by Dale Shumaker
4spirit@gmail.com
Who's Got Your Back by Keith Ferrazzi is about creating lifeline relationships. Lifeline relationships are your inner circle of trusted advisers, mentors and colleagues. It's those you can really open up to, share your fears, failures, goals, dreams and ask for help. They will give you the insight, feedback on your career and life you need to hear. They know your professional goals, so they are the best ones you can ask for help. We need advice and feedback from people we can trust. It's not about changing who you are, but enlisting advice of others to help you become the best who you can be. Ferrazzi shows us how to get this support in our lives.
The four mind-sets for building lifeline relationships:
Generosity: building mutual support and helping others succeed.
Vulnerability: letting your guard down so you have mutual understanding.
Candor: being totally honest with who you confide in.
Accountability: following through with the promises you have made.
Eight steps to Instant Intimacy (from Vulnerability above)
1. Create an authentic environment around you. Let others see who you are and what you have to offer.
2. Suspend your prejudices. Let people see the why behind your passion.
3. Project the positive. Think positive and project positive and others will too.
4. Share your passions. Tell people your story.
5. Talk about goals and dreams. What really gets you going, and gets you excited.
6. Revisit your past. What in your past has contributed to your behavior today.
7. What's keeping you up at night. What's bothering you right now.
8. Future fears. What of the unknown ahead makes us afraid.
To make candor a big part of your life...
1. Find people you respect.
2. Create opportunity.
3. Make it clear any feedback you get is a gift.
4. Acknowledge your faults.
5. Tell others what you plan to do with their advice.
6. Don't tell them what you want to hear.
7. Ask specific questions.
8. Take it or leave it.
9. Pay them back. Be a straight shooter but never shoot from anger.
Ferrazzi has nine steps to building your dream team of lifeline relationships... those
close to you who will give the support and advice you need.
Step One: Articulate your vision.
What are your talents and abilities and how do you plan to use them to make a difference in the future.
Step Two: Find Your Lifeline Relationships.
You should look for commitment; comprehension which is a practical knowledge of your areas of concern; chemistry and curiosity which is they like you and admire you; diversity which is a balance of diverse backgrounds of value to you.
Step Three: Practice the Art of the Long Slow Dinner.
Find a safe environment where you can be relaxed, not hurried so you can chat; a place to be there for each other so the four mindsets of candor, vulnerability, accountability and generosity come into play.
Step Four: Broaden your Goal-setting Strategy.
Set both performance and learning goals. They are specific goals you want to achieve as well as skills you want to improve. Sharing these goals with others helps you in bringing clarity to your vision.
Step Five: Create Your personal Success Wheel.
Prioritize what is important in life like Spirituality, intellectual stimulation, physical wellness, financial success, professional growth, deep relationships, giving back and then blend them. They actually overlap each other so strategically blend them. In your goal-setting process work on preventing mission creep (that's losing focus), the belief gap (belief you will accomplish what you want), the skills gap (acquiring skills you need), third inning slump (not losing motivation).
Step Six: Learn to Fight.
A give and take of your ideas with your trusted support partners.
Step Seven: Diagnose your weaknesses.
Turn the mirror on yourself; try to learn lessons from your role models; ask other people.
Step Eight: Commit to Improvement.
Before you commit to others make sure you have committed to yourself. When you express it outloud it is liberating, there's no turning back, you build intimacy with others.
Step Nine: Fake it Till You Make It... then Make it Stick.
Commit to small steps, take action, discuss your feelings of success, do it again. Collaborate, don't compromise. Work to bring ideas together, combing them to make them better.
Ferrazzi concludes with how to actually make it your life which includes tactics, strategies, and structures. A self-developed support group has these benefits that go with it.
1. Momentum. Once started it creates a life of its own.
2. Structure. It makes commitments more concrete with increasing chances of genuine growth.
3. Peer pressure. This is the good kind that makes you not want to disappoint and get the applause of your peers.
4. Self-selection. You pick and include the right people for you.
5. Diversity. Differences in experiences and ways of looking at things only strengthen the dynamic of the group.
You can do it yourself and Ferrazzi shows you how to conduct and effectively run a meeting. Plus he gives you tips on how to recruit, apply the rules of engagement, resolve conflicts.... But he says... Get started and have some fun.
Relationships are fundamentally critical to business success. Learn more at
http://www.keithferrazzi.com/WGYB/
Create a web of Spiritual Power Connections.
Spiritual connection is when people living in context of "Jesus living in them" connect with others who live the same way. When one's own life is aligned with the Spiritual Principles of Spirit as Jesus defined them and they then connect with others, tremendous power is released through their interactions. Here's the process....
First, take responsibility for your own time in God's Presence. Jesus went off often to pray the New Testament says. During these times, one record said Moses and Elijah appeared with Jesus. It was at these times Jesus was both empowered to a Supernatural level and He had clear direction on what to do.
Keep a log of what you hear, thoughts you get, senses you have when off alone. Blogs are a good place to keep these things that come to mind as you have a record and your friends can see them too. On Twitter you can post ongoing insights.
Second, find a person who is doing the same and share with them what you are thinking and sensing from these times alone. This sharing and combined faith and hope for each other is very critical. This process of shared hope, belief and faith for the other, begins a dynamic, strategic release of Spiritual power on your behalf. Jesus said if just two come together and are in agreement (in heart, with love and compassion for the other) He will personally see to it that what you agree on will be done. You have just made a contract, in essence, with Jesus Himself who will personally represent you to God, whose Spirit creates all things. now creates on your behalf.
Third, both a Spiritual and reality factor go to work here. You naturally think of what you can do to be part of the answer to this person's prayer, desire in life. Some answers are right within our abilities... if so, we should respond accordingly. In some cases, we get ideas from each other and from those ideas, the answer begins to form. At this point have faith that the power of God is going to work on this matter.
Jesus said whatever you ask and believe in His Power for the answer it will be done for you. This is such an awesome thing to think about. Jesus Himself is going to work for us as He inspires us to use our gifts, talents. We stay involved in the process. We have hope and belief to do things above and beyond we ever could have imagined possible. It is amazing when we are convinced we can do things above and beyond what we have ever done before, we then literally rise to another level.
Fourth, stay in touch with the person you have Connected with in Spirit.. With smart phones, the Internet we can stay in touch better than ever. It is good to meet in person if possible from time to time, and continue to connect in prayer. When we do that His Presence joins us.
Fifth, continue to connect with others and do the same thing. If you know someone else you care for and trust do the same with them. The exciting thing is if everyone keeps connecting with others, it keeps expanding into a prayer network. Before you know it you have quite a Spiritually empowered web of people connecting with each other.
Two by two by two begins to create an ever expanding network of Spiritual Power Connections, a Spiritual network of Power.
It just takes two... it's in the relationship quality where true Spiritual Qualities and Power exist. A husband and wife can be a core, or two close friends, business associates, etc. From this core connection continue to expand to form other prayer connections.
This is also where the supernatural Power exhibited by Jesus is tapped. It can intertwine among relatives, friends, through business, groups, etc. Its application crosses all paths of life.
It's simple... but a person must just do it and see what begins to happen. All the Supernatural Power of Jesus is with you as you Spiritually connect with Him, while making Connections with others who live in God's Spirit.
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