My blogs

Relationship Management

If you purchase a product or service through a link on this site we may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. Please see our affiliate disclosure for more.

Relationship management allows you to connect with others in ways that help them feel understood and supported. Managing relationships is an essential emotional intelligence skill that enables you to effectively lead change or manage personal change

Managing relationships is much more than being friendly. It takes effort and intention (and some strategy) to get the best from a situation and manage the way people respond.

A Core Domain of Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence consists of four basic capabilities, or domains. These are:

Self Awareness
Self Regulation
Social Awareness
Relationship Management (this page)
This page focuses on managing relationships - the ability to inspire and influence others and sort out the conflicts that arise.

This is the last of the domains of emotional intelligence proposed by Daniel Goleman. Use the links above to find out about the other domains or get an overview of emotional intelligence here.

Relationship Management
Relationships can be complicated. Even Rudy Giuliani (Mayor of the City of New York: 1993 - 2001 and Time 2001 Person of the Year) acknowledges how difficult it is to predict how people will respond to each other and how they'll work together.

In his (highly recommended) 2002 book, 'Leadership' Giuliani observes, "Sometimes very different people will form a harmonious unit, while those with a lot in common can't be in a room together" (p. 111).

So are relationships about luck, or is there something we can do to influence them?

One thing you can be sure of is that if you're going to manage relationships effectively you'll need to use self awareness, self regulation and social awareness to understand what's going on and how it's affecting you.

You see, effective management of relationships relies on all the abilities in the three domains of emotional intelligence that I've highlighted above.