Last week, I went to see Keith Ferrazzi–best selling author–speak on his new book “Who’s Got Your Back?” Because I had heard a RainToday podcast with a Ferrazzi interview just two weeks prior, I was moderately prepared for what I would learn in his session.
Yet, I wasn’t prepared for my emotional reaction when listening to his personal stories. They were both touching and real. These stories made me further respect his perspective on vulnerability—which is one of his proposed Four Mindsets: Vulnerability; Generosity; Candor; Accountability. His willingness to share humble story after humble story weighed on my mind that evening and throughout the next day.
The premise of Keith’s new book is essentially this: to achieve our full potential, we must find a small group of “lifeline relationships”—people that we can count on to sincerely and wholly have our best interests in mind. Keith states that “the level of success that you can achieve is disproportionate (in a good way) to the few deep relationships required to attain that success”. In other words, we need help and support, and this help is not as much about quantity as it is about having a high quality lifeline group identified and active in our lives.
According to the research that Keith’s team conducted for this book, 50% of Americans would say “I don’t know” or “No one” in answer to this question: “Who are your lifeline relationships?”
Later that evening, I pondered the question from a different angle: “Do I truly and sufficiently provide lifeline relationship support to others?”
I’m wrapping my mind now around securing my own lifeline relationships. One of Keith’s suggestions is to ask people out for a “long slow dinner” at which point, it’s a no holds barred (oh ok, maybe just a couple of ‘rules’), open feedback communication with each others very best interests at heart. He points out that some people with whom you may invite for a dinner of this sort may not be responsive to the premise at a particular moment in time. They may have too much going on in their own world to be emotionally and intellectually available. But there will be others with whom you’ll choose (or they’ll choose you) and together you will strive to elevate your relationship to a new level of richness and value.
One intention (out of many) is for these lifeline relationships to help you achieve learning goals (not just performance goals). For example, a business performance goal might be “I want to be a keynote speaker for three large associations/conferences in 2010”. A learning goal might be “{To achieve that}, I need to study the specific differentiators of serving as a keynote speaker versus a session or workshop speaker.”
In this blog entry, I’ve just barely offered up a taste of Keith’s approach from his book, which just hit #1 on the New York Times and #1 on the Wall Street Journal’s best selling lists. In addition to buying the book, and/or subscribing to Keith’s blog and twitter, here are two areas you may want to explore as you learn more about this concept of lifeline relationships:
Keith Ferrazzi’s Greenlight Community
Five-part blog series produced this week by Huffington Post
