Ask yourself, has anyone bothered helping you understand what it takes to build and maintain a quality relationship?

Consider building quality relationships as a PROCESS. Yes, think of it as a step-by-step sequence that takes time and patience with a long term goal in mind. If you think you can do it in one or two ‘touches’ you are totally delusional! It takes continuous positive experiences over time.

1st Stage – Acquaintance
When we meet someone for the first time we want to be friendly, cordial and above all genuine. Nobody likes a phony. People today have a natural resistance to accepting anyone into their ‘circle of friends’ as Robert De Nero said in the movie Meet the Fokkers. A little kindness and spirit of friendliness never hurt any budding acquaintance. Certainly asking non-threatening questions is a great way to break the ice and serves as a starting point. Taking a real and sincere interest in the acquaintance’s answers shows you are listening, paying attention to what they are saying and forms a position from which any subsequent dialogues, ‘touches’ and contacts can be initiated. And it helps if you remember some defining comment the acquaintance made to you which demonstrates you found something significant and impressive about them in the initial conversation.

2nd Stage – Connection
There is somewhat of a quantum leap from acquaintance to connection. It requires us to be easy to communicate with and understand. At this Stage something almost surreal happens when a bond and a commonality gets identified between both parties. This could be something as simple as growing up in the same city, having a common friend or having worked in the same company in the past. At this Stage both parties realize they are no longer total strangers to each other, rather they have one or many things in common.

Step 3 – Mutuality of Purpose
Do we have a common goal in mind, namely do we share similar values, goals and objectives. Is there a ‘meeting of the minds’ as it were in how we conduct ourselves in our personal and business affairs – specifically with honesty and integrity. Do we have the same objectives, such as resolving an issue, eliminating a problem or being a good parent. Is there a way either we or they can help another customer or friend. In my experience acquaintances and connections do not advance to this stage because they have not let each other know how they can help each other.

Be mindful I’m not talking about winning a popularity contest. It was Abe Lincoln who said, “You can’t please all the people all the time.” However one thing you can do which influences potential relationships is to be a pleasant and polite individual.

4th Stage – Relationship
What determines if our acquaintances, connections and mutually purposeful contacts will ever mature to a relationship is based on trust. However, much more significantly, we will advance to this stage when we have achieved a level of respect that only gets established when we act and perform in a consistent manner. Consistency is the touchstone leading people to feel comfortable around us, and one of the ways they feel at ease is knowing we will be the same as last time – friendly, respectful and trustworthy. Could you count on them if a situation or opportunity arose requiring their experience, background or assistance. Those wise in the relationship building process know that a little trial or test in one area is at least an indicator of what that person would be like in a more complex situation. Frankly, if we live up to our word and conclusively show we know what we’re talking about and what we are doing, we have reached that Stage called relationship.

5th Stage – Maintenance
Let’s not take our relationships for granted. A relationship can be compromised when we fail to nurture it. If we muff an opportunity that has been referred to us in a business environment the prior relationship may be in serious jeopardy. When we stay in touch with others through some mechanism such as email or social gatrherings we are in fact sustaining the relationship that has been built.

Conclusion
After more than thirty years of building relationships I have come to the conclusion that the PROCESS is incredibly similar to what excellent sales people do. And just in case you think you are not in sales, be mindful of what Robert Louis Stevenson once noted, “Everyone makes a living by selling something.”

It is fascinating to me that Americans are an impatient lot. The Point? I believe it is virtually impossible to jump from Stage 1 – Acquaintance to Stage 5 – Maintenance in a single contact event. It takes time and patience to build a relationship. It can’t be done in one ‘touch’. While it may take many interactions, nonetheless it can be accomplished in fewer ‘touches’ when the first three Stages occur in a short time span.

Now you know why I call it “building a relationship”. It’s like building a house; you can’t put the roof on until the concrete pad is down and the walls are up. It requires us to be trustworthy, honest, credible and competent. And don’t fool yourself, the test of these goes through a gestation and maturation cycle during each of the Stages.

So if you are intent on building quality relationships then appreciate where you are in the Stages mentioned above with everyone with whom you are attempting to cultivate a relationship. Trying to move the PROCESS too quickly will probably cause indigestion from too much too fast. Give it time and let the Stages play out; in so doing both parties will have a much clearer sense of each other and how each can become a trusted person to the other. Above all abiding by the above PROCESS will assist in getting us to our goal of quality long term relationships.

