121: Communication, Partnership & The 3 Keys For Success

How we communicate and work within our relationships is a key factor of our happiness and success. Learn to distinguish between what demands your commitment by evaluating three key factors: (1) look within and find your why, your values and reason why you do what you do and see who aligns accordingly (2) articulate clearly that why and the rules that will help it come into being through agreements and (3) remain effective by doing what you said you would do and inspiring others to do the same.

Transcript

This is Episode 121 Communication,

Partnership,

And Three Keys for Success.

My name is Tudor Alexander and this is the Dance of Life podcast.

Every week,

My goal is to inspire you to take action towards what you love,

Live a transformed life and enjoy the journey there.

Are you ready?

Let's go.

James Humes,

Author and creator of Dance of Life.

And presidential speech writer to Ronald Reagan,

George Bush and many others once said,

The art of communication is the language of leadership.

And I absolutely love this quote because if you want to be a leader,

You have to master communication.

It is the way that your internal desires,

Emotions,

Visions,

Everything that's in your world gets to the external and into the minds of those around you and inspires them.

That's what leadership is all about.

It's about creating.

It's about bringing what you see to life in the world out there.

And the way you do that is by communicating and working together with other people.

So this episode is about looking at relationships.

And particularly,

We look at four ways that we interact in the relationships.

I wanted to distinguish four key types of interactions for you in all areas of your life,

Whether it's business,

Love life,

You know,

Whatever,

So that you can bring clarity to the things that you do and why you do them.

The second goal is I want to discuss three components,

Very important components in my own experience and working with other people that govern.

Each of these types of interactions,

So all the things that we're going to talk about,

There's three keys to success that I want to offer you today so that you can evaluate yourself on a constant basis to maintain all of your relationships and the things that you do at optimal levels.

So first,

Let's talk about interdependence.

I talked about this in the last episode a little bit.

That's the principle that everything is connected,

Right?

You're all in a relational universe,

Everything's connected to everything else.

You cannot escape that.

So therefore,

Your function in relationship to others and also how others function in relationship to you is a key component of evaluating your success and your happiness in life.

You can't have success by yourself,

Even if you have all the money in the world,

All the,

You know,

Possessions in the world,

If you have nobody to share it with,

That's just not going to work.

So you know,

You've got tons of scientific background on this too.

You know,

A lot of studies have found that the top two indicators of longevity and health are not diet,

Are not exercise,

It's literally your relationships.

And one of them is basically your,

The health of your relationships,

You know,

Your connections with other people,

Having love and support,

And also your integration into society.

So what that means is basically your sense of purpose.

How do you relate to everybody else and how does everybody else relate to you?

Those are the two sides of the interdependence coin and they've been proven by science to be number one impactors on your health and your longevity,

You know,

And that's,

I notice this all the time,

You know,

I work with a large variety of population of people and especially in the senior community,

I see a drastic difference between people who are integrated and they have a sense of purpose,

Have a sense of,

You know,

Their role hasn't stopped in life just because they're retired.

They're sharper,

They're happier compared to people who have just stopped,

You know,

And that's something to be careful for because it doesn't matter what age you are,

Life can sometimes stop you.

And this is one of those episodes where I want to address one of those things so that you can continually keep yourself connected,

Interconnected,

Effective,

And operating at your best with your relationships around you.

So a little bit about my own story.

If you haven't been listening too long,

If you have,

Then thank you so much.

I really appreciate you guys.

I'm so excited for all the things I'm going to share with you in the next month or two,

So stay tuned.

But if you don't know who I am,

I've been doing this podcast almost for about a year and a half.

I'm a professional ballroom dancer.

I'm an entrepreneur.

I live in Phoenix.

I have my own business doing coaching,

You know,

With clients one-on-one,

Performance,

You know,

I perform professionally.

I've been dancing for about 15 years now.

So I've got a lot of little irons in the fire,

But my own story is that I've really had to learn how to navigate my relationships effectively.

You know,

The things that I do are all based on one-on-one relationships.

Mostly I do some group stuff too,

But a lot of one-on-one work with people.

