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How to grow professional relationships

tej.as

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Re: How to grow professional relationships

#81

Post by beryilma »

tejaskumar_ wrote: post #7
alexpotato wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No matter how much I tried to engage or find common ground, they kept shutting down any attempt at teamwork. This reminds me of a story from when I was in business school. We were assigned groups for project work and it was very difficult if not impossible to transfer out of a group. This was by design b/c the point was to teach the students to deal with interpersonal issues and group dynamics. My friend was in a g…

Did they consider kicking Bob out of the group?

I know of a graduate-level software engineering course at a reputable US university, where getting kicked out of the project group is a possibility and gets the person an automatic F grade.

Re: How to grow professional relationships

#82

Post by ghaff »

tejaskumar_ wrote: post #29
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very good point. What's the old saying "A friend in need, is a friend, indeed." ? I like to have personal relationships, as opposed to corporate ones. Funny story: During the 1990s, my direct boss was a fairly low-key Japanese man. I really liked him. He was a marketing type, so we didn't really have a technical basis for our relationship. He was a decent chap, and I happily followed his orders. In return, he gave me…

Hahaha, what a lovely story! Really shows what happens when we engage as _people_, not _opportunities_.

This is a lot of the misunderstanding around "networking" you see in discussions. A lot of tech people see it as an unwelcome task/burden. Whereas, it should be generally viewed as a pleasurable opportunity to just get to know people who may (or may not) be useful at some point in the future.

Re: How to grow professional relationships

#83

Post by spiderfarmer »

dennis_jeeves2 wrote: post #68

Nearly every professional 'relationship' I've had has been transient after you stop working with them, with people completely failing to reciprocate even after multiple attempts to reach out. From talking to people I know that this experience is not unique to me, this appears to be the norm, may be it's the industry I work in : software development.

It's not that I don’t want my private life to seep into work, it's that I don't want work to seep into my private life.

So I don't need friends that are also colleagues or clients. I already have great friends. I'm a great colleague in every way possible, but I never feel the need to be anything more than that.

For most people work / life balance is already tipping towards work. They want it to be the other way around.

Re: How to grow professional relationships

#84

Post by askafriend »

that_guy_iain wrote: post #59

I find this quite funny, I've worked with this author at a company and the stories of his behaviour to other coworkers there make my WTF collection. So to find him talking about growing professional relationships either means he's made massive strides in his behaviour or it's a lot of nonsense. This is the one I always tell people when I explain how WTF IT can be, I wasn't there for it, but it was retold with the aut…

> A female coworker joined and on her first day he went up to her and said "You know you're a slut, right?"

Insane behavior. I'd have to think there's an underlying medical/mental condition here.

Re: How to grow professional relationships

#85

Post by ghaff »

the_snooze wrote: post #51
lovich wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Relationships are like a garden, they require continual, repeated effort to maintain. It doesn’t need to be an onerous amount of effort, but reaching out to people to shoot the shit once even a year is often enough to maintain the relationship for professional networks at least. In software we have an unfortunate amount of people who don’t value social connections at all so we end up with a large tranche of people wh…

>In software we have an unfortunate amount of people who don’t value social connections at all so we end up with a large tranche of people who can’t get past the “but why would I talk to them without a specific reason?” argument and then lament why all of their relationships end up transactional, or even better lament why no one will help them specifically because all their relationships are transactional and they ar…

Post a longtime job out of grad school via on-campus interview (which is a bit of an irrelevant story itself), every other of my (few) jobs were through a professional network. Nothing formal, but people I ran into and maintained some connection with. I know there are a lot of people who (at least until recently) are they just ping a recruiter and get offers dropped in their lap. Or who are deeply resentful that it seems like "who you know" is the modus operandi for some. But without being anything like deliberate or cynical about the whole thing, it worked for me.

