"Beyond Networking"
Being with Ron Sukenick
TNNW Contributing Writer
Strategy Ten: Shorten Learning Curves – Move Into Dream Fulfillment
A glorious thing when one has not unlearned what it means to begin.
- Martin Buber
Common Ground Where the Project Arises
Finding common ground will help you jointly move toward dream fulfillment.
The project we are to do together is revealed when we find our overlapping purpose and intention. Common ground. Let’s talk about the word project. We are using it here in two different ways.
To pro-ject refers to a future state: looking ahead. We are pro-jecting into the future a potential outcome. When we see we have choices, we come up with projects to achieve this projection! The project is an undertaking, tangible plan or design that casts us forward. Pro-ject: forward looking. Pro-ject: forward doing.
Out of the contact that takes place between you and the person you are meeting comes the project. Again, it may be a small project and the project is quickly concluded. Or it may be a large project involving many hours, months, or years and great rewards. Stating this again, the project emerges out of the relationship.
Building Context
What is context and how do we use it to project us forward? The power is in your ability to put into context the information you are constantly receiving in the meeting with another.
Context considers the environment, situation, relationship, and language that supports the connection we are trying to make. For example, when I teach a leadership course, I occasionally throw in words like concentric circles and quantum physics. If I don’t tie these words into the discussion, they appear totally out of context or out in left field, and I begin to lose people. People ask if they are in the wrong room. The language and the appropriateness of the conversation in a given setting helps us to set up and establish common context.
The environment also is an important consideration. Individuals have told me about going to lunch with a customer and being told that their customer-supplier relationship was ending due to poor performance or inadequate quality. The interruptions of the restaurant server, the laughter of other patrons, the clanking of dishes, and the brightness of the room contrasted to the information being conveyed. The restaurant environment didn’t fit the message.
Building context, then, is the art of paying attention to environment, the situation at hand, the language used, and weaving together information derived from communication, insight, observations, impressions, and intuition. This is the task of both individuals in the relationship as they strive to make a connection and shorten learning curves.
There are compelling reasons to build context into shortening learning curves.
Building context helps us use our time more efficiently and effectively. Time is a premium for most of us. A context orientation helps us direct our communication to what is most important and align our doing accordingly.
Consider the following thinking points as you jointly look at how your experiences and dreams are matching up as you attend to your joint project.
Thinking Points for Connecting Forward
- Operate out of choice, not out of habit, as you work with the unique individual you are currently partnering with.
- Continuously realign frequency and quality of interaction as you move toward your desired outcome.
Summary
This strategy encourages walking purposively in relationship with others and asking the question what are we to do together. While this question doesn’t need to be asked aloud, keeping the question at the forefront of each meeting helps you pay attention to what is possible between you and another. Shortening your learning curve as your project together emerges, and as you move toward project completion calls for attention to context—the environment, the situation at hand, the language used, information, and the decisions important to moving forward. Continuously asking “process questions” such as how are you are doing collaboratively, what needs to be done, how satisfied is your business partner, and how satisfied are you keeps you addressing process and project improvements along the way—shortening the learning curve as you go along.
Next month, we’re getting down to basics and introducing the strategy of bringing the ordinary to the extraordinary—giving muscle to the tried and true statement of far exceeding expectations.
Ron Sukenick is the Chief Relationship Officer and founder of the Relationship Strategies Institute, a training and Relationship development company that provides innovative, effective and relevant programs and systems for corporations, organizations, and associations. To learn more about the value of Relationship Development, visit his Web site at www.RelationshipStrategiesInstitute.com. You can reach Ron by phone at: 317-216-8210, or by email: rs@relationshipstrategiesinstitute.com
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