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Simplify Your Life and Living the Simple Life by Elaine St. James. I listed this first because it is one of the books that most influenced the simple philosophy behind this site. I began simplifying my life when I first read these books a decade ago, and though I’ve had some ups and downs, I credit my love for simplifying to these books. They’re an easy read and there are some great tips in there.

Your Money or Your Life by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robins. No book on money is more important. If you haven’t read this book yet, you must. It’s simply life transforming, and takes the way most people look at money and turns it on its head. My philosophy about money stems from this book.

Getting Things Done by David Allen. This is not a surprise for people who read this site. When I first read about GTD, I overhauled my organizational and productivity habits, and have been refining them ever since. This book’s methods guide much of the writing on this site, even if I’ve adapted them to suit my needs.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. I was highly enthusiastic about this book when I first read it about 15 years ago, but then I kind of forgot about it for a long time. Until recently, when I was looking for ways to fill in gaps in GTD, and realized that Covey’s concepts are perfect. Now, my productivity/goals system is a blend of GTD, Covey, simplification and a few others.

The Art of Happiness by the Dalai Lama. Taught me more about compassion than any other book I’ve read. For that alone, the book is worth its weight in gold.

Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky. This was a hard book to swallow when I was a journalist, as it cuts to the heart of the mass media (also known as corporate media). Chomsky’s writings awoke in me, as they did in many others, an awareness of the political and corporate machine that affects all of our lives. When people ask me how I can boycott reading and watching the news for two years (”You need to be aware of the world around you!”), I would point them to this book. The reading is a bit dense, but it’s powerful.

Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Although Gatsby is more highly regarded, I think because it is more compactly written and touches on themes considered more important, Tender is the book I read first and it is the book that truly awed me with the unmatchable beauty of Fitzgerald’s writing. He writes poetry and music in the form of prose, and his ear for rhythm of language is unmatched. My heart aches when I read this book.

Dubliners by James Joyce. I think this book changed me because it taught me how powerful literature can be. I went on to read even more powerful stuff from Joyce, but this was the first, and it made all other literature I read before it seem like light reading. And Joyce captures beauty and sadness and humanity in the smallest things, and his mastery of the language is unmatched except by Shakespeare.

Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut. I love everything by Vonnegut. I wanted to write something on this blog when he died, but I couldn’t put my feelings into words. He became a close friend, through his books, and he was able to make fun of some of the most horrible things — things we don’t normally want to think about — and thus making them more digestible, and more absurd at the same time. Cat’s Cradle is simply my favorite, but Slaughterhouse 5 and the rest are awesome too.

The Essential Gandhi. A great man captured in one little book. His words are profound and his actions even more so. Gandhi, more than anyone else, shaped my thinking about violence and politics and simplicity and the power of our actions.

[via zenhabits]

[via guy]

Remember those old spy movies, where the secret agents captured documents with a tiny secret mini-camera? Now we all have one. Believe it or not, photographing documents works.

I don’t recommend stealing information, but for random paper information, notes — even white-board information, you can snap a picture to capture the data.

2. Screen-Capture Utility

The same trick for capturing paper documents works surprisingly well with a computer screen. The “normal” way to capture a screen — pressing the PrntScrn key, the pasting into e-mail, Word or other applications (pressing Alt+PrntScrn captures only the selected window) — sometimes that doesn’t work. Some Web sites and some video formats don’t let you capture. In those cases, take a picture of the monitor! The resulting image won’t be perfect, but it will be a lot better than nothing.

3. Photographic Memory

Business travel involves remembering small details, just to get yourself there and back. The more you travel, the more these details blur together.

After checking into your hotel, and dropping off your bags in the room, you decide to go grab dinner. You come back to the hotel, and make it up to your floor — what was the room number 1021 or 1012? The next morning, you go downstairs to drive to your meeting — which of the 50 rental cars in the lot is yours? You arrive at your home airport after a weeklong trip — where in the five-story lot did you park?

Your camera phone can instantly record, then quickly recall, these and other minor but easy-to-forget details of business travel.

Whenever I travel, I always snap a picture of my hotel room number, rental car (with license plate) and airport parking garage location sign. If I forget, I can just call it up on my phone.

4. Contact Database Enhancer

Most camera phones let you add photos to each contact entry, which pop up on the screen when the person calls, or when you call them. Many also add the picture to Microsoft Outlook or other desktop contact applications when you synchronize the phone.

Snap a picture of important people you meet, and add that photo to your contacts. People don’t mind, and it really helps you later connect faces to names.

