RelationalProximity – Page 10

rLiving Day 6: facebook Nation (Purpose)

Is Social Media a fad? Is facebook a nation?

Social Media Revolution 2, the new video by Socialnomics says No to the first, and implies Yes to the second. The first video, uploaded in July 2009, received over 1.8million hits. I’m viewer 534 of the new one so I feel, like, way cool and on the cutting edge (but actually I’m just following Marcia Conner who’s the one on the cutting edge!)

Is Social Media a fad? Well, no. Given the numbers in these great videos, it’d be like asking if the automobile is a fad. And facebook is usually the prime example of the nonfadness of social media.

This statistic may be true in terms of numbers, but the comparison with countries is a category mistake. facebook isn’t a country or nation. [I know it’s a comparison just made for effect but I’m still going to exploit it for my own purposes!]

Relational Proximity Dimension #5 is Purpose/Commonality: Our sense of connectedness and relationship is greater to the degree we have things in common or share a common purpose or identity. A good relationship has a direction to it, something that is common between the members that holds it together.

facebook is ‘simply’ a tool, an affordance for connecting people with each other. But by itself, it’s just a computer network. It’s the connections between people that matter. And those connections are rooted in either identity (Red Sox!), commonality (city, college, Captain Sully) or purpose (Protest facebook’s privacy changes!!). ‘facebook’ doesn’t have any of those elements.

But in case you needed convincing not to think that facebook is actually something to form an identity around, consider this excellent quote that my friend Dana (male) left in a comment on yesterday’s post. The quote was from Ernest Renan’s famous speech attempting to respond to the question, “What is a nation?”

“A nation,” said Renan, “is a large-scale solidarity, constituted by the feeling of the sacrifices that one has made in the past and of those that one is prepared to make in the future. It presupposes a past; it is summarized, however, in the present by a tangible fact, namely, consent, the clearly expressed desire to continue a common life. A nation’s existence is, if you will pardon the metaphor, a daily plebiscite, just as an individual’s existence is a perpetual affirmation of life.”

What is your common life? What is the identity or purpose that maintains and feeds your relationships?

Is social media a fad? Watch this:

rLiving Day 5: Customer Relationships (Continuity)

At work today we were running through a virtual version of Forum‘s program, Achieving Service Excellence, on Adobe Connect Pro. Forum was a pioneer in “customer focus” and organizations still come to us because our deep experience and expertise in the customer experience. For years ASE (and its companion, Managing Service Excellence) has helped fancy ice-cream stores, banks, hotels, gas stations and more improve customer satisfaction, retention and spend. A center-piece of ASE is a simple but powerful ‘customer interaction cycle’ (shown with permission below). The behavioral battle for most people is resisting the temptation to go straight to ‘helping’, and then to keep going to ‘keeping’. But that’s not my point here [end of unpaid commercial]: the model presumes you’re going to see the customer again.

Relational Proximity Dimension #2 is Continuity: our relationship is formed and strengthened by the amount, frequency and span of time we are together. ‘Together’ is a function of directness (Dimension #1), so even if you only have an online relationship with someone Continuity will likely still strengthen the relationship.

I’d argue that if we meet once, we don’t really have a relationship. Not that I would approach you like that, especially if I’m a customer service representative. If I meet you once, but expect to meet you again, and you expect to meet me again, then suddenly it’s as though something is at stake, so trust is required and therefore a relationship is established. You can see how the expectation of a future meeting might change how we treat someone.

Two sets of vendor-client relationships may have met exactly the same number of times but because one set has an expectation of a future there is inevitably more depth and seriousness to the relationship. Historical perspective works the same way; having a sense of common history together means you can think and feel and say, “That was us, you and me! We did that. We went through that together!”.

Or, of course, you could look back and say “you keep screwing me over!”. Continuity, like the other dimensions, is a necessary basis of a good relationship but doesn’t guarantee it.

Whether with a customer or a friend, try recalling your history together, and discuss plans for the short or long-term future. Then actually start meeting regularly! See how that changes your sense of the health and vitality of the relationship.

rLiving Day 4: Corporate Trust (Power)

This tweet just caught my eye, and had me wondering about the relational basis of trust:

The article by Stephen J. Gill, Ph.D includes this quote from Nick Sarillo, the owner of Nick’s Pizza and Pub, describing how performance and employee turnover was wrecked for a time because of a lack of trust:

Managers trained in command and control think it’s their responsibility to tell people what to do,” Sarillo says. “They like having that power. It gives them their sense of self-worth. But when you manage that way, people see it, and they start waiting for you to tell them what to do. You wind up with too much on your plate, and things fall through the cracks. It’s not efficient or effective. We want all the team members to feel responsible for the company’s success.”

Relational Proximity Dimension #4 is “Parity”. The greater the asymmetry of power between me and someone else the greater the potential for difficult and strained relationships. This asymmetry can be real or perceived, and its affect on relationships can be more about the use and misuse of power than the mere existence of power disparity.

The reality is that Sarillo and all his managers have power. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that. It’s what makes them managers, empowered to carry out their responsibilities and make decisions. Arguably, it’s their proper exercise of power that enables others to trust them and so get on with their own responsibilities. And command-and-control is not always in opposition to trust. The armed forces rely on it (not absolutely and not in all circumstances, however).

But a pizza company? The misuse of power and/or the identification of power with status – as in the quote above – resulted in gross mistrust. So in thinking about your relationships with others, to what extent does real or perceived power asymmetry make the relationship harder and erode trust? What can someone with power (whether it seniority, physical, monetary etc.) do to build trust without necessarily giving up that power? I’m 6’2″ and my daughter is 3’4″. How do I exercise my power in such a way that produces a flourishing relationship?

Notes:
1) Almost all the dimensions of Relational Proximity are important for trust. I’ll likely touch on other elements in future posts.
2) Neuroscience research is telling us more and more about ‘status’ and I’ll likely blog a lot more about that in the future. In fact, David Rock’s SCARF model reveals a lot of interesting neuroscience that I think confirms the Relational Proximity model.
3) Just a reminder: the Relational Proximity model is not mine, and I’ll say more about its origin and application after the 30 days.
4) For why I’m blogging all this, see the video on www.thirtydayproject.org and what the 30-day rLiving thing is about.