How to grow professional relationships

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.<p>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- the beginning of those conversations is usually a bit of sheepish catch-up on what happened after you last spoke with them. Similarly, there have been times when I have felt like a dope after realizing that I failed to follow up myself after a call, and am again reaching out for another reason.<p>However, when you follow up with someone as simple as “Thanks for connecting me with so and so, we had a great chat” or “I tried that thing you suggested, here’s how it worked out”, you build mutual trust and enthusiasm for a successful outcome to the conversation you had. It’s a genuine and thoughtful way to grow your relationship.

Nearly every professional &#x27;relationship&#x27; I&#x27;ve had has been transient after you stop working with them, with people completely failing to reciprocate even after multiple attempts to reach out.<p>From talking to people I know that this experience is not unique to me, this appears to be the norm, may be it&#x27;s the industry I work in : software development.

Abandoning lost causes can be one of the toughest but most freeing decisions in relationships. I once worked with a colleague who seemed completely resistant to collaboration. No matter how much I tried to engage or find common ground, they kept shutting down any attempt at teamwork. But one day, I realized I was investing so much energy into something that wasn’t going anywhere.

If you need to read something like this, consider it a mildly bad sign.<p>If you think this transactionally, it may actively hurt your ability to build these relationships.<p>Simply be nice, be on time, work hard. Treat everyone, boss, colleague or subordinate with high degree of respect. Remember that they are human beings and have families, and respect that. Consider everyone in your company as a member of a team working for a common goal, and presume positive intent. Treat competitors and vendors with respect and act ethically. Just have good manners and empathy, really. This is much better because it works universally, not just in professional relationships.

I only skimmed it, but the framework is pretty sound, aside from the fact that what should be the focal point<p><pre><code> Love your neighbor as yourself </code></pre> seems to be buried at the end, so it doesn&#x27;t look like he really takes that teaching to heart. I hope I&#x27;m wrong about this.<p>Still, it&#x27;s better than anything else I&#x27;ve seen on here in terms of group dynamics. It&#x27;s a good step in right direction in this fraught world.<p>ETA: And his tech skills are legit. I&#x27;ve been on the internet since before HTML, and his site is very well done. And his smile does not betray any negativity, so he looks like a legitimately good human being. I&#x27;m rarely impressed, but am with his site.

I find this quite funny, I&#x27;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&#x27;s made massive strides in his behaviour or it&#x27;s a lot of nonsense.<p>This is the one I always tell people when I explain how WTF IT can be, I wasn&#x27;t there for it, but it was retold with the author in the room laughing about it. A female coworker joined and on her first day he went up to her and said &quot;You know you&#x27;re a slut, right?&quot; And there were tons of stories of him saying the craziest of shit.<p>That company had serious culture problems, from a CTO who would take his anger out on juniors, demand complete nonsense that made no technical sense, and a revolving door of employees who were leaving because of the CTO or Tejas.<p>Funny enough, in my personal opinion, Tejas was always well-meaning and rather friendly he just would say the weirdest of shit ever.

It is nice if your profession has a yearly conference that most people go to. It is a place and time designated to see those colleagues in person and strengthen&#x2F;maintain relationships.

I&#x27;ve no idea what to take from this. Large parts sound like carefully planned entryism: Identify the gatekeepers, if they reject you, move on.<p>The situation where the gatekeepers do let you in but their gatekeeping is not apparent until years later is not mentioned.<p>Providing excellent work is not mentioned.<p>Given the political state of software &quot;development&quot;, the poster might be on to something, but it is hard to find any concrete advice.

It took me a long time to realize that conversations are the building blocks of relationships. Want a relationship? You need to have conversations.

This is one of the most inspiring and useful read I have come across on this topic in several years. Thanks for sharing!

Don’t try to “network”. Try to “attract” instead. People are jaded af these days.

&gt; A lesson I learned from reading Mark Manson’s “Models” as an awkward stupid teenager who wanted to get girls is that the world is an abundant one full of all kinds of people: some who shun us, others who love us. When someone reveals that there’s no room for a relationship, they do us a huge favor and free us up to go pursue others who are open to it. I’ve seen great success in quickly being thankful for the data and moving on.<p>Getting strong pickup artist vibes here. I needed that sort of knowledge too. Married nowadays, would&#x27;ve been single forever probably if I wouldn&#x27;t have gone through that phase.<p>It makes sense that you break social interactions down like this. This type of thinking flows from pickup.<p>It also puts into context that you said stuff like &quot;you know you&#x27;re a slut&quot; (which you don&#x27;t remember doing but you mentioned having done similar enough things). It seems you mixed pickup with work. I was a high schooler when I learned it and did it solely outside of high school. So I wouldn&#x27;t run into these things.

evil people have to draw charts on how to interact with their minions rather than being an upstanding human being who has tried to read a few icelandic poems before...