Interpersonal Relationships - The Magic Formula That Makes 1+1 More Than 2

Why little can be achieved alone and much can be accomplished together. How collaboration works in a professional context.

It’s always about personal advantage!

What’s your reaction to this statement?

“Of course it’s about me! That’s always been my motto.”

Or

“Absolutely not, that’s antisocial! The common good must stand above the individual’s self-interest.”

Let’s unpack this together. I hope we can agree on a common perspective.

But if you have a different opinion, don’t hesitate to share it with me. You can use the comments or send me a personal message. I’m very curious!

It’s About Creating Value

When I talk about the business environment, we often immediately think of numbers like revenue, profit margins, or ROI.

But actually, the purpose of every business activity is to create value for which someone voluntarily gives up something that belongs to them.

Yes, this business value can often indeed be measured in money.

However, it becomes more difficult when it’s not about companies, but about people.

In human interaction and collaboration, compensation often doesn’t occur through direct exchange, but happens with a big unknown time delay.

I help someone else today and get something back sometime, possibly.

Another special feature is that this compensation often doesn’t consist of money, but of other, non-material values such as social status, services and competencies that I don’t have myself, or simply by having something taken off my plate that I don’t like doing.

And this is where community comes into play, because the community can also give something to the individual that represents value to them.

It’s not just about the relationship from person to person, but also about the relationship from the individual to the community.

Take a moment and think about what other forms this compensation could take, so that it’s “worth it” for you to do something for someone else now.

Precisely because this connection between creating value for others and receiving value for oneself can be so diverse and non-concrete, people must enter into relationships with each other.

Relationships are necessary for the system of human society to function.

If you have a good relationship with another person, you will receive something from them without having to give something back immediately.

You will also give something without immediately expecting something in return.

But the reverse is also true. If you believe that the other person won’t do anything for you, then you won’t do anything for them either.

That’s called a bad relationship, and it develops in the same way as a good relationship, namely by gaining experience with the other person.

So let’s next look at how a good relationship comes about.

Trust

Trust is the conviction that you will receive from someone what you expect from them.

Every person has expectations of the other person with whom they interact.

When these expectations are met to a high degree, trust grows.

I collect positive experiences with the person and therefore assume for the future that my expectations will continue to be met.

If this is mutual, then a good relationship develops between us.

If my expectations are regularly not met, then exactly this experience forms. The advance trust that may have been present initially dwindles.

No relationship develops, instead we distance ourselves.

While trust is lost very quickly, building trust is much more effort-intensive.

It’s not enough to want to meet the other’s expectations, it must actually happen.

That’s why let’s now look at what’s necessary for this.

Communication

Very intensive and honest communication is the first and one of the most important building blocks for building trust, for two reasons:

1. If you don’t talk to the other person, you won’t learn their expectations and therefore you most likely won’t meet them. Believe me, random hits or intuition aren’t enough! You must communicate very intensively and broadly so that you even learn what moves the other person, what help they currently need, what problems burden them, and what support they’re willing to accept.

2. If you communicate frequently and extensively, your counterpart gets the feeling that you’re interested in them and their problem and want to help them. Even if the expected help perhaps doesn’t come or doesn’t work as expected, the experience remains that you wanted to help them, and that’s already half the battle.

Yes, there’s a right measure for communication. Too little communication is harmful, too much communication is annoying. But communicate more rather than less!

Proximity

Proximity to each other is closely related to communication.

It’s much more credible when you look directly into each other’s eyes during communication, directly perceive body language and emotions.

Believe me, it’s no coincidence that executive assistants climb the career ladder much more successfully than other employees.

You can assume that they’re capable and probably smart too, otherwise they wouldn’t have been selected for the job. But there are many more competent and smart employees in the company.

The difference certainly also lies in the fact that they have proximity to the boss, which enables them to build great trust. Believe me, no one promotes someone they’re not sure is worth the trust!

Now not everyone will always have the opportunity to establish this proximity. That shouldn’t stop you from communicating and building trust. Where it’s not so easy, you just have to make more effort.

And don’t limit this just to bosses for the sake of your career, because if you don’t have the trust of your colleagues and they don’t help you, then the boss won’t either.

Authenticity

Authenticity is the next important building block for gaining trust.

