How Do I Build Professional Relationships That Last?

SHOW NOTES:

WorkLife Stories from School of WorkLife Episode: How Do I Build Professional Relationships That Last?

How do I build professional relationships that last is the question that arrives on the day you discover your network is wide, warm, and strangely useless — and the answer is that you have to stop collecting people and start understanding them.

Haruaki had more than a thousand contacts and nobody he could call. This is the story of the one conversation that had ever produced anything — a real question asked at an emptying seminar — and what he changed afterwards. Fifteen relationships out of a thousand names. Fifteen is a network. A thousand is a list.

RESOURCES MENTIONED

Get the Client — Professional Self-Coaching for Networking and Building Professional Relationships Tell the Three Stories That Reveal How You Think, What You've Learnt and What Drives Your Work — and Why That Makes People Want to Work With You

Work With Me: Commissioned learning resources, speaking engagements, and organisational partnerships.

The stories I write are based on real WorkLife challenges, obstacles, failures and successes. Persons and companies portrayed in the stories are not based on real people or entities. Carmel O' Reilly schoolofworklife.com

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Haruaki had a contacts list that ran to more than a thousand names. One Sunday, he needed a specialist. Someone he could trust, at short notice, on something delicate. He scrolled for forty minutes. He knew almost every name. He knew where they'd worked, and roughly what they did. And he could not tell you how a single one of them thought. A thousand contacts. And he called nobody. Welcome to WorkLife Stories from School of WorkLife. I'm Carmel O' Reilly. And today's episode is How Do I Build Professional Relationships That Last? — the question that arrives on the day you discover your network is wide, warm, and strangely useless. This story is about Haruaki. And about one conversation at an empty seminar, three years earlier, with the only person on that list who ever rang him. A Thousand Contacts Haruaki was forty-nine, and knew everyone. Twenty-two years in-house — the last eight as general counsel of a company whose name people recognised — and now three years independent, advising boards on the kind of decisions that keep them awake. He was good, and he was well liked, and his contacts list ran to more than a thousand names. He had, one Sunday, a genuinely useful piece of work he could not do alone. He needed a specialist — someone he could trust, at short notice, on something delicate. He scrolled through the thousand names for forty minutes. He knew almost all of them. He had met them at conferences, sat on panels with them, exchanged pleasantries at industry dinners for two decades. He could tell you what firm they were at, roughly what they did, and where they'd been before. And he could not tell you how any of them thought. Not one. Not really. Not the way you'd need to before handing someone a problem that mattered — where what you need to know isn't their credentials but their judgement: what they'd do when the client is wrong, whether they'd say so, what they'd protect if something had to give. A thousand contacts, and he called nobody. He did the work himself, over a weekend he should have spent with his family. It was competent. It was not what it would have been with the right person beside him, and he knew it. And on the Monday he sat looking at the list and thought: I have spent twenty years meeting people and building nothing. The One Who Called Him The exception, when he thought about it, was a woman called Sinead. They had met three years earlier — one conversation, at a poorly attended seminar, of the kind that goes on far longer than it should because the room has emptied and nobody wants to leave yet. She had asked him — not as a pleasantry, but as a real question — why he'd left a job everyone assumed was the summit. And he had told her. About the board decision he had signed off on, years earlier, that had been legally immaculate and quietly wrong, and how he had watched the consequences arrive slowly, over eighteen months, in a way that nobody could ever attribute to the moment he'd said yes. Nobody blamed him. Nobody knew. That was the problem. He had left because he wanted to be the person who says the difficult thing before it's a legal question — and you cannot do that as the last stop in the process. She kept asking, and so he told her the rest. About the acquisition he had stopped — not on legal grounds, because there weren't any, but because he had read the founder's letters to staff and understood, in a way the diligence never would, that the culture would eat the deal within a year. He had been right. It was the best judgement of his career, and it appears nowhere on any record. And about why any of it mattered to him. His father, a schoolteacher, who had once refused to sign something and lost a promotion for it, and had never mentioned it again to anyone but his son. Then she told him hers. The audit she should have escalated and didn't, and the eleven months she'd spent afterwards