FREE FULL Course: Professional Career Relationship Building

Welcome to this course on building personal and professional relationships. My name is Alex Kondynyk and I'll be your instructor. In this video, I'll tell you a little bit about what to expect from the course, a little bit about my background, and we'll start right away. Well, this course is designed to be taken in under one day and actually begin improving your relationship through the ideas of this course the very same day, perhaps the very same hour as you're taking this course, because every lecture has actionable things you can do and apply to how you communicate and manage your own relationships. So this is meant to be incredibly useful and practical. In fact, I use these techniques in my own life, personal life and work, and they work tremendously. So what we're going to talk about are healthy mindsets for appreciating the right things in the relationships, not having self-sabotage and allowing the relationships to fully blossom. I'm also going to show you how to feel and share gratitude in the right way that makes other people do more of what you need and how to reciprocate that. We're going to talk about empathy, compassion, emotional intelligence in your relationship, and especially how to manage arguments and conflicts when they happen. Well, how do you do it in a way that makes your relationship resilient, meaning you come out of the argument or disagreement stronger on the other end? Yes, you might run into a bump in the road, but can you become stronger together? I'm going to give you the strategies, practical research-based strategies that work. And by the end of this course, of course, you will have many tools that you can immediately apply to your professional or personal relationships. So welcome to this course. Let's begin. I want to start this course on building stronger relationships by giving you some food for thought that comes from one of the greatest poets and singer-songwriters of the previous century, Neil Young, from his song Heart of Gold. You may be familiar with this song. If you're not, I'll have the link to the YouTube video of this song in the description of this, in the resources of this video. So you can go and listen to this song. It's an iconic classic song. It's a very poetic song. And the main lyric of this song that we're going to talk about is, I've been searching for a heart of gold and I'm getting old. And many people think, hmm, yeah, I've been searching for someone else who has the heart of gold and I'm getting old. And it's so sad. Why am I not finding somebody with a heart of gold? But the true meaning of this song is, and the wisdom of this song, and Neil Young wrote it at a relatively young age, which really is impressive. The wisdom of this song is that he means that he's been searching for a heart of gold in himself to give to somebody else. So a lot of relationships is about fostering that heart of gold, the capacity within you to give more and then you'll be able to take. That is how most relationships work at a healthy level. You give more or as much as you take instead of thinking, how can I get more? What's in it for me? Why am I not getting the right relationship? Whether it's at work or whether it's in personal life, this song can be the theme of discourse. I've been searching for a heart of gold in myself. The outlook is always inside first to find how can I be better? And when we are better, our relationships miraculously become better as well, because we're able to give more on many more levels. So with that idea that self-awareness is the foundation for great relationships that we're going to have in our life. Now with that idea, let's begin this course. I want to offer you some mindsets to help you make the most out of your relationships and be happy with them. And in the West, at least, we hear this phrase a lot. I'm not going to settle for whatever. People want perfection and ideal relationships. Otherwise, there's this, I'm not going to settle. And they end up not settling, but also not finding what they need for a long time or ever. There's no guarantee that you're ever going to find perfection. So to counter the idea of perfection, let's explore some gray area and nuance, because life is lived in the nuance, in the gray areas. It's very rare that things are so black and white. Nuance is where we live for the most part. And relationships are mostly imperfect. I've never known about perfect relationships that's great all the time. In relationships, there's a lot of good and there's a lot of bad. And to have the good, you have to accept some of the bad. Because if you don't accept some of the bad, you'll never get the good. And it's the truth of life. I didn't invent this. It's just how things are. And we have some options. We can appreciate the good or focus on the bad. Let's look at focusing on the bad. You feel the worst about things, your job, your relationships, your anything, when you dwell on how bad it is. So if you have this negative mindset, oh, I don't like when my co-worker says this, or I don't like when my boss keeps me after hours, or talks to me for a long time after meetings, or goes on and on. And if that's your focal point of what you don't like, that will get enlarged in your mind. And you will really not like that. And that will snowball and spiral out of control. And you really won't like that. And that relationship will become bad, partially because you're making it that