5 Relationships That Will Help You Build a Successful Career

An old African proverb says, “It takes a village to raise a child.” Young people need to interact with and build relationships with various people to grow up well-versed and thrive. This can also be applied to the workplace, specifically for early career professionals.

In the initial stages of your career, one of the most important things you can do is build a village of your own. We’re not talking about a college network, LinkedIn friends, or the people you met once at a conference. We’re talking about the connections that can help you get a promotion faster, make you more visible in an organization, and push you out of your comfort zone into a leadership role.

Five relationships are crucial to anyone’s professional growth. Building meaningful relationships with each other will take time, so you better start NOW.

1. The Mentor

Knowledge transfer is unparalleled when a more experienced person teaches someone new. Some of the most successful people in history owe their success to mentors. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers mentored Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. Maya Angelou, an author and poet, was a mentor to Oprah Winfrey, and music legend Ray Charles was a mentor to Quincy Jones, who was just as talented.

Mentors are the one person inside (or outside) of your organization who you can turn to for guidance — whether you are looking to expand your industry knowledge, navigate a difficult conversation, listen to feedback on a project, or get some encouragement when times are tough. They are reliable, wise, and, most importantly, honest. Mentorship is about having challenging conversations that help you learn about yourself and help you grow personally and professionally.

Great mentors are often proven leaders who have gotten ahead in their careers in an industry related to your long-term goals. To find one, think about someone whose path you deeply admire but is within reach, someone who may respond to your email or LinkedIn message. A potential mentor has to be open to forming a professional relationship with you because, more often than not, they’re pressed for time.

Once you’ve identified a potential mentor, contact them in writing. Don’t start with “Would you be my mentor?” These bonds form slowly after you’ve both had a chance to interact and build trust. Instead, share one or two things you admire about their work. You might say, “I attended the digital conference last week and was intrigued by your talk on what makes content go viral. I’m new to this field and interested in specializing in video production. I’d love to hear your career story and how you got here. “Could we have a quick video chat sometime within the next couple of weeks so I can learn more?”

After your first meeting, keep in touch with them regularly and tell them about your projects, how they’re going, and what you’ve accomplished. This will help you develop a reputation as someone who can manage stakeholders and deliver what you set out to do. Building a strong personal brand by showing off your skills, experience, and positive attitude is an excellent way to get influential people at your company interested in you. Potential mentors will want to advise someone already on an upward trajectory.

2. The Sponsor

While mentors give you advice and a different point of view, sponsors speak up for you and, in some cases, give you opportunities to move up in your career. They play a role in the “behind closed doors” conversations that may not include you and can support your boss in advocating for you in front of other team leaders.

Research indicates that a junior manager with a sponsor is 21% more likely to climb up the career ladder than someone in the same position. High power is passed from one person to another at work.

To find a sponsor, you need to begin by showing people in your organization that you’re someone worth advocating for. This means you must be great at what you do — and your work must be visible.

Start by thinking about what unique skills, cultural knowledge, or generational life experiences you can share with your organization that will add value to their mission and help them reach outstanding goals. For example, work at an agency looking to bring innovative advertising offerings to their clients. Your manager might be interested in learning more about emerging video-sharing networks like TikTok or live-streaming platforms like Twitch.

Sponsors, like mentors, are in high demand and difficult to recruit. But if you develop a standout reputation, they might come to you. Alternatively, you can ask your mentor to make an introduction or reach out to yourself for an introductory chat over coffee. Whatever you do the first time you meet with a potential sponsor, be sure to enter the conversation with a purpose. Ask them about their career path, work, passions, and goals. Then, share your own. You want to build a foundation of good intentions and rapport.

3. The Partner

A partnership is a mutually beneficial peer relationship. It is fueled by trust, a shared drive to succeed, and the recognition that you can do better together. Your partner is a friend who can help you see things from a different point of view, solve problems with you, and connect you with people who can help you build your brand and your network.

Your partner is not always your work BFF. This relationship is more transactional. You each have an explicit intent to elevate yourselves by elevating each other.

Simply put, finding a partner is similar to finding a co-founder — look for someone whose personality and work ethic complement your own. You want a person who will fill the gaps in your working style. For instance, if you are more of an introvert who avoids public speaking, look for a partner who enjoys presenting and will promote your shared projects when doing so. If you are a strategic, big-picture person who doesn’t thrive with the details, look for a partner who is strong in analytics and operations.

An excellent first step towards building this relationship is becoming an advocate for other people’s work. Pay attention to who reciprocates your enthusiasm. They may be a good candidate for the role. Ultimately, what makes a partnership work is the idea that you two will be more successful together.

4. The Competitor

The business world is full of rivalries: Steve Jobs vs. Bill Gates. Jeff Bezos vs. Elon Musk. Some of these rivalries have resulted in remarkable breakthroughs.

Competition can be healthy if it’s focused on achieving results (a win-win) rather than battling for resources (a win-lose). When used correctly, it can motivate you to hone and improve your skills and lead to improved performance, breakthrough ideas, and a greater drive to get things done.

Your competitor could be your ally or even your partner. Imagine that you and a peer have two great ideas for executing a project. You know that both of you can devise unique and effective solutions. Instead of butting heads and trying to choose one over the other, how might the result look if you collaborated and came up with something much more effective and valuable?

That’s what competitors can do. The goal is to win, not to be won over.

As Dr. Stephen Covey states in his business classic, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, a win-win attitude possesses three vital character traits; integrity, maturity, and an abundance mentality. So, choose your competitor after evaluating these traits. Once you have identified a potential competitor in your company, schedule a one-on-one meeting. One way to entice them to work with you, instead of against you, is to have a vulnerable conversation. Be sure to tell them you admire them professionally and consider them a formidable peer. Then, share your aspirations, ask them about their goals, and figure out if there are ways you can help each other succeed.

5. The Mentee

Physics Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman coined the phrase, “If you want to master something, teach it.” Most of us have been teachers at some point in our lives. Whether we’re teaching our kids to ride a bike or our classmates how to understand a difficult concept. No matter the situation, assuming the role of the teacher helps you gain greater clarity of a subject by breaking it down into simple steps or by articulating a complex problem more understandably.

At work, having a mentee allows you to be the teacher. Whether helping an intern get started or helping a new coworker figure out how to do a project, you learn more when you teach more.

Becoming a mentor also helps hone the soft skills that every leader should have: strong communication, creativity, and empathy. Employers want to train leaders who can give clear directions, develop new ways to solve problems and understand how people feel. As a mentor, you are a leader and role model. You learn to bring out the best in others, recognize their strengths, give feedback, and coach. Thus, this role will push you to improve.

Seek these opportunities internally by looking for interns or new employees who need help settling in. You can mentor people outside your company, such as at your old school or a non-profit. That said, if done at work, being a mentor will give you more visibility and help build up that good reputation we discussed.

Sometimes, forming these relationships will happen randomly and without effort. But you can accomplish much more if you are open and intentional about it. So, don’t leave things to chance. As the Roman philosopher Seneca puts it, “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”

If you are facing a challenge at office, or trying to decide on your career as a youngster, call 90008 50001 or click www.hopetrustindia to speak to a career guide.