5. Automatic Personal “City Guide” Creator

For years, I’ve kept personal “City Guides” of my favorite restaurants, hotels, stores and other attractions in the “Notes” application of my phone. I used to either type in the information with my phone, or grab a paper business card, then key in the information later. Now, I just take a picture of the outside of the building, then drop that photo in a folder labeled “Chicago” or “New York” — or wherever the city is. Later, when I want to grab a bite to eat, or recommend some place to a friend, I just open the appropriate folder on my phone, and cycle through the pictures.

6. String Around Your Finger

Sometimes you see something that jogs your memory. For example, you see a flower stand, which reminds you – “Oh, No!! My anniversary is next week!!” Rather than forgetting again, just take a picture of the flower stand, and e-mail it to yourself as a reminder.

7. Driving Directions Maker

Some buildings are hard to find, even with good directions. Use your camera phone to make and send easy directions. Send a photo of the outside of the building. You can also give hints for directions enhanced by photos, such as “turn left at this gas station” or “when you see this fork in the road, keep to the right.”

8. Personal Security Device

Door-to-door con artists are more common than you think. Chances are, you’ve been scammed yourself. The next time someone comes to your home or office to raise money or for some other potentially illicit purpose, ask if you can take their picture. Legit people won’t mind, and criminals will leave immediately.

Women confronted by creepy stalker types on public transportation have successfully warded off unwanted attention by snapping camera phone pictures of their harassers.

Aggressive panhandlers, crooked sales-people, suspicious strangers in your office — it never hurts to take a picture and e-mail it to yourself (in case they steal your phone). It gives you the upper hand, can deter crime, and provides evidence if a crime does occur.

9. Liability Reducer

Camera phones can help you prove your innocence. If you get into a car accident, photograph everything (the cars, the victims, etc.) in case anyone decides to get creative with the facts later on.

If you check into a hotel room, and something is conspicuously damaged or missing, take a picture immediately, then send it to your Gmail or other online e-mail account. The time and date will be captured, which might protect you from being charged for the damage by the hotel.

10. Morale Booster

All managers are challenged by the need to keep staff morale high. A camera phone can help. When a sales person delivers a great pitch to a client, stand at the back of the room and snap a picture of them in action. Later, e-mail it to the staff with praise for the speaker. The photo will magnify the praise.

If something unusual happens at the office, take a picture and e-mail it immediately to employees who are away on business, home sick or on vacation. It helps feel more connected to the team, and reminds them that they’re important to you.

[via earthweb]

1. respond immediately
2. tag it “@reply” if you can’t respond now (and archive it)
3. delete it
4. delegate it (forward and delete or archive)
5. put it on your to-do list (and then archive), if it has an action in it that needs to be done later
6. archive it if you need to refer to it later.

Those are your choices. Do one of those, quickly, with each email, and move on to the next. When you’re done, you’ll have an empty inbox!

