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Relationship management for exectutives: develop professional relationships in a pro-active, sincere and well-informed way

Building relationships with new colleagues or business partners becomes easier if you take ‘relationship management' seriously – especially if there are different companies, industries, or national cultures involved.

A fair and respectful approach to collaborating across boundaries

Relationship Management
Relationship Management

In a nutshell, professional relationship management is about how you effectively take colleagues and business partners seriously and treat them with respect and fairness – even if they have a different understanding of respect and fairness.

Managers and executives will be much more in a position to contribute to the success of their companies if they succeed in building a stable relationship of trust with their colleagues and partners – compared to a situation characterised by a lack of mutual trust,
or even mutual distrust.

This is important, since success in management positions actually depends very much on the development of trusting relationships. The impression that they cannot trust the other one can lead managers to stop projects or actually break up business relationships.

However, the reason behind such a collapse of mutual trust between business partners or colleagues can actually be cultural differences involved – like different expectations, values, work attitudes or negotiation styles. 

The preconditions for any successful relationship management are, in the first place, the sincerity and seriosity in what you do, and in the second place your guiding knowledge on the relevant differences in cultures and personalities that affect management and business interaction.