Category: Authentic Business Relationships

Do you struggle to build authentic business relationships with your colleagues and clients?

It’s a common struggle amongst even top business leaders, but a business is only as good as the quality of its relationships. To build an authentic and meaningful business, leaders need to be mindful of all stakeholders. This includes customers, employees, investors, suppliers, partners, and competitors. Here are some useful tips that will help you.

With these resources, you can learn how to build authentic business relationships. For instance, you can learn what makes them unique. Learn why they are important for your company’s growth. Leaders should strive to develop a sense of emotional intelligence. To begin they need to explore the emotional drivers in their own lives. Leaders realize how these emotions may affect those around them at work. Understanding your emotions will help you better understand other people’s feelings. You’ll have more productive conversations with clients or team members when you have a deeper understanding of others.

Leadership requires authenticity. Moreover, it is important that leaders are open about their strengths and weaknesses with themselves and others. People are more likely to trust and engage with you if they feel like they know who you really are. In these blogs, we’ll tell you how to create authentic business relationships by sharing your story. Learning how to build authentic relationships in the workplace will turn your prospects into clients, and your clients into partners.

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Authentic Business Relationships Authentic Conversations About Difference Authentic Leadership

Mentorship: How to be the Best Mentee

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Business team during a brainstorming in a meeting

You get out what you put in

As discussed last week, a mentor with the right approach is necessary for constructive and productive mentorship. Yet, even more responsibility falls on the mentee. The fact is, many mentees approach mentorship for the wrong reasons. Their motivations are often selfish and inauthentic. To many mentees, mentorship is just about playing the game and climbing the ladder.

I will tell you right now, anyone who approaches the relationship with that motivation and that inauthentic attitude won’t just fail at being a mentee but will struggle to truly succeed in their life. The goal should always be personal improvement, learning, and a genuine desire to become the best worker and person possible. That’s a context which can make mentorship a transformative exercise and lead to true success.

Aside from entering the relationship with the right context, what else can mentees do to get the most of their time with a mentor?

Fully commit to the relationship. Even with the best intentions, if you’re not all-in as a mentee, you’re not going to get out of the relationship everything you might expect. It can’t be a matter of convenience for you. If your mentor gives you an assignment or challenge, don’t put it on your backburner. Make it a priority. There’s a reason they’ve asked you to do it, and if you only accept the work you’re comfortable with, growth will remain unattainable.

Be authentic. Don’t be who you think your mentor wants you to be or who you think you need to be. Be who you are and approach the relationship with complete honesty. If you’re not your true self, how can you expect your mentor to give advice that can really have an impact? It’s only when you show your mentor who you truly are that they can help you become the person you want to be.

Have clarity. It’s not the responsibility of your mentor to define what you want to gain from their mentorship. Before you enter into the relationship as a mentee, it’s imperative that you get clear on exactly how you want to develop personally and professionally. Showing up under the delusion that you’re a blank slate is totally unproductive. Audit yourself. Creating a detailed inventory of your strengths and weaknesses, situations that have caused you problems in the past, areas in which you excel. Starting off the relationship with this kind of information to build upon will make your mentor’s advice more poignant and effective. It sets you both up for success.

Give first. What have you done to prove to your mentor that you’re worth their time and attention? Simply asking someone to be your mentor isn’t enough, and it’s never how the best mentorships start. Do work that your mentor values and needs, and do it well. Giving your best effort and working hard to earn their respect is the best way to endear yourself to a potential mentor and lay the groundwork for a rewarding relationship. Ultimately, they are staking their reputation on mentoring you, because at some point in the relationship, they will be asked to sponsor you. Before you reach anything close to that point, your mentor needs to be well assured that you will represent them well.

Check your ego. Bringing your ego into mentorship is a guaranteed failure. Growth is wrought with challenges and failures. If your ego is engaged, you’re sure to be defeated by the bumps and valleys on your journey. If, however, you’re able to check your ego and approach mentorship with humility, from a context of learning, everything becomes an opportunity for development, rather than scarcity viewed through scarcity lenses like failure or setback. A primary function of your mentor will be to offer criticism and feedback, especially during the most critical and challenging times. To receive their feedback properly and apply it to your life and work in the most positive ways, your ego needs to be fully disengaged.