way. Starting with mindset. But if you look at the same person who does these things, which let's call them irritants or not ideal things, we're going to separate that from, you know, you have your lines in the sand, deal breakers. They're not deal breakers necessarily. They're just annoyances that you don't like, but they're not deal breakers. Now, if you have a lot of nuances, but there are also some positives, like your boss maybe is annoying in some way, but also they're not firing you. They're giving you a job, by the way. They're also maybe not the greatest boss in the world, but kind of helping you with your career and moving forward. And you're kind of learning some things. Well, okay, these aren't perfect, but they're good. And of course, there's all these slogans. Well, the good is the enemy of the great. And yes, yes, there is. And you want great, but you can't always have that. So when you can have that, you can look for it. But while you're looking for it, you can always make a better out of a current situation. You can make your current situation better and ultimately close to ideal. That's my point. You don't have to look too much externally. You can make the current better. Here's how. Take all the annoyances of your boss, of your boyfriend, girlfriend, spouse, whoever you have. And look at what are the good things they're giving you. People have a lot of value. Some people are tidy. Some people are organized. Some people are creative. Some people are just good natured. Some people you can learn from. They do different things than you. And if you just look at it like, oh, they're different in a way I don't like. I kind of like myself. I kind of like what I like, and I like what I like, and that's it. That's so close-minded, as opposed to if you were open to this world that this person can share with you, because everyone is different, then you'd be like, wow, there's a world of things I can learn from this person. Maybe they're more athletic, and I can be more athletic with them. Maybe they know history, and I can learn about that. Maybe they know movies, and maybe they know art, or maybe they know science, whatever. But if you see the value of the good and focus on the good, that they have, which they do, and not dwell on the negative, this is such a strong key to your own internal happiness with your relationship. How you pursue the details of that relationship. What you allow to have more weight versus less weight. What you truly appreciate about them, and how much you allow yourself to appreciate. This is your internal work. The other person has no idea this whole internal conversation is even going on. But I'll give you some examples from cultures. Like in the United States and the Western culture, there's more and more of a culture for perfection. But in Eastern cultures, happiness is being happy with what you have. Being content with what you have is happiness. And wanting more is actually what's gonna make you unhappy. That constant drive of not having enough sometimes it's exciting to have a drive and ambition. There's a good part to it, but it also has a negative part of like, okay, then definitionally, you're not so satisfied with where you are now, but you could be, and you can balance the two. You can be satisfied with where you are now, but keep improving. Keep improving. Don't lose your ambitions, but be satisfied with where you are now. And I wanna finish this lecture with this idea from Kurt Vonnegut. There's a meme going around online. I'm not sure if you've seen it. It's from a book, but I didn't honestly read the book, but I saw the meme, but I thought it was brilliant. So he was at this party with millionaires and he was talking to this friend, Kurt Vonnegut, if you're not familiar, he's a very brilliant author. And he was at this party with millionaires and he was talking to a friend and I don't remember the exact phrasing, but he said something, you know what, they're millionaires and billionaires, but I have something that they don't have. And his friend was like, well, what do you have that these millionaires and brilliants don't have? And he said, I have what they don't have. I have enough. And that was just brilliant, right? Because you don't need so much more and so much perfection. When you can have enough and when you can appreciate what you have, you're happy, that's enough. Of course, in the Western culture, people will always say, but what about ambition? So of course, have your ambitions, but don't forget to appreciate what you have so that you have enough. In a relationship, you have to give a lot. But in this video, we're going to talk about how do you know what to give? Because the first impulse we have is to give what we would like, you know, the golden rule, do unto others as you would like done to you. Yes, the golden rule is so true, but it has a flaw. In this case, because it uses what's called projecting, we project our values unto others. If work-life balance is important for us, we might assume it's important for others. But if you ask 10 different people what's important for you, they'll give you 100 different answers or at least 10 different answers. So you don't want to project what's important for you unto others, even though as humans, we have so much in common. Some things are shared, like meaningful relationships, important to everybody, financial and physical health, important to everybody to some degree, mental health, important to everybody to some degree. But