Relationship Lessons from Another Language

In the April 2006 issue of Fast Company, there is an article about Dan Mintz, an American who has become a very successful businessperson in China. (You can read the full article here.) Early in the article a Chinese word is introduced - guanxi (pronounced gwan-she). According to the article, it is literally translated as "relationship building", but in practice it means "carefully cultivated clout, a culturally calibrated measure of respect, influence, and honor." The article goes on to say that it is a personal as well as political form of capital.

I've long been interested in learning words from other languages because it is through language that we create understanding. It is no coincidence that our vocabulary and our intelligence are closely linked - the more words we have in our mind the easier it is to express our thoughts and to think in new ways.

Guanxi is a word that does this for me - it expands my thoughts about relationship building. Relationship building is an important part of our lives in many ways - within the last two weeks I have had conversations or done training where relationship building has been discussed connected to Customer Service (even in very short relationships), consulting, leadership, facilitation, and sales. I'm sure you could expand this list and it doesn't even yet include our personal and family relationships.

So here are two questions for you: In the relationships you are working to build now, how would the components of guanxi - respect, influence, and honor - influence your behaviors and choices? Do you think about those factors when building a relationship?

I encourage you to think about those components in the coming days. Recognize that if you want to gain respect, influence, and honor, you will do best by focusing on giving those things first.

Build relationships by putting the other person first - respect them at higher levels, influence them not for your gain but for theirs, and honor them highly.

The dual lesson in this post for me is both the power of the insight gained by adding a new component to relationship building and that these insights came from a new word I learned from another language. I encourage both to think about the lessons of guanxi - both in terms of relationships and vocabulary.

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