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The Secret Sauce

Tuesday Takeover blog by Vanessa Angulo

Have you ever worked with someone you liked? You trusted? Who you felt had your back? You would do anything for them, right?  If they ping you, you stop what you’re doing to help them.  

Now think about a time where you weren’t that fond of someone, they rarely responded to your emails, they didn’t have your back in a meeting, or they just didn’t partner well.  Would you drop what you are doing in the moment to help them?  Would you prioritize them? 

 

Exactly, you picking up what I am putting down right?

 

As someone who has had a variety of jobs, at different levels, in different industries, the one thing that stands out is having the ability to build relationships and genuine connections with people has proven to be the most critical skill you can carry with you into any job at any level in any industry .

I don’t know about you, but I don’t how to pretend to care or fake it.  I truly care about my team, my customers, my colleagues, and the success of our organization. In everything I do, right or wrong, you feel that passion for my people, my team, my customers, my organization to be successful.  It exudes off me.  Sometimes too much!  But that is another blog, not for today!

Years ago, I had a strong leader I was newly working with, who was very matter of fact and no nonsense. While recruiting has always been challenging, recruiting after Covid, seemed to be impossible.  During this time, I was meeting with Sr leaders, all hands-on deck trying to solution for our recruitment challenges.  Oh, and did I mention I was just promoted to this role, right in the middle of Covid chaos???  Yea that was fun!    I listened more than I spoke, I validated the situation we were in, and I didn’t make excuses, I found solutions.  We became creative and focused on real solutions tailored to each site’s reality.  Slowly we started to see the shift, the demeanor of the calls shifted, were less frequent, the buy in from those sites came willingly and proactively. 

 

A year later I asked that same leader, what moved the needle for you on our partnership? What changed that the relationship shifted and started being reciprocated?  He said you listened, you genuinely tried to understand from our perspective, and you acted, and showed  that you cared about our sites success  and the desire to know deeper what was happening, to understand why. You were driving individualized solutions for each site.  

 

That’s it. Not some fancy strategy. Not a new playbook. Just genuine connection and it changed the game!

And now…..When I need something from my stakeholders, I routinely hear, “anything for you.”  And when my stakeholders call me, I say the exact same thing.  Relationships matter!

 

You can drive results, be strategic, have executive presence, all amazing qualities, just remember relationships in every area matter.  Driving results requires people to be influenced and to act.  Strategy requires influencing skills and people to execute.  Executive presence is much more, but it has pieces of influencing, how you collaborate, how you show up, how you work a plan that wasn’t your own……Everything ties back to strong relationships and partnerships!  


ღ Vanessa

 


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