Chapter 254

Your every correspondence from the top is an opportunity to nurture a relationship.

I really need to remember this, because I communicate a lot by written means, including old fashioned hand-written thank you notes and snail mail. For the last 25 years that email has existed, far too high a percentage of all those emails have been communicating facts. Or answering someone’s questions. Or outlining a decision. Or sending instructions. Or reprimanding someone’s actions. And its no longer just emails, but also mass communications, twitter, texting, responding to blogs, and more. You probably communicate much more than you realize.

Whether you are at the top or at the bottom of whatever relational, corporate or organization structure, I think you can be nurturing rather than only instructive, or outlining, or answering, etc. But I am equally certain that it requires a big shift in thinking and approach in order to do it. The subtle change in writing it out, may be the easiest part of the process.

But don’t let your position on the ladder determine your commitment to nurture your relationships. Think of all your writing, digital and analog, as another opportunity to build relationships. Honestly I think for many people, texting, twitter, and email are the only relational touch points that they have. Why would you not leverage those, in new, and potentially very rewarding, perspectives of writing? I think that there are several ways you could do this.

1.  Be at least equally concerned about the person than the content of the correspondence.

2.  Share something that you are going through personally, this is a two-way street.

3.  Ask for help. People love to help generally.

4.  Ask about their extended family or loved ones, very specifically, and follow up in the next communication.

It won’t be long, until you see a change in how people respond to you.