Hitler would probably have unified Europe sooner and more thoroughly, and in a far more resentful way, than his successors did. etc. However, there is a key point that is often not realized: none of the above individuals can change the direction of history if they do not have relationships and alliances.

In almost any field of achievement,5 you can identify a small number of key collaborators. Without them, individual people could not achieve success; Thanks to them, individual people have acquired great influence. In government, in popular ideological movements, in business, medicine, science, charity work or sports, all have a common pattern. History is not made up of blind, non-human forces. History is not controlled by elite classes or groups according to some predetermined social or economic formula. History is determined and changed by dedicated individuals who form effective alliances with a small number of close associates.

You need to have a few key allies

If you have had successes in your life, you will (unless you are an egotistical person bent on failure) realize how vital your allies are to your achievements. However, you will also see the presence of the hand of the 80/20 Principle. The key alliances are few in number.

Usually we can safely say that at least 80% of the total value created by alliances comes from 20% of the alliances. For anyone who has done anything, the list of allies, when you think about it, is very long. Yet among the hundred or so confederates involved, the value distribution is extremely skewed. Usually about half a dozen alliances are much more important than all the rest.

You don't need to have many alliances, but you do need to have the right alliances, the right relationships between you and each alliance and between the alliances. You need those alliances at the right time, in the right place, and with a common interest in advancing your interests. And above all, the alliances must trust you and you must trust them.

Make a list of your top 20 relationships, with people you consider to be important alliances, and compare that list with the approximate total number of contacts with which you can communicate informally. – if you use a Rolodex, Filofax or a phone book, that is the total number of regular contacts on the list. 80% of the total value of your alliances tends to be concentrated in 20% of your relationships. If this is not the case, then the alliances (or several alliances) may be of poor quality.

Alliances help you succeed

If you've been in your career for a long time, make a list of the people who have helped you the most so far. Arrange them in order from top to bottom and then distribute 100 points among the top 10. Usually the people who helped you the most in the past will also be the same people in the future. However, sometimes a good friend somewhere at the bottom of the list turns out to be a much more important ally in the future: perhaps because he or she has just been appointed to a new, influential position. Becoming rich through investment or being respected by everyone. Do this exercise again, this time ranking your alliances from 1 to 10 and allocating 100 points to this group based on their ability to help you in the future.

Others help you because you have a strong relationship with them. The best relationships are built on five characteristics: enjoyment of each other's company, respect, being on the same page, reciprocity, and trust. In successful working relationships, the above characteristics are intertwined and cannot be isolated individually, but we can consider them separately.

The enjoyment of being together

Of our five characteristics, the first one is very obvious. If you don't enjoy talking to someone, in their office, in a restaurant, at a party or on the phone, you and that person won't build a lasting relationship. They also need to enjoy being around you.

If this seems obvious to you, take a moment to think about the people you associate with socially, but primarily for professional purposes. How many of them do you actually like? A surprisingly large number of people spend a lot of time around people they don't like. This is an absolute waste of time. It does not bring us joy but only makes us tired, often costs us money, prevents us from doing better things and leads us absolutely nowhere. Stop this now! Spend more time on relationships that you enjoy, especially if they can help you in some way.

Respect

There are people I really enjoy meeting but I don't respect professionally, and vice versa. I would never help someone advance their career if I did not respect their professional abilities.

If someone wants to help you professionally, he or she must be truly impressed with you. However, usually we hide our profession. Paul, a good friend of mine who was in a position to help me advance my career, once remarked at a meeting of the Board of Directors in which we were non-tenured trustees that he can believe I have professional ability even though he has never seen any evidence for it! I was determined to find an opportunity where I could show some evidence. I did – and Paul immediately became one of my top allies.

Same boat

Just as in a primitive village, we only have a limited number of slots for important career experiences. Shared experiences, especially when they involve struggle or suffering, have great bonding power. One of my greatest relationships, both as a friend and as a professional ally, came from my shared experience with that person when we were just getting started in our first jobs. I'm sure we wouldn't have had a good relationship if we both didn't hate our jobs at the oil refinery.

The implication of the above story is that if you have a difficult job, find yourself an ally that you like and respect. Cultivate it into a deep and effective alliance. If not, you're missing out on a great opportunity! Even if you're not in a miserable situation, find someone who's in the same boat as you and make that person your key ally.

Reciprocity

For alliances to work, each partner must do things for the other – regularly, consistently, and over a long period of time.

Mutual help requires a relationship that is not unilateral. Equally important, mutual assistance needs to happen naturally and should not be too calculated. It is important that you do whatever you can to help the other person as long as it is consistent with ethical standards. This requires time and thought! You should not wait until people ask for help.

What surprises me when I review work relationships is how infrequently true mutual assistance is cultivated. Even when the other elements – friendship, respect, solidarity, and trust – are present, people too often neglect to proactively help their allies. And this, too, is a waste of a great opportunity for deepening the relationship and accumulating future