Mentorship has resulted in some of the most meaningful and impactful relationships in my life. I speak from experience when I say it’s a truly rewarding endeavor, but only with the right approach. Now that we’ve discussed the best of both roles—mentor and mentee—I’d love to dive into a concept I read about recently, the Reverse Mentor. In the meantime, check out some of the mentors who shaped my life and career: https://www.coreykupfer.com/resources/

Corey Kupfer is an expert strategist, negotiator and dealmaker. He has more than 35 years of professional deal-making and negotiating experience. Corey is a successful entrepreneur, attorney, consultant, author and professional speaker who is passionate about deal-driven growth. He is also the creator and host of the DealQuest Podcast.

If you want to find out how deal-ready you are, take the Deal- Ready Assessment today!

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Authentic Business Relationships Authentic Conversations About Difference Authentic Leadership

Mentorship: Being a Great Mentor

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Business team during a brainstorming in a meeting

A mentor is more than just a font of wisdom.

My first and greatest mentor was my father. His wisdom is something I carry with me always. “Make yourself as indispensable as possible to your boss, but remember nobody is indispensable,” is career advice he gave me that I will never forget. “Every morning when I think about life with your mother or without your mother, I choose your mother,” he told me of marriage. And on his deathbed, he said to me, “I traveled to 25 countries, have a great family and have done the things I wanted to do. I have no regrets. When you are in my situation, you don’t want to have any regrets,” which was when I realized that he’d won the game of life, and when I learned for certain how I wanted to live.

I’m grateful for the time I got to spend with my father and the relationship he and I shared. I know not all sons are so fortunate. The mentorship I received from my father taught me not just about life, but also about the value of having a mentor.

Being on both sides of mentorship has shaped my career, so I know that these kinds of relationships are very different than one might have with a father, friend, or colleague. There’s a different kind of work involved. Over the years, I’ve learned a few things about what makes a good mentor, both from mentors of my own and being one myself in a professional setting. If you’re interested in mentorship, here’s what I think makes a good mentor:

Setting boundaries is key. In a professional context, maintaining roles and status in the mentor-mentee relationship matters. It might seem superficial, but for both of you to get the most out of the relationship it’s important that you set boundaries. Your mentee needs to know that time is valuable, so they shouldn’t waste it with trivial concerns or problems they should be able to solve on their own. Furthermore, there should be clarity about what the two of you discuss. Setting these sorts of boundaries is necessary to remove noise from the relationship and ensure that things are always pointed in the right direction.

Don’t be afraid to challenge your mentee.

The relationship is ultimately about growth. If you’re tracking their progress and feel like they are ready, challenge your mentee. Not arbitrarily. Give them meaningful work that stretches what they think their abilities are. We learn the most when someone sees greatness in ourselves that we don’t yet see.. As a mentor, you can both push your mentee outside their comfort zone but also be there when the assignment is over to teach and offer feedback.

Seek understanding. For mentorship to really work, it has to be a two-way street. Many people approach mentorship with the idea that they are just a conduit for wisdom and lived experience. They pontificate, thinking that imparting their knowledge is the whole of the mentor’s duty. What their all-fortunate mentee does with the information is irrelevant. That’s never going to be true. A mentor needs to be sincerely interested in the career and development of their mentee. Seeking understanding is a strong way to display this commitment. When your mentee approaches you with a problem, don’t just launch into canned solutions you think they need to hear. Instead, seek understanding of what it is they’re going through and why they are experiencing this problem. There is almost always an underlying circumstance that can more deeply inform the advice you offer.

