Oct 14, 20206 min read

Relationship Equity

Personal core value #10: “Never stop making relationship deposits even when it’s hard or you see it as a waste of time.”

It’s always hard for me to believe that someone may not like me or not want to get along with me. After all, I’m wonderful! The sad truth is that there are apparently some people who may not put me on their trusted advisor list just yet.

One of the things that the CIQ™ system has substantially advanced in my effort to be an intentional communicator is to never burn bridges in front of anyone. Keep making relationship deposits because you never know when you may need to make a withdrawal or an advance or they may need a withdrawal or advance. Obviously, all of this hard work and hassle has got to be worth the tassel. What is your reward? Why should open and effective communication matter within your organization? How does it impact overall growth and the bottom line? The answer is found in Relationship Equity.

Today we are going to discuss the importance of building relationship equity and the impact that it can have throughout your organization.

Why the Hard Work?

You have likely put hours upon hours, thousands and thousands of dollars, and multiple resources into training, developing, and coaching your employees and equipping them with the best tools to be successful in their jobs. However, all of this could be for naught if they cannot work together and communicate well to drive the goals of the organization forward. For most, the primary objective of running a business is to have a stellar top and bottom line. But in order to achieve this, the top and bottom lines must include a healthy work culture that fosters the three C’s – Connection, Communication, and Collaboration.

Connection

Interpersonal connections in the workplace are essential to the attainment of organizational goals, as well as creating a unified workforce and a culture of open and free communication. At the end of the day, a team that works together becomes successful together. Therefore, as a leader, you must actively embark upon the pursuit of connection within and throughout your organization.

Communication

The importance of communication summarized in one short sentence, a team that can understand each other and communicates well functions at a significantly higher and more productive rate than the team that doesn’t.

Collaboration

An organization that successfully achieves connection and communication automatically begins to foster an environment where employees can communicate openly. This open expression of ideas leads to a truly collaborative work environment and culture. Employing the Communication Success Wheel well and understanding the prevalent communication languages in your workforce is key to achieving these 3 C’s – the elements that makeup relationship equity.

“relationship” means the way in which two or more people or things are connected or the state of being connected.

Once you have attained connection, communication, and collaboration, what you have is essentially relationship equity. Let’s break this down further. The word “relationship” means the way in which two or more people or things are connected or the state of being connected. Here, we can think about the relationships that managers build with their employees and one peer builds with another peer over time.

The word “equity” means the value that is associated with the object of concern, which refers to the overall employee relationship. Putting these together, “relationship equity” refers to the value that is derived to form the relationship employees share with one another.

The concept of relationship equity can be summed up as:

RE = Relationship + Equity + Trust Where, RE = Relationship Equity Relationship = Trust x Time Equity = Relationship x Value Trust = Connection x Authenticity

When trust is built over a period of time, relationships begin to evolve and when value is consistently added to each person’s life by the other person, a long-term connection is created that often results in authentic communication. The stronger the relationship and the more value that is added over time, the more equity you will develop. It is like a house, the more money you put into it, the more equity you will have.

There are times in which we can underestimate the importance of relationships and how trust, time, connection, authenticity, and value play into making those relationships better or worse. It has been said that trust is the hardest thing to build but one of the easiest things to lose. And that is one of the reasons it is so important to not only build trust but to maintain trust. The more time you spend with someone and the more intentionality you bring to the relationship, walls are replaced by bridges and long-term value and connection are the result.

In the real world, this equity translates into the top line impacting some of the intangibles such as a culture of open communication, collaboration, and a unified team effort – all of which lead to more revenue, growth, and success. But there is a catch – as the time increases, this equation doesn’t just advance in summations, but exponentially. This means that the relationship equity may double, triple, or even quadruple over time.

Why Relationship Equity?

Just like generating equity from your property or your investments, putting in intentional effort towards building relationship equity will result in massive returns for your business. There are many advantages to intentionally building relationship equity within your organization. Here are just a few of those:

• Opening up of opportunities – When your employees and teams are able to communicate openly and freely, there is a free flow of ideas, creativity, and innovation. As mentioned previously, you never know where your next multi-million dollar idea can come from! This kind of communication flow can open up many opportunities for the organization. • Organizational harmony – When there is trust and open communication prevalent in the organization, all five generations of employees can co-exist and collaborate harmoniously. This leads to discipline and a high level of productivity and progress within the organization. • High levels of employee engagement – When employees enjoy being at work, are unified toward the same set of goals, and when they feel valued, heard, and understood, they tend to put in more work and dedication for the organization. In addition to that, work-life balance increases and extreme stress levels decrease. This leads to unprecedented levels of employee engagement. • Lower attrition rates – High levels of engagement means employees would tend to stay with the organization, and as a result, the retention rate would go up. This is particularly true for Millennials and Generation Z employees, as it is both meaningful work and a progressive and inclusive work environment that tends to keep them around and going. • Attracting better talent – When your employees are in tune with the culture and environment you have created, they are excited to get to work and to share open roles with their friends or past colleagues who might be looking for work. If this is the case, word spreads and leads to the creation of a wonderful employer branding, and having this can help to attract better talent as the organization grows. • Organizational growth – When your work environment achieves and possesses both breadth and depth, it retains employees and draws top talent. This makes your company competitive and favorably impacts its bottom line. This effect crawls up throughout the organization, impacting the top line, and leading to organizational growth.

With so many amazing benefits, who would not want to achieve high levels of relationship equity within your organization?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Gerald R. Parsons is a forward-thinking strategic builder dedicated to character-driven communication as a core value. He has been affiliated with Life Languages International / Communication IQ for over 30 years and was appointed CEO in 2016. In his current role, Gerald strives each day to make a difference in the lives of his team and colleagues by creating equity within their relationships and the company. Gerald is a firm believer that when people learn their communication styles they learn how to speak and listen so more people will hear and understand them. Personal and professional development that involves improving himself as a leader worth following both in his family and organization are his top priorities. Living in constant reminder of how special his life is, Gerald is married to his wife of 42 years and enjoys spending time with his children and grandchildren.

Find out more by visiting the Life Languages website or checking out Gerald's book, Ties And T-Shirts here.