Beautiful Short-Term Business Relationships

“Some peo­ple come into your life for a rea­son, a sea­son or a life­time.” — Anony­mous

In a recent half-day strat­e­gy ses­sion, I had a con­ver­sa­tion with a CEO and an exec­u­tive about a close col­league who had recent­ly left their team. They had done spec­tac­u­lar work togeth­er and even became close friends out­side the office. This direct report had been so good, and had become such an incred­i­ble thought part­ner, that they made the exec­u­tive notably bet­ter at what they did.

Clear­ly, it was a beau­ti­ful rela­tion­ship — so much so that they were dev­as­tat­ed when the col­league left. It hurt.

So, we talked about it, and what came up was that it was painful because the exec­u­tive had a sto­ry in his head that the rela­tion­ship was sup­posed to last for­ev­er. He felt betrayed and didn’t want to invest in build­ing oth­er rela­tion­ships in case it hap­pened again.

No won­der he was dis­ap­point­ed! That’s like say­ing that a movie or a piece of music is so good it’ll nev­er end. And that’s just not possible.

Love the Lessons

It’s impor­tant to love the lessons (Chap­ter 15 in my book), and to see the pos­i­tive in every situation.

As long as he could only see the neg­a­tive, he’d be held back from build­ing the qual­i­ty of rela­tion­ships that gets incred­i­ble work done, in this company’s culture.

Appre­ci­ate that painful expe­ri­ences make you stronger and smarter.

To be OK, he need­ed to rewire and change his sto­ry because, truth is, some rela­tion­ships are meant to be short, some are meant to be medi­um term, and oth­ers are forever.

To con­sid­er that all good rela­tion­ships will last ​‘for­ev­er’ is not the health­i­est approach – or even pos­si­ble. So be open to great, short-term rela­tion­ships which can bring some­thing fresh and amaz­ing to your life – and appre­ci­ate them for what they are.

The Chal­lenge

Think about the amaz­ing work­ing rela­tion­ships you have:

• Which ones may be meant to be short term that you’re try­ing to make long term?
  • What’s your next step?
• Which ones have out­lived their life­cy­cle and con­tin­ue out of loy­al­ty or habit?
  • How do you move on?
• Which ones have the poten­tial to be long term that you can put more ener­gy into?
  • What can you do about that?
• For your for­ev­er rela­tion­ships, what can you do to enhance them?