Be an advocate for them. Let’s be clear about the endgame of a professional mentorship: to help your mentee develop and advance in their career. That’s why getting it right in your role as mentor is so important. Eventually, there will come a time when you are asked to advocate for them. If your tutelage was well received, there should be no hesitation—you should be thrilled to be a zealous advocate for your mentee, whether they are seeking a promotion, pursuing a new role at a different firm or company or pitching that big client or investor as an entrepreneur. Your endorsement will matter more than nearly anyone else’s. Be willing to use your reputation and influence on their behalf if they deserve it.

Mentorship has resulted in some of the most meaningful and impactful relationships in my life. I speak from experience when I say it’s a truly rewarding endeavor, but only with the right approach. This week we covered how to be the best mentor. Next week’s blog will discuss how mentees can best approach mentorship. In the meantime, check out some of the mentors who shaped my life and career: https://www.coreykupfer.com/resources/

Corey Kupfer is an expert strategist, negotiator and dealmaker. He has more than 35 years of professional deal-making and negotiating experience. Corey is a successful entrepreneur, attorney, consultant, author and professional speaker who is passionate about deal-driven growth. He is also the creator and host of the DealQuest Podcast.

If you want to find out how deal-ready you are, take the Deal- Ready Assessment today!

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Authentic Business Relationships Authentic Leadership

The Right (and Wrong) Way to Solicit on LinkedIn

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Business team during a brainstorming in a meeting

I recently posted a simple question – and brief explanation – about how people handle LinkedIn connections who immediately solicit you. I must have touched a nerve, because it went a bit viral. You can check out the post here.

As you can see, it seems like I’ve happened upon something we all feel, something universal – we hate being sold to blindly. None of us like getting an immediate solicitation from a new LinkedIn connection. What’s more, the consensus in my comments was that such behavior was grounds for an immediate disconnection.

If that seems drastic, let’s take a look at an example of a bad solicitation I received recently:

This user’s name and other identifying information has been changed. Text, including the user’s typos, has remained unchanged.

Happy New Year Corey! I’m expand my network by connecting with other colleagues from LinkedIn Connection University. – Dr. Bad Solicitation

Mon Corey Kupfer sent the following message at 8:46 PM

Dr. Bad Solicitation, thank you for your connection request. I do not believe we know each other (please correct me if I am wrong). For me to consider connecting with someone I don’t know, I need to understand why you want to be connected with me and what triggered the request. Thanks, Corey

Dr. Bad Solicitation sent the following message at 8:49 PM

Corey Thank you for your email. Your bio precedes you. If you have or know of anyone 9 business or personal contacts ) who are in need of commercial or residential properties located in Florinecticut as per a Good Investment, feel free and confident to have them reach out to me. Thank you

Urgh! Dr. Bad Solicitation lives up to his fake name, right? There’s so much wrong with this approach. This connection didn’t even answer my reasonable request about why he chose to connect with me. Instead, he issued an inauthentic compliment about my bio and leapt immediately into his sales pitch. For Dr. Bad Solicitation, this is purely transactional. I don’t approach my business relationships that way. Disconnect.

So, what should Dr. Bad Solicitation have done differently? Let’s examine another connection I received recently. It also came with a solicitation, but the approach here is so much better. Here’s how Ben Value-Add approached me:

This user’s name and other identifying information has been changed.

Hi Corey,

I see we have some mutual connections.

I am always looking to grow my network of professionals here on LinkedIn. If you are open to that please accept.

Warmly,

Ben.

9:29 AM

Ben Value-Add is now a connection

Mon Ben Value-Add sent the following message at 6:59 AM

It’s an honor to Connect!

I hope everything is well with you in your personal and professional life!

Here’s a document I pass out to all my new connections. It’s a summary of the growth strategies we use for our clients and ourselves. No strings attached. No opt-in. No cost 🙂

[There was a hyperlink to a .pdf here]

Here’s what we do at MyCompany:

He included a short, clear and strong mission statement here.

If you or someone you know has a bodacious dream and needs someone to capture that on film and let the world know about it – I’d love to talk!!

With thanks,

Ben Value-Add

555-555-5555

Did you catch what Ben did there? Yes, this is still a pretty immediate solicitation, but Ben’s approach gets several things right. First, he’s not forcing the issue. He opens the request explaining that we have mutual connections, and then clearly explains his primary motivation for connecting – always growing his network. He closes the message by actually asking me to connect. It’s polite, professional, and respectful of boundaries.

