How to Work with (Almost) Anyone

1. Build Best Possible Relationships (BPRs) for Success and Happiness

The quality of your working relationships determines your success and your happiness. Stop leaving it to chance. Start building the best possible relationships.

Importance of relationships: Your success and happiness at work depend significantly on the quality of your working relationships. These include interactions with managers, bosses, colleagues, peers, prospects, and key clients.

Current state: Most people leave the health and fate of these relationships to chance. They exchange pleasantries, hope for the best, and immediately dive into work. This approach often leads to disappointment, misunderstandings, and suboptimal relationships.

The solution: Actively build Best Possible Relationships (BPRs) by intentionally designing and managing how you work with people. BPRs are characterized by three key attributes:

• Safe: Remove fear and create psychological safety
• Vital: Amplify the good and create a sense of purpose, autonomy, and mastery
• Repairable: Build resilience to fix damage and carry on stronger than before

2. Conduct Keystone Conversations to Establish Safe, Vital, and Repairable Relationships

Create relationships that are safe, vital, and repairable.

The Keystone Conversation: At the heart of creating a BPR lies the Keystone Conversation. Like a keystone in architecture that locks an arch together, this conversation establishes the foundation for a stable and thriving relationship.

Benefits of Keystone Conversations:

• Generate shared responsibility for the relationship
• Create permission to continue talking about the relationship in good and hard times
• Provide a deeper understanding of the other person

Outcomes: A successful Keystone Conversation establishes:

• A shared commitment to something that matters
• Permission to talk again about how to keep succeeding
• A focus on the relationship's safety, vitality, and repairability

3. Prepare for Keystone Conversations with Five Essential Questions

The questions are straightforward and powerful. They're easy enough to answer quickly... and they take some work to answer well.

The Five Essential Questions:

1. The Amplify Question: What's your best?

   • Identify your most important qualities and strengths
   • Focus on amplifying the good

2. The Steady Question: What are your practices and preferences?

   • Recognize your habits and preferred ways of working
   • Help others support your best work

3. The Good Date Question: What can you learn from successful past relationships?

   • Draw on lessons from positive experiences
   • Understand patterns of success

4. The Bad Date Question: What can you learn from frustrating past relationships?

   • Identify patterns of failure
   • Learn from past challenges

5. The Repair Question: How will you fix it when things go wrong?

   • Acknowledge that every relationship will have rough patches
   • Plan for accelerating recovery after disappointments or disruptions

Preparation: Take time to answer these questions thoughtfully before the conversation. Be brave, vulnerable, and truthful in your responses.

4. Invite and Initiate the Keystone Conversation with Confidence

Be the person who starts.

Making the first move: Recognize that there's never a perfect time to have this conversation, so take the initiative to start it.

When to initiate:

• Before first meeting for long-term working relationships
• In existing relationships that are going well
• To reset relationships that have gone stale
• After repairing a broken relationship

How to invite:

• Explain what the Keystone Conversation is about
• Share the five questions and how you'll prepare
• Invite them to prepare as well
• Allow them to decide some details (e.g., time and place)

Sample phrases:

• "I'd like us to chat about how we work together."
• "Let's talk about how we bring out the best in both of us, what things we want to avoid, and how we'll keep this relationship at its best even when the work is hard."

5. Create a Safe Environment for Open Dialogue

Is it safe, is it safe, is it safe, is it safe, is it safe?

Understanding safety: The brain constantly scans the environment to determine if it's safe. The Keystone Conversation, being unusual and inviting vulnerability, may initially feel dangerous.

TERA model: Increase the TERA Quotient to make the conversation feel safer:

• Tribe: Are you with me or against me?
• Expectation: Do I know the future or don't I?
• Rank: Are you more important or less important than I am?
• Autonomy: Do I get a say or don't I?

Strategies to increase safety:

• Choose an appropriate location
• Be curious and ask questions
• Share your own vulnerability
• Co-create the conversation
• Be the "strongest signal in the room" by embodying the mood you want to create

Key phrases:

• "Thanks for having this conversation with me—it means a lot."
• "What do you want from this conversation? What would make it most helpful for you?"
• "Do you want to answer this first, or shall I?"

