Results Through Relationships: Building Trust, Performance, and Profit Through People

Chapter 1. Be a Partner, Not an Order Taker

The lessons in this book may require you to make a fundamental change to your perspective on relationships and business hierarchy. Most people spend their working lives following orders, whether from bosses or customers. These may not be military commands—your customers may ask you in the nicest way possible to reduce delivery time—but they still must be obeyed. This is just the way things are, whether you're a junior executive or higher-level manager.

So here's how to change your thinking: Consider the possibility that you can have an equal relationship with your superior. Regardless of whether your superior is the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, you don't have to perceive yourself as an inferior in that relationship.

Throughout my years of coaching, I've seen hundreds of productive partnerships among people of unequal status. In high tech companies, entrepreneurial CEOs and geeky techies work together like buddies. In more traditional organizations, senior executives and recent MBA grads participate on teams without anyone pulling rank. And I've also seen customers who treat their suppliers with great respect, generosity, and empathy.

But unless the working culture breeds this, which most do not, these partnership relationships don't just happen. You've got to take a chance, put forth the effort, and make them happen. How do you do it? Well, a good first step is figuring out why you accept the role of order taker in the first place.

TAKING ...