Building & Maintaining Relationship: Emotional Intelligence Phase 5

In a previous blog post, I provided an example of making your LinkedIn connections a warmer/closer connection.  I want to do this with between 5-10 connections weekly.  But in the process of building your network, look for ways to make that initial connection and response more personal.  Look at their website, blog, activity, and background to give them feedback.  Look at ways you can help them and they you in the future.  This relationship must be mutual and if they ask you to introduce them to one of your contacts, do so if it helps build a closer relationship.  However, just because you connect via an electronic invite, this doesn't mean you have to spend a lot of networking capital on that person.  A relationship has to be nourished and that takes several communications, exchanges of information and a meeting.

Last week I loaded a presentation on my LI profile of a PowerPoint presentation I gave at two professional networking groups.  If you want the copy, let me know.  It was about finding hope and light by effectively building our brand.  It also included some of the other LinkedIn helps in getting a job.  However, many of the suggestions in the presentation referred to other helps on this blog.

While this is the last presentation on Emotional Intelligence for the time being, the next two subjects will include analyzing an organization's performance from a quality perspective and Obtaining Payback in Your Innovation Pursuits.  While these might not help all my readers in finding employment, it should help those in management or leadership pursuits.

Emotional Intelligence requires us to also have strong relationships with our spouses or significant others as we want to rely on them for support and love.  In a class my wife and I presented to an institute class, one of the lessons was on using the "I statement" during times of discord or irritation.  This same concept was used in a teambuilding training program I presented when two co-workers don't get along.  Mediation is used by the supervisor when it's necessary to stop a verbal dispute or to help two parties get along better.  The "I statement" is used to correct an irritation.  Say for example someone hums at work, eats at his desk and the tuna or strong cheese smells reak up the place, etc.  Using the "I statement" the offended party says something like this:  "I feel (state emotion) when you (state offending activity), could you please (what you would like them to do).  Generally if someone hears and empathizes with our emotions, they are less inclined to continue the offending behavior.  Try this is your various relationshps when someone fails to pick up their socks or dirty clothes, to rinse their dish and load it in the dishwasher, or just makes offensive noises or gestures.

At a talk last evening, Thomas Monson talked about the success of marriage being eroded by worldly influences and our unwillingness to make the relationship work.  It is not about marrying the right person but being the right person.  He also mentioned we need to "choose your love and then love your choice."  If we are to succeed in our pursuits to finding a job or any other earthly challenge, we need to be the right person in any relationship.