6. Navigate the Conversation with Curiosity and Vulnerability

Nothing needs to be solved, decided, or fixed.

Approach: Treat the Keystone Conversation as a space for sharing useful, true, and heartfelt information. Focus on listening with intent and seeking to understand.

Key strategies:

• Don't skip the hard things: Work through all five questions, including the challenging ones
• Ask and answer: If you hold the balance of power, resist the temptation to only ask questions without answering them yourself
• Stay curious: Use phrases like "I'm curious to hear your answer to this" and "And what else?"
• Share vulnerability: Offer your own answers and insights

Balancing act: Navigate between asking questions and sharing your own perspectives. Remember that the goal is mutual understanding, not problem-solving or decision-making in the moment.

7. End Strong and Commit to Ongoing Maintenance

You've made a brilliant start.

The power of endings: Due to the recency effect, how you end the conversation significantly impacts its overall impression and effectiveness.

Strategies for a strong finish:

1. Share the learning:

   • Ask: "What was most useful here for you?"
   • Share what was most valuable for you
   • Reinforce the most helpful parts of the conversation

2. Appreciate the conversation:

   • Acknowledge the risk taken and commitment made
   • Celebrate the start of building a safe, vital, and repairable relationship
   • Use phrases like "Thank you, that was really helpful. I'm excited for what's ahead."

Commitment to maintenance: Recognize that this is just the beginning. Stay committed to the BPR's success with regular maintenance and follow-up conversations.

8. Apply Six Principles of Relationship Maintenance

Stay curious. Stay vulnerable. Stay kind. Adjust always. Repair often. Reset as needed.

Mindset principles:

1. Stay curious: Recognize that you don't have the full picture and remain open-minded
2. Stay vulnerable: Share information, opinions, and feelings that are useful for the BPR
3. Stay kind: Remember that both parties are trying their best and assume positive intent

Action principles:
4. Adjust always: Make small, frequent adjustments to adapt to changing conditions
5. Repair often: Address small issues quickly to prevent larger problems
6. Reset as needed: Be willing to recharge and change the relationship when necessary

Application: Use these principles to guide your everyday interactions and maintain the health of your BPRs.

9. Orient Yourself Before Taking Action in Difficult Situations

Observe before you act.

The importance of orientation: When a working relationship becomes difficult, it's crucial to step back and understand the situation before taking action.

Two key questions for orientation:

1. What are the facts?

   • Separate data (observable facts) from judgments (opinions and interpretations)
   • Identify your feelings and what you want from the situation

2. What position are you in?

   • Recognize if you're in a "one up" or "one down" position in the relationship
   • Understand the dynamic you're creating together

Benefits: This practice helps you gain a more nuanced and compassionate perspective, revealing new options for moving forward.

10. Adjust, Repair, and Reset Relationships as Needed

Disintegration is inevitable.

Ongoing maintenance: Recognize that all relationships experience wear and tear, requiring regular upkeep.

Adjustment strategies:

• Regularly ask, "What's working well?"
• Pay attention to small gestures and "bids" for connection

Repair techniques:

• Address unsaid and unsurfaced issues promptly
• Learn how to "fight" constructively when conflicts arise

Resetting the relationship:

• Be willing to have another Keystone Conversation to reforge the BPR
• If ending the relationship, choose how to depart:
  1. The Ghost: Disappearing without explanation
  2. The Cortés: Burning bridges dramatically
  3. The Wake: Celebrating the relationship's positive aspects and learning

11. Deepen Self-Awareness to Enhance Relationship Building

Know thyself.

Importance of self-knowledge: Understanding yourself better enables more effective relationship building and maintenance.

Self-awareness exercises:

• Archetypes: Identify which roles (hero, mentor, ally, shapeshifter) you naturally embody
• The Boasting Friend: Imagine how a friend would describe your best qualities
• Where Did You Learn Your Work Habits?: Explore the origins of your work preferences
• Hide & Seek: Recognize when you hide or showcase your gifts in relationships

Application: Use these insights to communicate more effectively about your strengths, preferences, and potential blind spots during Keystone Conversations and ongoing relationship maintenance.

Last updated: November 18, 2024