Business success can be defined in many ways – achievement of a firm’s goals and vision, cost reduction, successful strategy implementation, meeting revenue goals, etc. Firm-wide, team based, or individual, not matter your goals or desired outcome, a key success factor is one’s ability to build strong relationships with colleagues, managers, clients and often competitors.

Ed Wallace’s Business Relationships that Last: 5 Steps for Transforming Contacts into High-Performing Relationships proposes that every relationship is built on a foundation of three essential qualities – Credibility, Integrity, and Authenticity.

• Credibility – the quality that makes other believe in you, your words, and your actions
• Integrity – being trustworthy in our actions and character
• Authenticity – being truly genuine and honest with our clients about who we are and what we know

Each aligns with a core tenant and value of the EvMBA program – each difficult to teach or develop in any student (or employee). Each quality requires a level of self-awareness and reflection that can be easily lost in the core or elective MBA curriculum of finance, statistical modeling or product and brand management.

Wallace provides a framework for developing high-impact relationships and introduces a number of activities to spark your thinking about who your key relationships are, what “blockers” are currently holding you back, and actions to take to strengthen your key relationships in a proactive way.

It’s a good and quick read. (Maybe a good one for August, as it’s ~200 pages cover to cover)

Would love to hear your ideas (and actions) on how you build and develop relationships with key stakeholders, colleagues and acquaintances.