How to Develop Key “Life-Line Relationships” That Will Change Your Life

None of us can achieve the success or the validation we deserve alone. In this troubled economy, more than ever, we need the input, the feedback, the support and the feet-to-the-fire accountability of a few deep, trusted relationships in our professional and personal lives that we can count on, in good times and bad.

We’ve all had those relationships at some point in our lives, best friends in school or roommates in college we shared everything with. But we can’t wait for those relationships to just happen at work and in our careers. We have to reach out to others to make them happen. We have to actively create a circle of advisors who will watch our backs, and for whom we will do the same. We need the peer-to-peer support power that executive coaches offer CEOs, trainers offer professional athletes, and organizations like Weight Watchers and AA give their members day in and day out.

Most simply, no matter where you are in your professional or personal life, you will be amazed at how transformative just three “lifeline relationships” can be – they are the key to sustaining our efforts to do more, reach higher levels and live better.

Below are my top five tips for building key “life-line relationships”:

1. Recognize the friends you have now aren’t enough: We all have friends we love, but probably not all of them share your driving ambition with regard to business and career. Don’t drop the friends you have – just recognize that you still need to find the right partners (or deepen some of the relationships you have now) if you want to be pushed to achieve your full potential. When looking for lifelines, look for people who share similar values and ambition around dreams and goals – and who won’t be afraid to hold you accountable to make sure you’re doing your best. The best way to figure out if someone’s a good candidate for your inner circle? Try treating them like they already are and see what happens. Don’t be discouraged if not everyone makes the cut. That’s normal.

2. Be generous: Be ready and sincerely willing to help others succeed by offering whatever help you can muster. There’s no better lead than generosity to jolt people out of traditional transactional do-for-me-and-I’ll-do-for-you relationships. Actively reaching out to and helping others gives us the opportunity and permission to take a relationship to a deeper level. In your interactions with others, practice being a quick study and a careful listener to understand what it is people truly need – then be creative in figuring out what you can do to help.

3. Have the courage to be vulnerable: To connect genuinely with others, we need to be willing to reveal ourselves. After all, it does us no good to withhold information. It’s like lying to your therapist about what’s going on in your life—what’s the point? By trusting in others, you’ll become trustworthy. People will seek you out as a counselor and a confidant. When no one else has the answers, you will become that one person called upon to help. You will, in other words, become a lifeline to others. And because we create our reality through our words and actions, others will become lifelines in return.

4. Ask for candor: Valuable feedback from others whom we respect, and who care about us and our careers (bosses, friends, colleagues, spouses, or even coaches and therapists), can help us become more aware of where we are, what we should be doing differently, what we should stop doing, and how we can perform better. The poet Robert Burns put it more succinctly: “To see ourselves as others see us! It would from many a blunder free us.” It also helps establish trust, vital to lifeline relationships.

5. Create measurable accountability: The only means through which real change is sustained is accountability, which means following through on your promises. Schedule regular meetings with your support team and ask for status checks on the changes you and others have made. Encourage each other on things that have gone well and question one another on why other things did not go as planned. If you’ve been practicing candor and vulnerability, you should be prepared to give and receive the tough love that accountability requires – and still talk to each other the next day.

Try reaching out to just one person using the tips above. Invite them to a long slow dinner, where you can get know them better and to test out the aforementioned mind-sets. You will be amazed at how transformative one new deep and trusting life-line relationship can help you realize your goals in business and in life.

Good luck.

Keith Ferrazzi's latest book Who's Got Your Back: The Breakthrough Program to Build Deep, Trusting Relationships That Create Success--and Won't Let You Fail is available online. For more information on Keith Ferrazzi's success principles, visit his website Ferrazzi Greenlight.