And you know,

I've had a lot of relationships in my life too.

I'm 35 this year and it's been a good journey.

I've had lots of long-term relationships.

I've had a lot of fulfilling partnerships and friendships,

Business,

Business relationships.

So one thing that it all taught me,

All these things have taught me together is that ultimately whatever you want in life,

You have to get it with the cooperation of others.

You have to delegate.

You have to dream of something bigger than yourself that requires help.

And you have to inspire others to kind of join your bandwagon and create that with you.

You know,

That's what life is about.

And anytime that you're not doing that,

You're going to end up being unfulfilled.

You're going to end up being bored,

You know,

Frustrated,

Whatever else.

But ultimately when you don't have something that you're aiming for that's bigger than yourself,

You're trapped in survival.

You're trapped in me,

Me,

Me,

And you're trapped in this small world,

Which is an unfortunate world to be in.

Even if you have a lot,

It doesn't matter because if you're in a small perspective that's limited to yourself,

You can be very unhappy.

And that's the whole point of this lesson is that relationships,

This episode,

This whole discussion is about the value of relationships and helping you secure what you want that's bigger than yourself.

You know,

You,

Me,

Everybody else,

We're all imperfect.

The best idea that you can ever come up with is still going to come through a filter of your brain,

Your experiences,

Your history,

Your body,

Your limiting beliefs.

You know,

All these things are filters and even the best idea you have can't just make it outside of you without other people's help.

I'll give you an example.

I came up with this book.

I've been talking about this.

I'll be coming out within about a month.

I'll let you guys know when it's out,

But it's a book.

It's going to be on gratitude and looking at the obstacles to gratitude,

How to build a gratitude practice,

How to,

You know,

Have effective relationships with people.

It's going to come with a workbook,

Some online video courses.

It's really exciting.

I call it the gratitude map,

But the point is that it's,

You know,

It's my first book and what I'm excited about is that it's,

It's something that I've been able to delegate to other people.

And that was really difficult for me at first,

You know,

To be,

To,

To create something.

I find myself creative.

I think I'm creative.

I don't have a problem creating stuff,

You know,

But with that also comes a sense of ownership.

You know,

You want it to be a certain way,

Especially I'm a perfectionist,

Just like everybody else.

And when it comes to letting other people jump in and modify it and stuff like that,

You know,

That was a big lesson for me,

But it also showed me that,

Wow,

You know,

I can give this book off to somebody else to do all the painstaking detail work while I redirect my effort at,

You know,

Doing what I want to do,

Which is the creative stuff,

Thinking about the vision,

What's next,

You know,

Thinking about the concepts,

All this kind of stuff.

I had an illustrator,

I had somebody working on,

You know,

The website and all this stuff.

So I literally am working with like three or four people to put this together.

Each of them are specialized in their own areas.

Whereas before I would try to know everything about everything and you just can't do that.

Ultimately,

You just can't.

It's physically impossible.

And this is the great irony that we live in,

You know,

Today and not just today,

Any point in time,

Anything that you truly want,

Anything that you really want is always going to be bigger than what you can do for yourself to get it.

So what does that mean?

That means that anything that really inspires you,

That lights your heart on fire inevitably will require working with other people.

So in that sense,

Relationships are effective relationships.

Having effective relationships is a necessary part of life.

And it's difficult because delegating is hard and nobody likes to share control.

You know,

In the book,

I talk about some of the resources that we share and one of them is control.

It's not an obvious resource like money.

You don't have a control bank account,

But it is a resource that you share by letting go and letting other people help you.

You know,

And that's difficult to share.

It's an act of transformation,

Especially in the areas that are really important to you.

It is very difficult to share control.

But if you can do it,

If you can learn to do it,

Then you can get that thing that's on the other side,

Which is your dreams,

Which is your hopes,

You know?

So all these things are super important.

So today I want to distinguish four kind of key aspects to relationships.

And then we're going to talk about three really important governing principles.

Let's put it this way,

That you should be looking at in each type of interaction,

Whatever it is.

So the first one is cooperation.

You know,

We've got four total cooperation,

Communication,

Collaboration,

And partnership.