what's most important? What do people want the most? We can't really project because that's an assumption and guessing. So we have to ask in intelligent ways. The smartest thing to do is to ask unique open-ended questions over a period of time. When you meet somebody, the first questions people ask usually in a Western setting are, what do you do? Where are you from? Where did you grow up? These basic questions, they tell you a lot, but they're also kind of canned questions and everybody has the canned answer, basic answers. You don't really get a lot, really. So you want to ask more meaningful and open-ended questions. Like, let's say people tell you, oh, I'm from such and such place. And let's say they say they're from Brazil. Projecting might be, oh, from Brazil, you know, I know Brazilian people like soccer, right? So this is kind of projecting because maybe I like soccer also and I want to talk about soccer and it's also a stereotype because maybe people from Brazil, not everybody from Brazil likes soccer. There's plenty of people who don't like soccer who like science or arts or poetry. When you do the stereotype and projecting of your own ideas, okay, you will be wrong a lot. But you might avoid that and you might ask a more open-ended question. Like, how was your childhood growing up there? And they will tell you, I played a lot of soccer or I went to an art school and right away you'll be on the right path because if they say I went to art school, you might ask what kind of art do you find most meaningful and which kind of art has impacted you the most in your life and are you still able to practice or use it in your daily life? Now they'll tell you a lot in their answer and from that you can extrapolate. This is where you use active listening. Not just listening for the purpose of trying to hear what you want to hear but listening to truly think about what people are telling you and understand what they are trying to tell you. And sometimes reading between the lines because they don't always say what they mean because you can't always say what you mean. Sometimes you have to know people for a very long time to truly express yourself. But active listening is the act of truly thinking about what people are telling you so that you can understand what they're saying at a deeper level with more insight. And of course that leads us to empathy and compassion. Empathy is understanding people. You can have multiple levels of empathy. There's cognitive empathy, understanding what people think and emotional empathy, understanding how people feel. Now you're never going to feel what people feel. There's different levels of intensity of empathy within adult world. We usually don't reach incredibly intense empathy where you actually feel everything the other person feels. There's research on like mother-child, mother-infant empathy. This is different. They usually tune each other's emotions, mother and infant. But for adults, it's a little different. So we couple cognitive and emotional empathy as far as we can get and we want to turn that into compassion. Compassion is, whereas empathy is just understanding, compassion is the desire to actually help. And so when you combine asking great questions, thinking about the answers using active listening and truly trying to think about it in the conversation, after the conversation, coming back in the next conversation and talking about it more and listening more and truly being empathetic and compassionate, this now is where you start to gain the true insight of what that other person needs. Remember in the beginning of this video, we started out, don't project or assume because you're going to make errors. Now with open-ended questions, listening, doing the work of being empathetic, compassionate, then you are in a far better place to give that other person exactly what they need. So you actually don't have to give a lot but have to give in a meaningful way that resonates. Imagine if somebody is going through life and they just have some need, that need that's constantly unmet, unmet, unmet. And imagine if you listened enough and you know what, did something to meet that need. They would be so grateful, so grateful because most of us go through life and we think to ourselves, well, they have this inkling in our minds but I'm just not finding the right people, just not finding the right settings. And here comes somebody, comes along, listens to you and delivers exactly the thing that you need. Wow, that's special. That's really special. You know, like you're getting exactly the right birthday gift or something like, you know, like it feels, those moments feel special or just when somebody does something you didn't expect but it's something that you're like, wow, this is really what I was hoping and thinking all this time. Wow, you know, people appreciate you for that so much because it's all genuine at that level and it really strengthens that relationship. And when people say, you have to give a lot in relationships, sometimes you have to give not so much but the right thing which will mean a lot. Not a lot of effort, a lot of meaning, give meaning. I want to share some insights about how to show gratitude in a way that actually is going to help whoever you have the relationship with do more of what you need. So when we think of gratitude in the mainstream, we maybe sometimes think of gratitude like, I appreciate what I have but this is not the gratitude that we're going to talk