Re: How to grow professional relationships

#87

Post by beryilma »

lovich wrote: post #19
mkmk wrote: post #9

On the practical side of things, one important behavior that I see people frequently forget is the importance of following up. This is probably the biggest differentiator between relationships that languish in the early stages, versus those that progress along the author’s continuum. It’s always a bit strange when you only hear from people once every few years, just as they need an intro or career advice or whatever-…

Relationships are like a garden, they require continual, repeated effort to maintain. It doesn’t need to be an onerous amount of effort, but reaching out to people to shoot the shit once even a year is often enough to maintain the relationship for professional networks at least. In software we have an unfortunate amount of people who don’t value social connections at all so we end up with a large tranche of people wh…

> because all their relationships are transactional and they aren’t offering anything of value

Why is a transactional relationship considered bad? And why would one consider a transactional relationship as something not offering value?

I don't like small talk, but if I like the person I would try to help them anyway with their transactional request, with the expectation that I might have a similar transactional request at some point in the future. If the relationship is equally transactional in both directions, I don't see a problem with that.

Re: How to grow professional relationships

#88

Post by sfink »

jameshush wrote: post #11
mkmk wrote: post #9

On the practical side of things, one important behavior that I see people frequently forget is the importance of following up. This is probably the biggest differentiator between relationships that languish in the early stages, versus those that progress along the author’s continuum. It’s always a bit strange when you only hear from people once every few years, just as they need an intro or career advice or whatever-…

I'll add to this: If you want to practice following up but are afraid of "bugging" someone, start by wishing 1-3 people happy birthday every day. I put every person I know birthday on one giant Google calendar and wish people happy every day. It's a super easy way to at least say "hi" to someone once a year.

I tried this, but it didn't work very well for me. Maybe I was just catching people at a bad time? They'd always brush me off with some version of

  "uh, it isn't my birthday"

  "you've said that to me every day for a week, please stop"

  "stay away from me".
What could I be doing wrong? Am I just choosing the wrong people to try to befriend?

Re: How to grow professional relationships

#89

Post by impendia »

beryilma wrote: post #87
lovich wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Relationships are like a garden, they require continual, repeated effort to maintain. It doesn’t need to be an onerous amount of effort, but reaching out to people to shoot the shit once even a year is often enough to maintain the relationship for professional networks at least. In software we have an unfortunate amount of people who don’t value social connections at all so we end up with a large tranche of people wh…

> because all their relationships are transactional and they aren’t offering anything of value Why is a transactional relationship considered bad? And why would one consider a transactional relationship as something not offering value? I don't like small talk, but if I like the person I would try to help them anyway with their transactional request, with the expectation that I might have a similar transactional reque…

I am an academic mathematician, and one thing I love about our culture is that transactional relationships are considered perfectly okay.

I can invite a colleague at another university, whom I might consider an old friend even though I haven't spoken to them in ages -- to come give a talk in my department. Very often they'll agree to come; we'll roll out the red carpet for them, and they and I will have a wonderful time.

That said, this is far from universal in academia, and many academics do enjoy small talk and prefer to keep in touch regularly.

I don't think any sort of relationship can be called "bad" or "good" in the abstract -- but a lot of people consider transactional relationships "bad" in the sense that they don't like them. And, if you want to build relationships with people, often you have to do it on their terms, or at least try to meet them halfway.

Re: How to grow professional relationships

#90

Post by ghaff »

beryilma wrote: post #87
lovich wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Relationships are like a garden, they require continual, repeated effort to maintain. It doesn’t need to be an onerous amount of effort, but reaching out to people to shoot the shit once even a year is often enough to maintain the relationship for professional networks at least. In software we have an unfortunate amount of people who don’t value social connections at all so we end up with a large tranche of people wh…

> because all their relationships are transactional and they aren’t offering anything of value Why is a transactional relationship considered bad? And why would one consider a transactional relationship as something not offering value? I don't like small talk, but if I like the person I would try to help them anyway with their transactional request, with the expectation that I might have a similar transactional reque…

If you "like" a person, it's probably not really a transactional relationship. "Hi, I'm one of the 100K alumni who went to the same school as you did, can we do coffee?" is.
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