What do all four of those mean?

And I think it's very useful to know what each of them mean so that you can identify them and where you're at in life and what stage you're at with whoever you're with,

Whether that's a business partner,

A relationship,

Whatever else.

So cooperation is cooperate,

Right?

Co-together,

Operate is to work mechanically.

So two things basically working together.

Cooperation is just what is it?

How do you work?

You know,

What is the workflow?

What's the vibe?

What's the chemistry between you two?

Do you try to control the same things or are your personalities complementing each other?

Are you opposites?

So cooperation governs the way that you work together,

Pure and simply the mechanics.

Communication is the exchange of information,

The effectiveness of your,

Let's say put it this way,

The effectiveness is your information exchange.

I can have a friend,

For example,

That we may work really well together.

We may have some inherent chemistry.

We may be opposites and specialize in different things and we can kind of,

You know,

Feed off each other in that sense.

But if we speak different languages and I'm not speaking metaphorically here,

Like literally I speak a different language and you know,

It's very difficult to understand each other,

Then we're going to be very ineffective,

Right?

Or let's say put it this way,

We'll be less effective than if we could articulate exactly what we want to each other.

So communication on the other hand though,

If you can articulate effectively,

What is it that you're trying to do?

What is it you want?

What is it your vision is?

All these kinds of things.

If you can effectively communicate,

Then even if you have crummy cooperation,

Even if your chemistry isn't the best,

Even if your workflow,

You know,

Isn't the best,

Then communication will help to solidify that because it's putting things out in the open and bringing clarity to an otherwise unclear situation.

That's another element to all these and we'll talk about this in the three keys that I bring up later.

But clarity,

It's all about clarity.

You know,

We want to avoid clarity because clarity comes with responsibility,

It comes with accountability,

All these things.

But ultimately if you want to get anything done in a relationship of any kind,

There has to be clarity.

And how that clarity you come about it is through communication.

You know,

Some good questions to ask yourself is what is your communication style?

How do you handle details?

How do you handle follow through?

How do you handle conflict and deadlines?

How do you express what you want?

Remember that words create reality.

So they're the first things literally that come into being from our internal world,

From our minds.

So communication has to come first before cooperation is considered.

How you communicate,

What you communicate,

You know,

How do you basically exchange information?

How do you bring the internal world of your mind to the external world so that it's the clearest way?

You know,

That's something that we're always refining.

I look at this podcast for example,

And I'm continually trying to refine my communication because in my mind ideas are perfect,

Right?

But then when we speak,

When we put them into language and words,

There's all kinds of things that come through.

The words you use,

The energy that you use,

The tone,

The mood that you're in,

All this kind of stuff that kind of influence the delivery,

Right?

And then on the other hand,

Somebody gets it,

Their own mind,

Their own history,

Their own,

You know,

Mood at the time is going to filter it.

And then by the time it gets to somebody else's mind,

It's going to be in a different state than it was in mine.

So your ability to communicate will determine what happens mechanically as far as actions between you and the relationship.

So communication comes first.

Now you've got two more things that are distinguished here,

Which is collaboration and partnership.

And for me,

These have been very useful to understand because collaboration is short term,

Whereas partnerships are long term.

You hear a lot about collabs on Instagram and sharing,

You know,

The work,

Let's say on a project to,

You know,

Profit from the situation with each other and,

And,

And gain some sort of benefit that would be,

Let's say greater than if you did it on your own.

So collaboration is when you collaborate with somebody on a short term project and partnership is when you're looking to engage in a longterm endeavor.

This is both you're committed to that vision.

You're both committed to the outcome.

This is about being business partners,

Or let's say being in a marriage or longterm relationship.

So the difference between these two is ultimately just the level of trust.

You can think of this and again,

Dating,

Business,

Whatever else,

If I'm collaborating with somebody we're,

You know,

Working together.

So we both benefit,

But the level of trust isn't,

Let's say a hundred percent or as maximally as it would be in a partnership.

The takeaway for me from all this is that understanding the difference between these two is a very useful tool in helping you understand what to expect in a new venture with somebody,

In a new relationship,

In a new situation.

