Robert Steven Kaplan: The Importance of Building Strong Relationships

In order to reach your potential and do what you're really meant to do, you're gonna need some help. You can't do this alone; you need coaching to do it. You need feedback, and you need people to talk to about your fears, your insecurities, your doubts.

Sometimes you just need people to talk to you for a reality check. The thing that struck me, really struck me and shook me when I came here to Harvard Business School, is I would have a student come to my office and really talk to me about a difficult situation they're going through. The first question I normally ask them is, "Who'd you talk to about it?" Invariably, the answer is almost always no one.

What I've realized is, in this hyper-connected world we live in, people don't have that many relationships. Relationship means mutual trust, mutual respect, and mutual understanding. There's an exercise in three things I think you can do to help build understanding, trust, and respect.

That is self-disclosure. In order to have a relationship with someone and have them understand you, you have to tell them something about yourself. I don't mean something superficial; I mean something fundamental about yourself—maybe your upbringing, your parents, traumas in your life, something that would help them understand you better. A lot of people are so buttoned up, they don't ever do that.

Number two, and when I say I call it inquiry, which means asking someone a question that would help you understand them better. How many times does a senior person in the company take a trip with subordinates and they don't learn a damn thing about them in the entire business trip because they never asked? They never ask. Just ask questions; a lot of us are not good at that.

Then the third thing is: do you seek advice? You frame a situation that you want advice on, or an area of self-doubt, and ask for advice. Just think how great you feel when somebody tries to seek your advice on something. I feel flattered; they're showing me a lot of respect.

Now, why do I suggest doing those three things? They help people understand you better; they help you understand the person you're trying to have a relationship with better. They build trust, and those three things help build relationships.

The reason I go through this in this book is you need to have relationships with people. You can't be an island. More often than not, I find when people are struggling in their lives or have regrets, this is one ingredient that they failed to work on. So, I'm trying to talk about how do you build a relationship so that you can actually go to work on doing it...