As a leader, you know relationships matter. They’re all around you from your family relationships, business relationships, and friendship relationships.
You can’t avoid relationships. But you can do something. You can ignore the important relationships in your life and watch those important relationships slip away.
Photo by Jenn Evelyn-Ann
Knowing you, you don’t want that to happen. You want to strengthen those relationships you cherish.
Let’s take a look at how you can strengthen those relationships today.
5 Ways To Strengthen Relationships
1. Lead with integrity:
Integrity means being honest, upright, doing the right thing. Having integrity as the basis of any relationship, whether that’s business or personal or family, is where you need to start when strengthening relationships.
The firm foundation of integrity does more than give you peace of mind. It gives you boundaries for what you are willing to do in a relationship.
These boundaries will strengthen the relationships you enter into. You have a set of rules you will live by and by letting others know you have boundaries, they know where the relationship can and can’t go.
Be proud of the integrity you have. Your integrity will keep you, and those you’re in relationships with, safe.
2. Create time for relationships:
Many relationships fail because of the lack of time one or both parties are willing to give to the relationship. Other activities such as sports, work, or entertainment take precedence over the relationship.
To strengthen a relationship, you have to spend time together. This means you have to create time for relationships.
Great relationships don’t just happen. They require time.
Put in the time to strengthen your relationships. It’s a time investment that can’t go wrong.
3. Pray together:
There’s a saying: The couple that prays together stays together. While the saying sounds cheesy, there’s research showing this is true.
When you spend time praying with and for one another, whether this is a marriage relationship or just a friendship, prayer bonds people together. Praying together strengthens relationships.
Take time to pray with your significant others, your friends, and, if they’re up for it, your business partners. These prayers will create bonds that are hard to break.
4. Have time apart:
Wait, what?!? Am I saying that spending time away from someone can help strengthen the relationship? I am.
Absence makes the heart grow fonder. By being away from someone, you realize how much they mean to you.
Don’t mistake what I’m saying and believe you have to split from your relationship. No, this is saying to take a mini-vacation or a few hours a week away from one another.
For me, I’ve done this during my ice climbing trips. Pam and I aren’t able to see one another as we’re hours away. Or it’s when Pam goes to visit her sister out of state.
We have a few minutes on the phone together each day and then nothing. No physical contact, no visual contact…
But this time apart also strengthens our relationship. It’s giving each other needed time and space apart. It also makes us realize how much we love and care for one another.
Find a way to get some time apart. Then remember why you wanted to be in a relationship in the first place.
5. Grow together:
Far too many couples grow apart rather than grow together. This happens because these couples aren’t intentional about their growth, especially together.
By creating a plan where you can grow together through a shared devotional, letting one another know what they’re reading, or attending conferences together (Pam and I do this one at the Catalyst Conference), you can continue to grow together. You can stay on a growth path that brings you together rather than apart.
Look for mutual interests. See what you can do to grow together in those interests.
You’ll soon find yourself engaged and interested in one another again.
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