• 2-minute rule. If it takes 2 minutes or less to respond to an email, do it right away, as quickly as possible. Most emails, I’ve found, only require a couple of sentences to reply. Do those now. If it’ll take some thought or more time to write a response, tag it “@reply”, to be replied to later today if possible, and archive it.
• Tag and archive. One of the beauties of Gmail is that there’s no need to file things in a complicated folder and subfolder hierarchy. The time spent filing is minimum. Tag an email (if necessary) and archive it. You can always use Gmail’s very fast search to find it later. Most of the time, I don’t even tag — just archive and search later.
• No reply needed. Not every email requires a reply. Learn to spot those instantly. It might just be an FYI email, which you can note and then archive. Or it might be something forwarded to you — delete or archive those immediately. Try to avoid responding to emails in which you’re just in the “cc” field, not in the “to” field. Replying to fewer emails means less time spent cranking through your inbox.
• Reduce your inflow. Do you get a lot of emails from mailing lists, or newsletters, or advertising, or regular things like that? Unsubscribe to as many as possible. You can drastically reduce the number of emails you receive, and thus reduce the amount of time needed to process your inbox, by stopping many of these automated emails. Also, if someone you know is sending you regular emails you don’t really need, politely ask them to stop.
• AHK. OK, so how do you crank faster? AutoHotKey’s text replacement feature is a great tool for doing that — from automated replies to multiple signatures, you can save yourself tons of valuable time by setting up a few regular keyboard shortcuts for text replacement. I use a number of different signatures, depending on who I’m writing to, and after setting up AHK’s text replacement for each signature, I can just type a few keystrokes and the appropriate signature is generated. For example, I have “wsig” and “wsig2″ for my two different jobs, and “psig” and “psig2″ for different personal correspondence, and “bsig” for my blog signature. Another great way to use AHK is to generate a few common replies that you email just about every day. I haven’t actually begun using this yet, but I’m beginning to consider it with a lot more companies emailing me personally asking me to try out their products.
• Keyboard shortcuts. Another invaluable tool for cranking. Using the mouse takes way too much motion (and thus time). Stay in the keyboard as much as possible, and your cranking skills increase dramatically. Gmail is great for this — it just takes a few minutes and a little practice to learn the shortcuts. There are a lot of great shortcuts (Go here for the complete list). Just a few I use a lot: “c” for compose, “r” for reply, “y+o” to archive and move to the next message, “tab+Enter” to send a message after composing it, “/” to search, “j” and “k” to move up and down the list of emails, “#+o” to delete and then open the next message.
• Filters. I have a couple dozen filters set up — this is possibly Gmail’s killer feature. For example, all comments and pingbacks in my blog go to my “@reply” folder, so they don’t fill up my inbox. Same with Google Calendar notifications. I also have a Monthly Challenge mailing list that I do every day, and those get shunted into their own tag and archived. Others get forwarded to the appropriate address, or deleted immediately.
• Killfile. I get a lot of email forwarded to me from people. I hate chain mails and joke emails. After getting a bunch of these from one person, I’ll killfile them. Just set up a filter with their address or name in the “from” field, and make “delete” the action.
• @reply: Set up a time each day to go through your “@reply” folder (or tag). If you can’t get to it when you process your inbox, and you tag it “@reply”, you should try to get to it sometime that day, so your @reply folder doesn’t get to overflowing, and you don’t become one of those people to whom I send an email and it gets lost in a bottomless void. Respond within a day, and people will appreciate it. Of course, if you don’t want to respond, just delete.
• Batch processing. It’s most efficient to do all your emails in groups, rather than processing them as they come in. For this reason, turn off your email notification. Set times during the day (2-3 times a day is sufficient for most) and give yourself 10-15 minutes to process your inbox. Do it quickly, all at one time, and get out. Of course, if one of those times is when you process your @reply folder, you might want to give yourself another 10-15 minutes on top of that.
• Email diet. The above tip may be difficult if you’re addicted to email. Go on a diet, if that’s the case. Go one whole day without even checking your email. If you do this, you’ll realize that the world doesn’t collapse if you don’t check your email. From then on, only process email during those 2-3 set times, for 10-15 minutes each time.

[via webworkerdaily.com]

Let him know you’re thinking about the future. Either ask him, “So, what’s next?” or let him know you’ll be needing some time to get things together before he approaches you with the next project. Something like, “I’m getting ready for the next project. Could we talk about it in an hour/this afternoon/tomorrow/next week after I tie up some loose ends? I’ve been focusing on getting this done but want to make sure I haven’t let anything fall through the cracks.” Both approaches let him know that you’re focused on what is best for the company. The second allows you to look this way but gives you the break you need when the project you’ve been working your butt off to finish is finally done.

When she’s pointing our your little mistakes (Again!):

Remember that this is part of her job, and may be as distasteful to her as it is to you (or may not, depending on the boss). If the criticism is particularly difficult for you to hear, remember to breathe before you say anything. A deep breath or so, when done surrepitiously, can give you the strength to respond calmly. Then, if it’s appropriate, defend yourself. If her criticism is just, nod as she speaks. Tell her, “Thank you for showing me how you would prefer this to be done/how this should be done/how to add a column of numbers/whatever.” If she persists, or is talking to you about something for the Nth time, say, “This seems to be something that you want me to work on/I should work on. Are there any resources available to help me improve?” Whether you need to be on time, make the web page load faster, or something else, it’s hard for a boss to fault an employee who wants to change. If she points you in a direction, follow through!

When you’re swamped and he wants you to do more:

Be honest about what you can do. Most supervisors appreciate hearing when their people are overworked and stressed. If he likes up front, honest people, say, “You know, I’d be happy to take that on, but realistically I won’t be able to get to it until I finish with X, Y, and Z. Will that work for you?” He may take it to someone else, or he may give it to you, but either way he knows what he’s looking at. If he’s going to lay it on you no matter what you say, try, “I’ll take that on. Right now, I’m working on P, D, and Q. Where does this fall in priority relative to those?” With this, he knows where he stands and what you have on your plate, and he can determine when you get to it.