about here. The gratitude that we're going to talk about here is the kind of gratitude that people and scientists have done a lot of research on lately and what they found is that we don't actually feel that much gratitude when we say, I feel gratitude. It's like a kind of a slight practice in futility because you don't make yourself any different. Where gratitude is really felt is if someone does something good for you and you tell them, that thing you did really helped me with whatever I needed. Like if they helped you just something simple like carry your groceries and you tell them, I was so tired and it was just the right time to help me. Thank you so much. That really helped. So that tiny tiny act of helping carry the groceries which is easy to do without that statement of showing gratitude. That person who carried the groceries, they don't really know like was the other person thankful or they're not thankful but when you express to them, that was really helpful. Thank you. That made a difference for me. They'll feel really good about it and they will be more likely to do it next time without being prompted or asked. And this taps into the dopamine system. We're not going to get too much into it now but dopamine in your body it's a reward chemical. You have a built up an increase of dopamine when you're anticipating a reward and the reward for a person here is the thank you that their work had a good result. They get a release of dopamine and in anticipation and when they get told that their work was good as opposed to no feedback or negative feedback. So when anyone you have a relationship with at work or in private life when they do something good that you like you tell them exactly that in beautiful language. It doesn't have to be Shakespearean beautiful language but you express to them exactly what they did and what impact it had on you to make your life better in whatever way. When they understand it they'll do more of that thing you like and if you leave it undiscussed they won't know and so their dopamine will be kind of at the same baseline level or maybe a slight drop because maybe they'll anticipate oh I just did some good things but they get no feedback on it and they're like oh maybe it wasn't so good maybe that person didn't appreciate it and then they don't do it again because next time there is not as much of a anticipation related to dopamine buildup and this is why the way you really show gratitude is whatever is a nice thing that the other person does that you like that you want more of you tell them exactly about it and how much that helped they'll be very very happy to do it next time for you but also for themselves because their own dopamine levels will go up and that actually feels good for that person so that's how you get people to do what you need and actually feeling good about it as well and of course you should do this vice versa this should be a two-way street but this is how gratitude really works and how to use it in a good way to make the overall feeling of the relationship much better and everybody doing things that the other person likes now let's talk about how to manage conflict and disagreement in relationships that actually strengthens your relationships meaning it makes them resilient you come out better on the other side so conflicts and disagreements will happen what you don't want to do is get too wrapped up in the exact moment you have to understand that how the person feels about the conflict has to do with how they are feeling in the moment so if you're screaming they're going to feel bad about it if you're elevating your voice that's going to evoke negative emotions in them subconsciously so you don't want to raise your voice you want to stay calm and you want to think about why is this conflict happening what does the other person need the first and foremost thing you think about is what is the other person's value system what is really important for them and you try to work from that you try to use active listening to really ask what's wrong when they tell you sometimes they tell you what's wrong but sometimes there's an underlying issue and you want to ask open-ended questions to understand them better this is opposite of you know you probably have seen or maybe you've been in disagreements or arguments where it's kind of a shouting match and both sides have a point and they just keep repeating the same point and they kind of go in circles and just repeating the same point this is where you don't listen and don't develop a fuller understanding of what the other person is trying to say or what they need so in our case what I would suggest is to use empathy meaning try to understand what they're going through emotionally try to understand what they're going through cognitively what they need and since you know this person already you're not just arguing after the first time meeting them you have some relationship with them you understand their value system and what's important for them and you find common ground maybe you both have very strong common ground which probably is the basis of some parts of your relationship in the first place but maybe you just have different ideas for how to achieve some goal maybe one person sees one path another sees another path you can agree on the path but instead of arguing about the path what you want to do is get aligned on hey we have the same goal I want the same thing let's figure out how to get there why don't you like path A? oh