There's times for collabs and there's times for partnerships.

And as we get into these three keys of success that I'm going to share with you,

This is something to ask yourself,

Is this a partnership situation?

Is this a collaboration situation?

Or is it none of them?

You know,

It might be,

The answer might be none.

So understanding the trust is the key variable that will relate to another variable,

Which is value,

Which is your values,

Which will be the first one we'll talk about in a second.

But understanding what is what,

Because a lot of times we may approach everything from a default perspective.

You may approach all your relationships as collaborations,

Meaning that it's easy for you to relate to people on a,

Let's say somewhat superficial basis to benefit a little bit,

But then it's difficult to have partnerships,

Right?

Or you may approach all your relationships from a partnership perspective that you're ready to deep dive and you know,

You're ready to go full out and,

You know,

Let's say get all the detail and control in there.

But maybe some of those situations aren't useful in that orientation.

So again,

They're just tools to identify the kinds of relationships you have in your life and knowing,

Okay,

It's okay for me to commit here.

It's not going to work for me to commit that much here.

And remember that communication is key for all of those,

Because that governs your cooperation.

How do you work together and the kind of actions that happen within the relationship.

So now we have three keys for success that govern all of your relationships and help you make decisions and evaluate when you're collaborating with someone,

When you have a partnership with somebody,

How to communicate,

You know,

And how to work together,

Cooperations.

The three keys are this,

Your values,

Your agreements,

And your effectiveness.

So let's start with values.

I told you we'd do that one first.

Your values are very,

Very important.

This is your why.

This is the number one quality that you should be looking for in all your collaborations,

All your partnerships,

All your relationships.

A lot of times we don't know our why,

And we align with people that seem to have externally what we like or what we do.

And as you get more specific and articulate to yourself your own why about what you do,

Then you will start being more decisive about the people that you commit to through collaborations and through partnerships.

You know,

A partnership requires a lot of trust,

Right?

Whether it's a marriage,

Whether it's a business partnership,

Whether it's.

.

.

So ultimately when you are about to engage in that kind of relationship that has with it an inherent level of risk and inherent level of investment,

Time,

Money,

Energy,

You have to know that your whys are on the same page.

If I'm super passionate about this because it's gonna make a huge difference to the community,

And the other person is super passionate about this because it's gonna make a huge difference in their bank account,

Those are two different values.

And now one is not wrong in a sense,

But they're misaligned.

And if you don't see that,

If you're not aware of that,

And you have to be aware of your own why first,

Then guess what,

Engaging in a partnership,

Which we know requires trust and investments,

A long-term deal,

That's going to cause a friction,

A problem down the road.

Now that doesn't mean it's locked in stone because again,

Communication rules how you cooperate,

How you co-work together.

And certainly with effective communication,

Maybe that can be brought onto the same page.

You can communicate about why you're doing this and what is our outcome in mind?

What is the deep,

Passionate,

Meaningful reason that we're both intersecting on?

And then that will allow you to create the next part,

Which is agreements.

Agreements are your rules.

It's your rules that govern your cooperation.

Agreements,

You know,

Agreement sounds pretty tight.

I'm not talking about a legal agreement here,

Although that's maybe part of it.

What I'm talking about is the rules that govern your behavior,

Your cooperation with each other.

Agreements are very important because they bring again,

Clarity to gray areas that cause conflict and wasted resources.

You know,

So for example,

I may have a rule like,

Hey,

You know,

We meet every Tuesday at nine in the morning,

You know,

Because we need a weekly meeting to be able to handle all the stuff that's coming in.

Okay,

Great.

That's an agreement.

And if somebody isn't honoring that,

Right,

If one person misses meetings,

Refuses to go to meetings,

Then that's ineffective.

And effectiveness is the last pillar,

Or let's say key for success in this three.

But agreements are important and agreements come through communication.

Ultimately,

They're all made up.

It's all created because every business,

Every relationship is going to have a different set of agreements.

And if you think about it,

Any relationship that you have is really an agreement because you're already in a relationship with everything around you.

