Last week Project Resource Partners were fortunate to have Nina Anderson of Anderson Advisory facilitate the latest in our series of workshops that have proved rather popular. Nina presented her workshop over Zoom on ‘Developing Strategic Relationships and your Personal Value Proposition and Why this is Important in the Current World.'

Nina was able to facilitate a discussion that resonated with all the participants, whether they were in a role, leading teams, leading businesses, or looking for work. Nina navigated us through why strategic relationships matter and the value they deliver to businesses, and what this looks like with a dispersed workforce and an often invisible market. In addition, Nina also investigated how executives and their teams build strategic relationships for commercial outcomes and ways you can achieve this right now.

These are skills that often people find less than comfortable. Usually seen as self-promotion or putting themselves ahead of their team, or it is simply that it is outside our comfort zone, and often that is because we are not practiced at it, and therefore we are unable to convey the value that we can bring to people, projects, businesses or situations. In a dispersed workforce, where visibility can be blurred at best, but where we still need to achieve our goals, the ability to understand our Personal Value Proposition, and to build strategic relationships has never been more important.

With that in mind, and before announcing our next workshop which will take place on Thursday 13 August at 1pm, I wanted to share my top ten takeaways from Nina’s presentation. 

1. Take the time to understand yourself, what you do and the value you add, and importantly how you can convey that on a daily basis in a way that creates interest, and that you are comfortable with
2. Who do you need to know? Who do you know? Where are the gaps? Know that, so you know who you need to target to know internally and externally
3. The strategic relationships you need are a cross section of relevant connections to you and your work. They be internal, external, business contacts, advocates, ambassadors, industry, media, social media, and government amongst others
4. You have recognised the gap; now how do you connect? There are online tools at your fingertips; LinkedIn, or an intranet’s internal directory. Or there is the time honoured talking to people and asking for an introduction. If you are doing it online, include a personalised message when you connect
5. With the connection accepted, now it is time to organise the next step. Our current distributed workplace can make that harder, but there are still options
6. You could start with a phone call, or a Zoom meeting, or a walking meeting where you still follow the necessary social distancing restrictions
7. Remember though that people are busy, even those you have the closest relationships with, so in that case maybe a text that does not require a response. Something like ‘Thinking of you and hope you are well.’
8. It is important to remember that the relationships are not about now, or tomorrow, they are about the long term and the ones that matter will be mutually beneficial
9. Part of building that relationship over the long-term and building your Personal Value Proposition is sharing and giving. It may be content, or articles or insight that you share with connections that it is relevant to them. You can give without getting!
10. Your value proposition is important and it needs to be authentic. For that you need to understand your intrinsic value and what it is to others. Are you a trusted advisor? Are you a facilitator? Are you a sounding board? Are you a provider of insights? Maybe you are all of them, but what is important is that you know that and are comfortable portraying that

Spending time on building our connections, and building strategic relationships can be difficult, but often it is because we do not put aside the time to do, or the time to understand ourselves. The ability to build these relationships is in us all, and in this current climate, it could provide us with the opportunities to really thrive and be successful. If you have not done so before try and put time in your diary to focus on what your Personal Value Proposition is, and to then build the relationships you need. 

These are skills that are valuable to you whether you are in work and looking to progress your career, or if you are looking for work.