Ben was off to a great start, but a bad solicitation—something baldly transactional—can squash that good will in an instant. Ben didn’t go there. Instead, Ben chose to give first. He asked nothing of me. He gave me a document that was, I must say, legitimately useful and filled with content that interested me. And, he made it clear that at no point would there be expectations of me doing business with him.

Now, I’m not considering using a service like Ben’s at this particular moment. However, I’m sure the time will come, and I won’t forget this interaction and Ben’s choice to give first. He clearly understands the value of building authentic business relationships. That kind of alignment shows me that he and I would, likely, work well together.

A transactional and exploitative approach, on the other hand, is a sure failure. It cheapens business relationships down to the simplest compliment. Look back at Dr. Bad Solicitation’s compliment. “Your bio precedes you,” seems so hollow and exploitative in the context created by his shallow solicitation. This is not how authentic business relationships are formed, and it’s a habit more of us need to break.

For an expanded take on how to build authentic business relationships, check out my blog or my video on the topic.

Corey Kupfer is an expert strategist, negotiator and dealmaker. He has more than 35 years of professional deal-making and negotiating experience. Corey is a successful entrepreneur, attorney, consultant, author and professional speaker who is passionate about deal-driven growth. He is also the creator and host of the DealQuest Podcast.

If you want to find out how deal-ready you are, take the Deal- Ready Assessment today!

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Authentic Business Relationships

How You Can Build Better Business Relationships

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Business team during a brainstorming in a meeting

What’s the one thing your company can do to strengthen its relationships?

Business relationships are hard, right? There’s so much background noise and posturing and it makes being our true selves nearly impossible.

It’s not what you know, it’s who you know. Part networking proverb, part running joke of the aimless deadbeat, this is a maxim that at its core highlights the importance of professional relationships.

Too often we leave our business relationships intertwined with outcomes and results that may or may not ever come to fruition. We put unnecessary pressure on these relationships with artificial timelines that really serve no one. Our business relationships are too important to be muddied by all of this.

Authenticity helps us remove these preoccupations with outcomes and timelines from our business relationships and just focus on the people, on ourselves. What’s more, building authentic business relationships is 100 percent within your control.

How? Relationships are collaborative, they require a give and take, right? Not really. Not if you’re rooting the relationship in authenticity. Start by being your authentic self. Show your partner who you truly are and it will create space in the relationship that allows them to reveal their true self.

That should be the foundation of an authentic relationship, but we can build upon that. I want to share with you the five tenets of building better, lasting, authentic business relationships.

Give First

If you want to divorce your relationships from the influence of outcomes, try giving first; try asking for nothing. What do you think would be a more effective way of establishing a lasting authentic relationship, approaching an industry influencer you’d like to know to advance your career and asking them to help you, or taking some time to get to know that person, and offer ways in which your unique talents can help them? Give first.

Care and Be Interested

If you aren’t interested in a person, don’t seek out a relationship with them. You can’t fake interest, at least not for a sustained period of time, not to mention that doing so is inauthentic and will inevitably poison the relationship. Our micro-facial expressions will betray us, and we’ll give off a negative energy that communicates our disinterest even when we aren’t meaning to. Remember, we’re trying to create lasting professional relationships, not temporary ones.

Show Gratitude and Appreciation

This should be a natural byproduct of true care and interest. Showing gratitude and appreciation is a genuine response when coming from that place, we just have to remember to do it. When we put out gratitude and appreciation into our relationships, it comes back to us. The results in our lives are a mirror of what we’re putting out. So, why not put out some gratitude and appreciation?

Mutual Respect

This seems like a tricky one at first glance, doesn’t it? Isn’t this all supposed to be in our control? Sure, I can respect them, but they in turn have to respect me. Yes, but no. When I talk about mutual respect, I mean you have to respect the other party, and you have to respect yourself. If you can’t respect the other person while also maintaining respect for yourself, you need to exit that relationship. It won’t be productive.

