{"id":9518,"date":"2012-03-27T22:01:22","date_gmt":"2012-03-28T03:01:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/trainingmag.com\/last-word-building-strong-relationships\/"},"modified":"2021-02-16T15:11:31","modified_gmt":"2021-02-16T21:11:31","slug":"last-word-building-strong-relationships","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trainingmag.com\/last-word-building-strong-relationships\/","title":{"rendered":"Last Word: Building Strong Relationships"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tBy Peter Post<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen I became involved in the Emily Post Institute teaching about etiquette, I found myself sitting at a lunchroom counter one day scribbling notes for an upcoming talk. The thrust of the talk was the importance of etiquette in building relationships. Etiquette, after all, is more than just a bunch of rules. Its true purpose is to guide us to make choices that build relationships.<\/p>\n

\n\tEmily Post explained the real value of etiquette this way: \u201cWhenever two people come together and their behavior affects one another, you have etiquette. Etiquette is not some rigid code of manners, it\u2019s simply how persons\u2019 lives touch one another.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSo what actually affects a relationship? It\u2019s all well and good when a consultant tells you the secret to business success is to build strong relationships, but what he doesn\u2019t tell you is how to do that.<\/p>\n

\n\tRelationships can be amorphous things, not easy to wrap your fingers around and simply shape the way you would clay into a piece of pottery. While sitting at that counter, I realized that relationships are affected by only three things:<\/p>\n