On Relationships and Success

I come from a long line of salesmen, and all salesmen know that the best way to make a sale is to build a relationship.  My paternal grandfather spent the early part of his career buying mineral rights all over Texas, Oklahoma, and the South.  While the job could be viewed as buying something, my grandfather was actually selling the dream of riches to poor farmers during the 1920’s and 30’s.  I can imagine him driving the dusty, caliche roads, stopping every few miles to open the ranch gates that that crossed public highways then.  I feel certain that he kept a bottle of bourbon in his car to act as a lubricant to ensure the success of the negotiation.  My grandfather was successful because he could hold a conversation with anyone from the poorest dirt farmer to Lyndon Johnson.  

My maternal grandfather was a sales manager at a Buick dealership for most of his life until he mortgaged his house when he was in his sixties to buy the dealership.  He was also successful.  He knew almost everyone in San Antonio who might have the ability to buy a Buick over his sixty-year career.  He, too, knew how to ask questions and pay attention to the responses.  

While many probably thought that both my grandfathers had some charisma that made people want to do business with them, I don’t think that was the case.  I think they both recognized as young men that they could form relationships that were important to their business by listening.  My father knew this also, as one of the only pieces of advice that he ever gave me was that the key to success is listening.  It has taken me a long time to truly understand what he meant and that the success that he described was not necessarily financial.

I was having a casual chat with a parent today, and she told me that her daughter said that I must study information about students because I always ask them about things going on in their lives.  I admit that she is correct.  I do spend time asking students questions and remembering their answers.  Before the school year starts, I study photos of incoming sixth graders to make sure that I can place a name with a face.  It takes intention and purposeful actions to form and maintain relationships.  

I am rewarded every day with the success of having relationships with students and faculty.  The questions that I ask students and the comments that I make that appear to be casual sometimes take work.  They take the work of me getting out of my own brain and focusing my attention on someone else -- of attempting to see the world from a student’s twelve-year-old perspective, which is every bit as important as my fifty-four-year-old point of view.  I know that the success of these relationships will not show up in mineral rights or the gross profit made by selling a car; the success comes from knowing that my efforts help to create a place where young people can feel that someone is interested in them at a time in their lives when they sometimes feel vulnerable and alone.