Results Through Relationships: Building Trust, Performance and Profit through People
by: Joe Takash
Published by: Wiley Publishing
Buy From Amazon.com
Reviewed by Muhammed Hassanali
Books and seminars that provide a better understanding of us and others around us rarely tie this understanding to profitability. _Results through Relationships attemps to link our behavior with profitability, and advocates behavior change to realize this profitability.
Each chapter focuses on one behavioral change, provides techniques of self-analysis and hints on charting out next steps. The hypothetical scenarios and author’s examples help drive home the discussion’s points and help readers to concretely see the benefits being conscious about their behavior.
The book’s goal is to partner with our boss, direct reports, vendors, customers – essentially everybody. This helps break down workplace hierarchy, and helps us understand each other as humans (not just as co-workers, vendors, or customers), and helps leverage the best in all of us. While this book’s focus is the business environment, these techniques can also work well in family and less formal settings.
The book covers standard business relations topics like communication, feedback, listening, gratitude, and knowing those around you as people. The fluid writing style, sub-headings and highlighting main points make the chapters easy to read. Chapter 4 (Relish Productive Confrontation) and Chapter 5 (Make Gratitude a Habit) resonated with me.
In Chapter 5 for example, readers are shown how providing honest feedback, through expressing gratitude, influence the recipient’s behavior. However there are desirable ways of expressing gratitude–and less desirable ways of expressing gratitude. The chapter also provides a list of “dos and don’ts” on expressing gratitude. One learning point is that we express gratitude frequently, but don’t always stop to think about the impact of our actions. The chapter on gratitude helps us better appreciate the full impact of our actions.
The main message is transparency and a conscious effort to add value to the lives of those around us. Ultimately the book helps readers in building more meaningful, authentic and long-term relationships with those people that matter most to us.
Armchair Interviews says: Information that works for both business and personal relationships.
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