Trust

This is what all the other tenets are built upon. Following the other tenets means you trust you’ll eventually be taken care of in the relationship. The biggest lesson you can learn is that your benefits won’t be linear. First, be of service and trust that it will come back to you. It’s about being untethered to outcomes. If you want immediate benefits for being authentic and giving what you can to a relationship, you aren’t trusting. When you give trust, people know it, and it will create transformative opportunities for you.

If you can bring these five things to your business relationships, you’ll be astonished at how much your life changes. Remain patient and know that being authentic will pay off. For a deeper look, check out my video, “Building Authentic Business Relationships.”

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Corey Kupfer is an expert strategist, negotiator and dealmaker. He has more than 35 years of professional deal-making and negotiating experience. Corey is a successful entrepreneur, attorney, consultant, author and professional speaker who is passionate about deal-driven growth. He is also the creator and host of the DealQuest Podcast.

If you want to find out how deal-ready you are, take the Deal- Ready Assessment today!

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Authentic Business Relationships Authentic Conversations About Difference Authentic Negotiating

Negotiating Differences Between Men and Women Pt. 2

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Business team during a brainstorming in a meeting

Last week’s blog discussed some general differences in how men and women negotiate. I went more in-depth about what many women I’ve worked with have struggled to do most, and that’s own their value. I think there’s a lot to learn in that idea, and the work we can do to own our value is important for both men and women.

In case you missed it, the wonderful Sylvie di Giusto, of Executive Image Consulting chatted about this recently. Check us out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i31n2wK9cuQ.

So, how can we move past limited perceptions of our self-worth and own our value?

Audit your work

Analyze the work you’ve done, and itemize the difference you made with each task. What lives were impacted by the work you’ve done? How much have your coworkers benefited from working with you? Has the company profited from your work? If you take some time for a deep dive into the value of your work and lay it out in front of you, it becomes easier to own your value.

Do the internal work

Find your truth. Once you discover and own that, you can be honest about what you value, what you really want and what kind of person you want to be. If you’re committed to those truths, and your work is pointed in their direction you can feel confident in your value from a deeper perspective than the dollar signs. When we feel like what we’re doing and who we are on a fundamental level is valuable, then it becomes natural to accept that our quantifiable value is commensurate with our work and how we feel about ourselves.

Define your goals

What are your objectives? To this point, we’ve been thinking both granular level of value-adds that your work brings and high-level spiritual and emotional work that can clarify how you value yourself personally. When we define our goals, these things come together. We can set objectives that both add value to our work but also align with our values and the person we want to be.

Backburner your external reward system

There can be a barrage of external factors that stick with us and make it difficult to perceive our value at all, let alone accurately assess it and own it. Between constant adverts that remind both men and women that we’re just not enough, missing this thing or that thing or bosses that make it difficult to parse our value, our external reward systems can be easily broken. The baseline expectation is perfection or outstanding work, so when we succeed and add value, it might seem unremarkable. In the rare instances when we fail or fall just short, it’s magnified and feels like it unravels all the other amazing work we’ve done. When we contract out our reward system, we concede that we have no say in our value, making it impossible for us to own it in any impactful way. If we seek rewards internally and live up to our own self-ascribed standards and find peace in living up to those ideals, we own every aspect of our life, work and value.

Regardless of gender, the Authentic Negotiator finds the same level in any negotiation. Their value isn’t in question, and the goals are clear. Still, it takes work, regardless of your starting point. Authentic Negotiators aren’t born that way. They’ve done the work. What work do you have left to do? My Authentic Negotiating Success Quiz will show you.

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Corey Kupfer is an expert strategist, negotiator and dealmaker. He has more than 35 years of professional deal-making and negotiating experience. Corey is a successful entrepreneur, attorney, consultant, author and professional speaker who is passionate about deal-driven growth. He is also the creator and host of the DealQuest Podcast.

If you want to find out how deal-ready you are, take the Deal- Ready Assessment today!