making sure she'd never again be the person who saw it first and said nothing. What she'd got right that nobody knew about. And why she does this work at all. Two people, one hour, and everything that actually matters about how each of them thinks. Since that evening, Sinead had rung him four times — twice for advice, once with work, once to send him a client she said was "exactly your kind of problem, not mine." One conversation, three years earlier. And it was the only relationship on his list that had ever done anything. Why Contacts Don't Become Relationships Haruaki's list was a record of introductions. It was not a network, in any sense that matters. Because here's what actually happened at every one of those conferences and dinners: he told people what he did, they told him what they did, and both of them left knowing a fact that could have been read off a website. Facts don't make relationships. Understanding does. And understanding requires two things that a pleasant professional exchange almost never contains. The first is that someone has to go first. Somebody has to say a true thing — not an impressive one — and take the small risk that the other person doesn't reciprocate. Sinead's question was the risk. Haruaki's answer was the leap. The second is that it has to be reciprocal. This is the part most professionals miss. A relationship is not built when you tell someone how you think. It's built when both of you do — because what makes you call someone three years later isn't that they were interesting. It's that you know what they'd do. That is why Sinead rang him and the other thousand didn't. Not because she liked him more. Because she knew how he thought about being wrong — and one day, she had a client who needed exactly that. What Haruaki Did Differently He started, cautiously, doing what Sinead had done to him. He asked people real questions. Not what do you do? — he'd asked that a thousand times and learnt nothing. He asked: what did you learn from that? And: what would you have done differently? And, when someone described work they clearly cared about: why does that matter to you? They were not clever questions. They were simply questions nobody asks — and that turns out to be the entire trick. People are almost never invited to say what they've learnt. Offered the invitation, sincerely, they take it. And he went first. He told people about the decision that was legally immaculate and quietly wrong, and the eighteen months of slow consequences, and why he left. He was surprised, every time, by how little it cost him and how much it changed the conversation. Within a year he had perhaps fifteen relationships in which he could genuinely say: I know how this person thinks.Fifteen, out of a thousand names. Fifteen is a network. A thousand is a list. And when the difficult work came again — the specialist, the short notice, the delicate thing — he knew exactly who to ring. That person said yes straightaway.  How to Build Relationships That Last: What Haruaki's Story Shows Understand people, don't collect them. A contact knows what you do. A relationship knows how you think. Only one of them will ever call you. Go first — with whichever story the moment calls for. Someone stuck in a problem you once got wrong? Your failure. Someone doubting whether an approach can work? Your success. Someone deciding whether you mean any of it? The reason you do this at all. Your passion. Somebody has to say a true thing before a conversation becomes real. It is a small risk, and it is nearly always repaid — and if it isn't, you have lost one conversation, which is the cheapest possible price. Ask the questions nobody asks. What did you learn from that? What would you do differently? Why does that matter to you? You will be remembered as the person whose conversation went somewhere real, which is a rarer thing than you'd think. Make it an exchange, not a performance. Telling someone how you think is half of it. Understanding how they think is the half that makes them ring you three years later. Fifteen is a network. A thousand names is admin. Depth is what makes a relationship useful; breadth just makes it long. You Already Have What They Need to Know Twenty-five years held everything Haruaki needed to be understood. Not his CV — everyone on that list had his CV. What nobody had was the decision he still thinks about, the eighteen months of quiet consequences, and the reason he walked away from the summit. He had never told anyone. Except, once, a woman at an empty seminar who asked a real question — and she was the only person who ever rang. Yours are there in the same way. What you got wrong and what it taught you. What you saw that others walked past. Why you do this at all. CLOSING That's today's story — How Do I Build Professional Relationships That Last? And if you want to go deeper, my second Professional Self-Coaching resource — Get the Client, for networking and building professional relationships — is there when you're ready. All the details and links are in the show notes, or you can find everything at www.schoolofworklife.com. Remember: A contact knows what you do. A relationship knows how you think — and only one of them will ever call you. Thank you for listening.