You're in a relationship with the trees outside,

With the world,

With the ground under your feet.

You're already in a relationship with everybody around you.

So to say that you have a relationship and let's say the other person says,

Yeah,

We're in a relationship.

That is something that you both have agreed upon.

So it's an agreement.

It doesn't exist inherently because you're already in a relationship with everybody and they're in a relationship with everybody too.

Now,

We don't like to think of it that way,

But in reality,

That's really what is happening.

So we bring language,

We bring agreements to that world and delineate and say,

We are in a exclusive relationship,

Right,

Or exclusive business partnership,

Whatever it is.

And through those agreements,

You delineate how behavior works.

That's why they're very important because without agreements,

Things will unravel and your communication is going to be ineffective.

And the last part,

Which is effectiveness,

Is doing what you say you will do.

So you create the agreements,

Right?

You create the ways that things will cooperate and then you both have to,

Or everybody,

Let's say I'm using two people in this case,

But you know,

Let's say company,

Culture,

Whatever,

Have to be aligned with those agreements,

With the values and the agreements come from your values.

So values are first,

What is your why?

What is it that you,

You know,

Why do you do what you do?

Then you generate the rules that will help keep that why and bring it into the world.

And then effectiveness is being able to be in alignment.

How,

You know,

Effectiveness is not something that's like a hundred percent of the time because really in large companies,

You can see how ineffective a lot of the companies are when they'll say one thing and they'll do another.

And the companies are really successful,

They're effective.

So this is an area that both for an individual and for a company,

We are constantly monitoring and trying to increase effectiveness,

Which is basically the difference between what we said and what we've done.

If I've done everything that I've said,

Then I'm a hundred percent effective.

If I've done half of what I said,

I'm 50% effective.

So it's all a matter of aligning what you said with what you've done.

And that's not always going to happen.

So you have to continually evaluate.

So I said these three keys are about continually evaluating yourself.

You have to continue to evaluate your values because sometimes those change too,

You know,

And then those will change the agreements and then the effectiveness or,

You know,

Let's say sense of integrity with the system is going to be constantly being evaluated because you're not ever going to be a hundred percent all the time in alignment.

So you continually adjust and adjust and you maintain that as high as possible.

So remember the last episode,

We talked about decisions and commitments and the value of basically commitment towards anything that you want in your life.

So anyone that you invite into your life,

Into your bed,

Into your business is a collaboration or a partnership.

And it's up to you to communicate your values clearly to create effective agreements and to honor those agreements.

And obviously,

You know,

You do what you can and the other person,

You have to judge if they're on the same boat,

You know,

Or what,

What are you committing to by combining with their energy,

Whether it's a business,

Whether it's a romantic relationship,

Whatever,

Is it synergy?

Is it a parasitic thing?

Do you both benefit as only one person venting?

Are they in alignment with your values?

Are they willing to set up agreements and honor them?

You know,

To what extent do you delegate work with each other?

Can you share?

Can you trust all these kinds of things?

These are things to continually evaluate on the level of values and then also look at effectiveness and how you handle missed,

Let's say missed situations where something was said but something wasn't done.

That goes back to your communication.

So being able to communicate effectively and handle problems is of utmost importance on your path to having better relationships.

So once you do commit,

Ask yourself on regular intervals,

Where are you with your values and see if your agreements are in alignment with your values because again,

Every year it's a good,

I have a good practice every year.

I mean,

I do this often.

I sit by myself and consider,

But every year at the end of the year,

I always take at least a week off to just try to connect and see where am I at?

Where's my next year going?

You know,

Plan ahead.

Where's the vision?

And it's going to change a little bit every time and how that vision gets reflected in what you're saying and your message and how you communicate is changing all the time and be open to that.

You know,

That's totally cool.

So I hope this has been useful for you.

You know,

One thing that I pledged to this year and really for the rest of my life is gratitude.

You know,

This whole podcast at the beginning of the year,

My message,

I realized the things that were the most popular and the things that people really found the most useful and the things that I love talking about most was entrepreneurship,

Transformation,

And gratitude.

