5C. Relationships toolkit
This toolkit explains how to build and maintain strong relationships with individuals who are critical to your work, and provides resources to help you. It is structured around three core principles set out in Deliverology in Practice:
- Creating spaces for relationship building
- Building a strong brand by paying deliberate attention to each interaction
- Helping resisters to get to yes through principled negotiation
The focus of this toolkit is strong interpersonal relationships with a few key people. It complements the communications toolkit (element 5B), which focuses on how you can influence large numbers of people through communications.
Kit Resources Include:
5C. Relationships toolkit overview
This document provides a guide through the rest of this toolkit. Read this first to understand the concepts covered in the rest of the kit.
5C.A. Identifying key relationships
Use this exercise guide to lead a team discussion to identify a manageable, prioritized list of critical relationships; evaluate these relationships; and decide on the actions needed to build space for them. Includes a handout with key questions for analyzing relationships.
5C.B. Building your “brand”
Use this exercise guide to structure a team conversation about how the team will build and communicate about its brand with internal and external stakeholders.
5C.C. Ethical influencing tactics
This slide deck provides a short guide to ethical influencing tactics. Use this to increase your own understanding of tactics for influencing others without relying on formal authority, or as a training resource.
5C.D. Analyzing a difficult relationship
This worksheet provides questions to help you plan a negotiation strategy to resolve conflict in one of your key relationships. Use this to structure your own thinking or to structure a conversation with colleagues.
Related Resources