Relationships

I've been watching several feeds I set up on the web about relationships.  I started with ICERocket and Newsvine feeds and the topics that have come across the wire are hilarious.  Everything from "How to make a Sex Tape" to "Consolidate Loans" has come through.  I'm convinced I'm missing something here. I think the missing piece is that the word "Relationship" is too broad.  With Google returning 732 million results, the enormity of this topic is definitely confirmed.  In fact, it's very interesting that the top 15 results for relationship are about romantic relationships.  It's not until the 16th result that business relationships come into the picture with a link to Salesforce.com.  In starting to blog about relationships, I now realize that I was assuming that relationships were 99% non-romantic.  If the Google results are any indication, this shows a HUGE deficit in knowledge about non-romantic relationships. So, I am going to officially define what I think of as a romantic and non-romantic relationship.  I am guessing that there are further types of non-romantic relationships, but we'll start here first. Romantic relationships are obviously with someone you are romantically involved with.  I best understand this as a relationship that includes a sexual component.  I know that sounds rather clinical, but there you go.  Normally, I'd assume only one person can fill this role at a single time.  What makes a romantic relationship interesting is that it gets the lions share of attention in our lives.  I probably spend at least 40 to 50% of my relationship effort on my wife.  I consider that time very well spent, but the fact that the minority receives a large portion of my attention is definitely interesting. Non-Romantic relationships are relationships that lack a sexual component.  Friends, co-workers, family all fall into this category.  I would say that I spend the other 50 to 60% of my relationship effort with this group.  I'm not sure I know the exact size of this group either.  My outlook contact list is about 130 individuals.  However, this includes a variety of distant family members that I may talk to only once or twice a year.  A better estimate might be around 80 to 90 individuals I connect with on a normal basis. What surprises me here is the imbalence of relationship effort to the type of relationship.  Now, if I broke down my non-romantic relationships even further, different types emerge here as well.  I would classify some friends as "Close Friends".  Of course "Family" would be a group here as well.  However, a certain effort level is applied to each of these groups as well.  As I move down the line, I spend much less effort on keeping up with distant family members rather than close family members.  Thus, I think it's safe to say that not all non-romantic relationships are equal either.  In fact, there is even an order to the amount of relationship effort spent on non-romantic relationships. Wow, my brain is spinning with this.  I'm a visual thinker, so here's a chart of how I'm visualizing this: If you apply all the long tail hype of late to this graph, some interesting things stand out.  First off, this completely validates the MonkeySphere(link 1, link 2) principle.   read more »

Do slimy salespeople turn you off?  If they do, that slimy salesperson forgot to read about how selling is all about relationships.  Tom Peters released a ChangeThis manifesto addressed directly at all those sleazy salespeople.  It's titled "111 Ridiculously Obvious Thoughts on Selling". Tom keeps the bar for ChangeThis manifesto's high with many excellent thoughts on sales and relationships.  Here's a few of my favorites: 7. The best relationships are often (usually?) not “top to top”! (Often the best: hungry divisionGMs eager to make a mark.) 8. IT’S RELATIONSHIPS, STUPID—DEEP AND FROM MULTIPLE FUNCTIONS. 10. Relationships from within our firm are as important—often more important—as those from outside—again broad is as important as deep. Allies—avid supporters!—within and from non-obvious places may be more important than relationships at the Client organization. Goal: an “insanely unfair ‘market share’” of insiders’ time devoted to your projects! 17. WOMEN ARE SIMPLY BETTER AT RELATIONSHIPS—don’t get hung up—particularlyin tech firms—on what industries-countries “women can’t do.” (Or some such bullshit.) 57. Never forget the “Law of Cousins!” In developing nations in particular, power brokers at all levels are at least cousins! Consideration for a second cousin can pay off big time. 60. REPEAT: HE/SHE WHO HAS THE MOST-BEST RELATIONSHIPS WINS.RELATIONSHIPS ARE THE ESSENCE OF THE WORK OF THE SALESPERSON. THEHARD ... AND LONG ... WORK OF THE SALESPERSON. 66. Be hyper-organized about relationship management—you are in the anthropology business. Study the great pols! Brilliant NRM (network relationship management) is not accidental! It is not catch-as-catch can. (Football analogies are cute—but deep political understanding pays the private-school tuition.) 67. Think/obsess on ROIR (Return On Investment In Relationships). 73. Listen up: “It was much later that I realized Dad’s secret. He gained respect by giving it. He talked and listened to the fourth-grade kids in Spring Valley who shined shoes the same way he talked and listened to a bishop or a college president. He was seriously interestedin who you were and what you had to say.”—Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, Respect.(I.e., Respect is Cool.) 82. Shit happens. That’s what they pay you for. 86. GOAL #1: MAKE YOUR CLIENT A HERO—YOU ARE NOT THERE TO GET CREDIT.(“Taking credit” is for ego-maniacs. And losers.) 97. It takes time to get to know people. (DUH.) 105. Become a student! Yes, you can study Relationship Building. So, study … Technorati Tags: changethis, relationships, sales, selling, tom peters    read more »

I put up a Squidoo Lens on Relationships.  Check it out. Technorati Tags: relationships squidoo

I am going to start blogging on a new topic I've been interested in for a long time, relationships.  I am interested in this topic for a number of reasons.  Based upon general observation and reading the book Never Eat Alone, I have become convinced that relationships are one of those key things in life.  Being married, I have learned this.  Through my friends I have learned this.  In work I have learned this.  This subject is like the elephant standing in the corner of the room, everyone knows it's there but people often fail to recognize it. So, I want to study it and post my thoughts on this blog.  The goal for me is to learn more about the subject and to help others learn more about it as well.  I hope that I will be able to use some of the techniques I learn in my life, but if I don't that is ok.  I'm going to set up a new category so you can track my posts on relationships if you are so inclined.  This is one of those subjects for me that has some pretty deep meaning, so I'm really writing this for myself.  I invite you to follow along.  Please feel free to post feedback and comments; I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts on relationships as well. Relationships are weird.  I am not sure I really know what that word means, relationship.  I've looked it up in the dictionary, but that didn't help very much.  Answers.com had more detailed information, but still left me confused.  Wikipedia just had a simple definition and some of the root words.  Looking up the root word "relation" I finally hit some pay dirt. Relation comes from the Latin word "relatio".  I have no idea what "relatio" means or where it came from and Google didn't turn up anything good.  A few things struck me about the Wikipedia page for relation though.  First, the word relation is considered to be one of the 1000 basic English words.  It sort of makes me think that it is a more important word.  Looking at other words in that category, it seems to be in pretty good company.  The second thing that struck me is that the definitions of the word are sort of spread out.  It covers topics in mathematics, story telling and family.  Makes me think I am biting off something pretty big here. I did some more searching on the history of the word relation and found the Online Etymological Dictionary.  Here's the entry on the word relation:  read more »