And so with gratitude,

Especially I'm coming out with this book,

Like I said,

It's called the gratitude map.

It's going to be awesome.

It'll be a course.

It'll be an online thing.

It'll be super affordable.

The book actually is going to be free,

Just pay for the shipping.

But one thing that I created to not only help myself,

But to create a space for other people is the daily gratitude practice Facebook group.

So I'm going to invite you to check that out because I think practicing is a commitment that,

You know,

Practicing gratitude is a commitment that we should all have for our lives.

It is something very simple,

But so beneficial,

So beneficial.

And it's literally changed my life in the last couple months and also seeing other people being positive and encouraging each other.

You know,

It's,

It's a wonderful thing to keep you on track because we tend to stray.

You know,

Your values,

You may have,

Let's say amazing values.

I want to be a good person.

I want to be effective.

I want to be grateful.

Okay,

Great,

Cool.

I set up agreements for myself.

All right.

I'm going to list three things every day that I'm grateful for so I can get myself motivated in the morning.

I'm not going to let myself be negative in the morning,

Even if I'm tired.

Okay.

That's an agreement.

Third.

Now I look at my effectiveness.

I'm waking up in the morning.

I'm just not doing it after a week.

I've gone back to old habits.

It's like,

Well,

There's a problem there.

It wasn't a problem with the values.

The values were good.

It wasn't a problem with the agreements.

It's a great thing.

Enumerate three things you're grateful for every day.

And it was,

But it was a problem with the effectiveness.

And in that sense,

You know,

There's a lot of ways to go about it,

But having a structure,

A routine,

Something that helps you maintain a practice is what keeps that effectiveness in play.

That's your structure,

Right?

So this daily gratitude practice Facebook group is exactly that.

It's a simple thing.

Just go on there,

Post what you're grateful for once a day or share inspiring quotes up to you,

However you want to use it,

But really it's free.

It's effective.

And I think it's pretty awesome.

There's tons of people in there and everybody's supporting each other every day.

So I'm really happy to have shared that with everybody.

And I want to invite you to check it out in my book.

That's coming up.

I talk about the three pillars of relationships that make relationships successful.

And to be honest with you,

All these things that we talked about today,

I think they're super valuable learning to communicate effectively,

Being able to distinguish when is there something a partnership?

When is it useful to be a collaboration?

You know,

Looking at your values,

Creating agreements,

Being effective,

All that stuff is super,

Super useful.

But you know what?

At the end of the day,

If you're not grateful,

If you're not able to create appreciation in your life,

If you're not able to handle the derailing that happens on a daily basis with our dreams,

With our hopes,

With our energy,

We're constantly getting in obstacles and you don't get back to center from that,

Then none of that stuff is useful.

It's pointless.

You can't communicate effectively if you're angry or upset or resentful or cynical or hopeless.

So ultimately there's something else.

There's a prerequisite to before that.

And to me,

That's gratitude.

It's a simple thing.

If you're grateful,

You're happy and you're fulfilled and then your vision is,

It's easier to see your vision when you're happy and you're fulfilled and you're grateful.

It's easier to see that.

And then it's easier to communicate that because you don't have all those obstacles in a way about how much you're frustrated or how you hate this person or how that person ruined your day or how traffic would block,

You know,

All these things that come in the way of us being creative.

And ultimately it is,

It is about putting that first layer of gratitude,

Of appreciation,

And then that'll,

That fills your cup to be able to pour out.

So here is my takeaway for this episode.

Relationships are an integral part of life.

How we communicate and work within those relationships then is a key factor of our happiness and success.

Learn to distinguish between what demands your commitment by evaluating three key factors.

The first is look within and find your why,

Your values,

And the reasons why you do what you do and see who aligns accordingly.

Number two,

Articulate clearly that why and the rules that will help it come into being through agreements.

And number three,

Remain effective by doing what you said you would do and inspiring others to do the same.

Reviews

Thank you so much

Be decisive about who you Collaborate an Partnership with
Be sure you’re on the same page
Less friction down the road ... Big Sigh very much so Appreciated

Tudor great podcast looking forward to your book release