Articles
Explore over 350 articles that will help you grow your client relationships and improve your personal effectiveness.
Six Valentine’s Day Lies—and Rules to Replace Them
Hello, and happy Valentine’s Day. Speaking of which: I usually write about professional relationships, but today, I want to share six Valentine’s Day lies—and the relationship rules to replace them Our contemporary culture promotes many trite, misleading, and self-absorbed ideas about what makes for successful romantic relationships. “Just be yourself”, “Find someone who won’t try […]
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The Three Proven Keys to Establish Rapid Rapport
How do you develop the relationships that truly matter to your career success? As I discussed in my last newsletter, the first step is to focus on the “critical few.” There are about 15-25 key individuals—not hundreds of superficial contacts—who will make a disproportionately large contribution to your success. Do you know who these are for you? […]
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You May Be Developing Too Many Relationships
In a major study I conducted of nearly 3000 professionals, 91% said that trusted professional relationships were extremely important to their success. Guess how many were “very satisfied” with those relationships? Only 30%. So, what’s going on, and how do we bridge this “relationship gap”? Read on. Welcome to Part I of my four-part series […]
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Ten Questions to Ask Your Clients Each Year
Clients generally don’t voice their concerns with you. Instead, they tend to vote with their feet, gradually and often invisibly shifting their business to a competitor. So you need to seek feedback on a regular basis. Some questions are not very fruitful. For example, asking if your client is “satisfied” with your work seems to […]
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Fresh, Thought-Provoking Insights on How to Lead from Kevin Kruse
I recently read Kevin Kruse’s excellent new book, Great Leaders Have No Rules: Contrarian Leadership Principles to Transform Your Team and Business. In my interview with Kevin, I ask him about some of his most interesting—and perhaps controversial—leadership principles. Why is an open-door policy actually a bad idea? Do I really want to lead with […]
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Pithy Wisdom from Two World War II Veterans on Veterans Day
Today is Veterans Day, which honors military veterans who have served in the US armed forces. I want to especially honor the many members of my family who have served, notably: My father (see below), my mother, who was a nurse and Lieutenant in the US Army during WWII, our son (see below), and my […]
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C-Suite Strategies Part IV: Become an Irresistible Person of Interest
By Andrew Sobel Welcome to Part IV of my four-part series on building relationships in the C-suite. In this article, I’m going to talk about how you can become a “person of interest” to senior executives, drawing them towards you based on what you know, who you know, and who you are. I’m sharing this series to inaugurate the […]
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C-Suite Strategies Part III: Adding Value for Time
Welcome to Part III of my four-part series on building relationships in the C-suite. In this article, you’ll learn strategies to add so much value in your executive conversations that after meetings, your clients will consistently think to themselves, “I’d like to get together again and talk.” I’m sharing this series to inaugurate the release […]
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