When you know you’ve made a big mistake:

If you can’t fix it in time, be the first to let her know. Swallow the butterflies and make your weak knees walk to her office (or write that email). Most of the time she’s going to find out anyway, so you’re only prolonging the agony and creating a ton of anxiety for yourself if you don’t tell her. Your poise and honesty will also make an impression, even if she’s upset and there are consequences. At the very least, she’ll have a positive sense of your integrity for any future recommendations. At best? You might save your job.

When you’re interviewing for a different job:

In a few companies, this is considered tantamount to treason. If you work for one of them, keep it under the table but don’t lie if you’re asked directly. You might be asked to leave, but they won’t be able to fault your integrity in a recommendation. But if you work for most companies (or, at least, most of the ones I’ve experience/heard about), be honest. Tell her what you’re doing. If you’re valuable where you are, you would be surprised how many times she will do all she can to get you a counter-offer. If she can’t or if she has some other motivation to not re-hire you, she will appreciate not being blind-sided when you turn in your notice.

[via wisebread]

“It takes one hour of preparation for each minute of presentation time.”

- Wayne Burgraff

Note: This post was written by personal development blogger Scott Young. You can check out his website here.

Communication is a skill. That means if you want to blow the interviewer away, knock them out with your slide show or have them cheering after your speech you need to practice. Unfortunately since formal presentations, interviews and speeches are often an infrequent occurrence, you can’t become a master overnight.

But even in my own limited speaking I’ve discovered a couple hacks that can be used to improve your communication right away. They can work immediately to give you an edge in an upcoming event.

Hack #1: Rephrase Questions

When you get asked a question, spend a few seconds to rephrase the question. If you are giving a speech to an audience this has the first benefit of clearly stating the audience members question for everyone to hear. But the hidden benefit of doing this is that it gives you a few extra seconds to prepare a response.

Polished professional speakers and interview veterans can prepare for common questions in advance with a great reply. But if you don’t have the experience or a question throws you off balance, you can maintain composure by rephrasing the question. To everyone it looks as if you immediately knew an eloquent response, but in reality you were given a few seconds to process a response.

Hack #2: Pause, Don’t Trip

When you are nervous, everything get’s magnified. During an interview, speech or presentation forgetting what you intended to say or losing your flow of speech can be terrifying. When this happens remember to stop and take a deep breath. This pause feels incredibly unnatural for the speaker, but it is usually barely noticed by the audience.

Pausing is far better than tripping over your words and making incoherent sentences. Most people end up speaking too fast when they feel nervous, so intentionally slowing down and taking time to pause can prevent tripping over your words which is a lot more noticeable.

Hack #3: Write Out the Tricky Parts

If you have to talk for over five or ten minutes, it can be difficult and incredibly time-consuming to prepare every single word of your speech and memorize it. Many professional speakers instead choose to just write major topic headings so they understand the structure but can deliver the speech naturally.

When you get a chance to practice your presentation, notice points where you trip up. These are usually the same points you will have trouble with when presenting. Write out those few sentences word for word before presenting. The easy parts of your speech will continue to flow and you can be thoroughly prepared to handle the harder parts.

Hack #4: Watch Your Apologies

Never apologize when the goal of that apology is to soften the criticism of the audience. Some speakers apologize for appearing nervous when giving a speech. The truth is most the people in the audience wouldn’t have realized the speaker was nervous until he apologized for it. Apologizing from where you lack confidence only draws more attention to your weaknesses and detracts from your performance.

Apologies for legitimate errors are acceptable, but apologies designed to elicit sympathy won’t help your performance.

Hack #5: Don’t Distract With Powerpoint

Powerpoint presentations are very popular among presenters. But remember that as a speaker you want the focus to be on you. Slides should enhance your presentation, not form a backup. If I can get all the information I need out of your slides, why should I pay attention to you?

If you watch any presentations done by hugely successful speaker and marketer Seth Godin, you quickly notice how many of his slides are nothing more than a single image or word. These slides enhance the message he is trying to convey but they don’t steal the spotlight since they don’t contain enough information to distract.

If you are going to be doing a lot of presentations, interviews or formal communications in your work or life, I’d suggest joining Toastmasters. A non-profit organization dedicated to improving communication skills they can give you practice. But if you are concerned about an approaching presentation you’ll just have to hack it.

About Scott Young:
Scott Young is a productivity and improvement blogger. You can check out his blog here, and you can subscribe to his feed (updated 5-7x per week with posts similar to this one). Some of his most popular articles include Habitual Mastery, Double Your Reading Rate and How to Ace Your Finals Without Studying.

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