because for me it was going to be easier but I see how for you it was going to be a lot harder maybe how can I make it easier for you is there any burden I can take off of you and you want to show understanding this is where you use the concept of acknowledging acknowledging is basically if a person tells you hey I'm going through this issue I'm having this challenge I'm having this emotion you don't just tell them whatever you want to say or like you know and what about me or I'm also going through challenges you don't do that because that sort of disregards whatever they just shared with you which is personally meaningful to them instead of jumping to your topics which there will be a time to do that but not yet you want to do this step of acknowledging whatever the other person tells you after you ask them open-ended questions about their situation after you listen after you think about what they told you you acknowledge like oh I understand this path that I suggested was going to be really hard for you I get it I wouldn't want to do it either if I was in your shoes I totally understand and I appreciate how much of a challenge it would be so let's work together to maybe figure out a better way so you see work together to figure out a better way but after you acknowledge their challenge that acknowledgement goes an incredibly long way because without it the other person feels not listened to you may be listening but they don't know that so the acknowledging lets them know you listened makes them feel respected and makes them because of that feel good about the interaction and they feel good about their interaction this is where they're going to be more likely to accept your points of view and your arguments because your points and your arguments you think oh they're logical but people actually are very emotional and most decisions are emotionally driven an emotion being there's two kinds of emotions you want to be aware of there's the emotion like sad, happy, excited in the moment those emotions but what you really want to be aware is the other kind of emotion where how do they feel about you in the moment if they feel good about you in the moment if they feel good about the relationship in the moment you respect them you acknowledge them if they feel good then whatever you tell them is in the context of them feeling good about you trusting you more in that moment trusting the relationship more in that moment and they'll be more accepting of your point regardless of how logical they are equally logical points are accepted more when the other person feels better about the relationship and you this is key if you've ever been in an argument or a debate and you're saying things that are logical and they're just not getting home the other person is just not getting them and you think well why how can it be I made all the logical points but that's what you want to think about is how are they feeling at the moment are they feeling pressured are they feeling they're not respected or not heard or not listened to or their opinion is not so valuable if they feel bad you can often very often tell by people's facial expressions if the facial expression is skeptical or closed or negative this is a tell hey they're feeling bad about the interaction they're not going to be into what you're going to say no matter how brilliant it is the things are you're saying so first forget your points first work on bringing back the feel-good elements of the interaction listen more show understanding show appreciation make compliments get on the same page find points of commonality all of these things until you see okay I'm bringing back the feel-good without feeling good don't make any points don't make any arguments they're all going to be interpreted negatively the other person is going to be mistrusting of them like you're going to say I want the same thing as you and the other person is going to think they're just trying to be sneaky and they're just trying to say the right things I know they're not telling me the truth right then so whatever you're saying even if it's true if they're not feeling good about it they're not going to accept it they're going to be skeptical but if they're feeling good about it and you're on the same page they'll be much more likely to take your words for what they are at face value and trust you and go with it this is what you want to do you want to first manage the let's make the term feel goodness in the entire interaction by asking open-ended questions listening acknowledging making the other person feel heard and respected and only when you see that there's a positive feel in the interaction this is where and you see that the other person is open to your ideas this is where you make your point that's when they're going to resonate without that actually going to drive that if the other person doesn't feel good you're actually going to drive them towards stubbornness and the more you argue while feeling bad and while having a negative aura in the conversation the more you argue and debate the more stubborn you'll make the other person feel for it's not really about the logical argument it's how they feel first and then the logical argument so definitely try to manage conflicts that way because when you feel good about an interaction agree find common ground find commonality find a way to work together this is where you come out of arguments with agreements and have your relationship be stronger moving forward you