Relationship…on purpose

I’m someone who is more naturally drawn to ideas, processes, and tasks. That's probably why I don’t usually approach relationships with a lot of rigor and often leave their success (and failure) up to chance. 

But what if that didn’t need to be the case? What if I could relationship on purpose? 

And what would happen if I stopped thinking about relationships as a noun (something that just is) and started thinking about them as a verb (something that I do)? 

And what if being good at relationships wasn’t a trait (something I was either good at or not) but a skill (something I could improve upon if I wanted to)? 

And what if I started to give as much thought and care to my working relationships as I do to my goal setting practices or project management strategies?

While I’d love to claim all the credit and say that I arrived at these questions on my own, I didn't. 

The credit really has to go to Michael Bungay Stanier (often referred to as MBS) and his new book How to Work with (Almost) Anyone. 

On the surface, this short and quippy book, provides a framework and a remarkably practical roadmap for how to build better working relationships, which I’ve already started to use in my day-to-day life. 

But really, this book is so much more than that. 

It’s a call to action to take relationships seriously and treat them with the same care and intention that we treat so many other parts of our working lives. 

So let’s start relationshipping on purpose. Heck, it might even be more fun this way.