Relationship Management: An Important Factor To Life and Business

Much emphasis is mostly laid on technical proficiency at work, school, various professions and careers. But the truth is that today we only focus on building technical skills without much effort on developing relationship skills, says Stuart Mckelvie. It doesn’t help as an individual, business owner or organization in the long run. There has to be a balance between technical skills and relationship skills. In this post, we will be looking at relationship management as an important factor in our life and business.

What Are Technical Skills And Relationship Skills?

Two important things are very important and can help people to be successful in every aspect of their lives, namely technical skills and relationship skills.

When we talk about technical skills, it is the knowledge or expertise needed to deal with intellectual tasks. Technical skills vary based on job type and industry. A customer service representative for example may need technical skills that are related to telephone systems and customer management. But the technical skills of computer programmers will be the knowledge of different coding languages.

Relationship management skills on the other hand have to do with relational communication and people skills. Relationship management is being able to communicate, inspire, influence, resolve conflict, develop, build bonds and bring out the best in others.  In other words, being able to establish, maintain and grow a healthy relationship with different groups and individuals. Relationship management skills are of two types which are business relationship management and client relationship management.

Many people think of relationship management skills as something that is needed only by those that deal with people such as nurses, sales agents, customer service representatives and other related careers. But the fact is that irrespective of your career, work or whether you have to deal with clients or not, relationship management skills are needed.

For a better understanding of the basics of relationship management, it has to be within the context and study of emotional intelligence. Our emotion can affect the way we behave due to the effect it has on how our brain functions and it is established scientifically that our emotions come before our thoughts. It is difficult in most cases to let go of our emotions before leaving home or when at work. But being able to discover and manage our emotions as well as that of others is the key to having successful results.

What is Emotional Intelligence?

Emotional intelligence is having the ability to be able to discover, understand, control and express one’s emotions and being able to discover, understand and control the emotions of others as well.

Technical skills are good but to be more successful and have better results in life and business it is very important to master the four elements of emotional intelligence.  The following are the four elements of emotional intelligence: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and relationship management.

Relationship management aims to improve productivity and better results by helping you work well and relate with people irrespective of your technical skills. No one will like working with someone negative, difficult and uncooperative no matter how intelligent the person might be.

In Conclusion

Whatever your profession, career, job or business may be at one point or another you will have to relate with people one way or the other. Therefore it is very important to know how to relate with people from various backgrounds, different temperaments and insecurities, says Stuart Mckelvie. As a business owner or leader, knowing about relationship management will help you in resolving conflicts, motivate, build and guide your employees or team.