Be as you are!

You instinctively sense whether someone is playing a role, and when you have this feeling, it’s not trust-building. You then involuntarily ask yourself: “Why are they doing that? Do they have something to hide?”

This suspicion is fatal and destroys trust.

Authenticity is the basis for predictability, and this in turn pays very strongly into trust.

Be as you are, then the other person knows what to expect from you. They can then adjust their expectations to reality and also understand why something might run differently than they expected.

This also includes openly admitting mistakes and dealing honestly with yourself and the situation.

Empathy

While authenticity was about you, empathy is about the other person.

You must take the time and make the effort to put yourself in the other person’s shoes.

It’s not enough to ask the other person about their expectations and then meet them.

You must find out what really moves the other person, what they expect from you in their inner self, and what is how important to them.

It helps to have known each other for a long time. Over time, it becomes easier to grasp the other’s thoughts, recognize their feelings, and identify their expectations.

Reliability

Meeting expectations also means being reliable.

Actually, this is the simplest discipline in building trust, but it’s still so difficult:

Keep what you promise!

Do what you say!

With expectations that you create yourself, there’s no “I couldn’t have known that!”

Yes, it’s as trivial as it sounds: Those who are unreliable lose trust. You can’t build a good relationship with unreliable people.

Here too, of course, there’s no 100%. Something can slip through. When that happens, authenticity and honesty can often still save the situation.

However, if it becomes the rule to not keep your promises, then trust is gone, and so is the relationship.

Reciprocity

After talking so much about trust as the basis of a relationship, I want to come back to reciprocity.

Reciprocity is the principle of exchanging values.

I give you something, I get something from you.

This principle forms the foundation for a good relationship and for success in a business context.

Trust is the belief or certainty that this principle works between us.

But it’s not enough that we both have trust, we must also actively apply it.

An important basic rule is that reciprocity consists of advances.

Everyone must do the right thing for the other person at the time when they need it.

But at that time, they don’t know whether they will really get the return service sometime and whether the measure will be balanced.

A situation can certainly arise where one person always gives more than the other in the long run. Perhaps because the other can’t give more, or because I myself don’t need more.

In the end, it’s not the balance sheet that’s decisive, but that the principle works at the right time for everyone.

So don’t hesitate, when the other person needs support, give it to them.

Now comes the big but:

There are situations where the other person isn’t willing to do their part of reciprocity. If you recognize this, you must act, otherwise you’re the fool and will be exploited.

Address it, and if it doesn’t change, then draw the consequences.

There are relationships that can’t be patched up and must then be consistently ended.

Willingness to Compromise

An important aspect of reciprocity is the willingness to compromise.

There will always be situations where your own interests are in opposition to the interests of the other person. Here it’s necessary to find a compromise that both can accept.

This requires willingness to compromise on both sides. If one party continuously insists on their advantages, then it’s difficult to build and maintain a good relationship.

So be willing to back down sometimes, trust that the other person has the same attitude.

Network Maintenance

In a business environment, an extensive network of relationships is necessary to be successful yourself and to be part of a successful environment.

That’s why you must develop and maintain a multitude of relationships.

This costs effort and time, but it’s still advisable and even necessary.

Another element of a good relationship is that you also share your network, which you’ve built with great effort, with others.

Reciprocity isn’t just about doing what’s necessary yourself, but also about using your own relationships and the associated trust to help the other person.

Professionalism

With that, I come to the last point for today, professionalism.

To be useful to others, you must also be really good at something yourself.

This requires professionalism.

Professionalism means qualifying yourself in a field, developing skills and abilities, and being able to produce high-quality results.

The profession is where you can create relevant value for others.

You need something that’s your brand. Something that everyone knows you’re particularly good at and that it’s worth building a relationship with you for.

Partnerships Are Based on Functioning Relationships

In the last article, I addressed partnerships and claimed that it makes more sense to build equal partnerships for mutual benefit, rather than practicing collaboration according to the power principle based on unequally distributed power positions.

I claimed that partnerships only work when the people involved build good relationships with each other.

In this article, I’ve now addressed exactly these relationships.

Please write to me about what experiences you’ve had in this topic area and which aspects I may not have covered sufficiently.

We can also chat about it.

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