We all know networking is important to business and developing more meaningful, long-term relationships bring benefits beyond networking.

The Mindset of a Long-Term Relationship

When you meet people, you will know long-term, you take more time to listen, give a bit more effort, and go out of your way to find commonalities.
When you develop a long-term relationship mindset, you create more meaningful connections. “Treat each employee relationship as if it’s going to be permanent,” says Marty Fukuda of Entrepreneur. “This is the difference between a summer fling mentality and a committed bond. If you believe you will be working in the same office with an individual for the next several decades, you probably will take more care in crafting a meaningful relationship.”

Long-Term Relationships Build Trust by Having the Other’s Best Interests

If you think of relationships as long-term, your behavior may change. For example, you will want to look out for the other person’s best interests, knowing you will interact in the future. Practically, this may mean investing more time in training someone. You may listen to remember a hometown or the name of someone’s spouse, know you will follow up on this connection in the future.
In contrast, a short-term relationship mindset may mean falsely influencing someone to buy something not needed to make a quick sale or having a cursory conversation out of mere obligation.
Playing the “long game” with someone is a good business strategy. “To be successful in sales you have to play the long game,” says advertising entrepreneur Chelann Watt. “It’s about understanding how your avatar thinks and the moves they make. Because at the end of the day, money is a trust currency. You don’t just hand over your hard-earned money to strangers. There needs to be a level of trust built between you and your client so that when the time comes for them to be making those big decisions, you are the clear, trusted choice.”

Meaningful Social Connection Leads to Personal Happiness

Besides networking, developing meaningful, long-term relationships has health and happiness benefits.

For her bestseller, The Happiness Project, author Gretchen Rubin spent a year of her life researching what makes people happy. And hands-down, across the globe, one of her biggest findings is the importance of meaningful social connection. “Studies show that if you have five or more friends with whom to discuss an important matter, you’re far more likely to describe yourself as ‘very happy,’ says Rubin. “Not only does having strong relationships make it far more likely that you take joy in life, but studies show that it also lengthens life (incredibly, even more than stopping smoking), boosts immunity, and cuts the risk of depression.”

Here are a few practical tips for building long-term relationships:
Spend quality time with people by showing up to lunches and social activities
Offer support to other people in times of adversity. Go to a party, a wedding, or a funeral, visit a newborn baby or stop by someone’s desk.

Go to groups-connecting over shared interests builds connection.
Consider remembering birthdays or using social media to praise someone’s work, send personalized holiday cards, pick up the phone or send a thoughtful text.

So much of our personal and professional lives are measured by the happiness we experience in our relationships. Our network is only as valuable as the time we put into these relationships.

Much of an executive’s workday is spent asking others for information—requesting status updates from a team leader, for example, or questioning a counterpart in a tense negotiation. Yet unlike professionals such as litigators, journalists, and doctors, who are taught how to ask questions as an essential part of their training, few executives think of questioning as a skill that can be honed—or consider how their own answers to questions could make conversations more productive.

That’s a missed opportunity. Questioning is a uniquely powerful tool for unlocking value in organizations: It spurs learning and the exchange of ideas, it fuels innovation and performance improvement, it builds rapport and trust among team members. And it can mitigate business risk by uncovering unforeseen pitfalls and hazards.

For some people, questioning comes easily. Their natural inquisitiveness, emotional intelligence, and ability to read people put the ideal question on the tip of their tongue. But most of us don’t ask enough questions, nor do we pose our inquiries in an optimal way.

“Be a good listener,” Dale Carnegie advised in his 1936 classic How to Win Friends and Influence People. “Ask questions the other person will enjoy answering.” More than 80 years later, most people still fail to heed Carnegie’s sage advice. When one of us (Alison) began studying conversations at Harvard Business School several years ago, she quickly arrived at a foundational insight: People don’t ask enough questions. In fact, among the most common complaints people make after having a conversation, such as an interview, a first date, or a work meeting, is “I wish [s/he] had asked me more questions” and “I can’t believe [s/he] didn’t ask me any questions.”

Why do so many of us hold back? There are many reasons. People may be egocentric—eager to impress others with their own thoughts, stories, and ideas (and not even think to ask questions). Perhaps they are apathetic—they don’t care enough to ask, or they anticipate being bored by the answers they’d hear. They may be overconfident in their own knowledge and think they already know the answers (which sometimes they do, but usually not). Or perhaps they worry that they’ll ask the wrong question and be viewed as rude or incompetent. But the biggest inhibitor, in our opinion, is that most people just don’t understand how beneficial good questioning can be. If they did, they would end far fewer sentences with a period—and more with a question mark.

Dating back to the 1970s, research suggests that people have conversations to accomplish some combination of two major goals: information exchange (learning) and impression management (liking). Recent research shows that asking questions achieves both. Alison and Harvard colleagues Karen Huang, Michael Yeomans, Julia Minson, and Francesca Gino scrutinized thousands of natural conversations among participants who were getting to know each other, either in online chats or on in-person speed dates. The researchers told some people to ask many questions (at least nine in 15 minutes) and others to ask very few (no more than four in 15 minutes). In the online chats, the people who were randomly assigned to ask many questions were better liked by their conversation partners and learned more about their partners’ interests. For example, when quizzed about their partners’ preferences for activities such as reading, cooking, and exercising, high question askers were more likely to be able to guess correctly. Among the speed daters, people were more willing to go on a second date with partners who asked more questions. In fact, asking just one more question on each date meant that participants persuaded one additional person (over the course of 20 dates) to go out with them again.

Chances are, most leaders are too focused on having all the answers — and not focused enough on asking the right questions. It’s time to recalibrate.

Despite what you might think, expressing vulnerability and asking for help, clarification, or input can be a sign of strength and confidence, not weakness. The right questions are signals of trust — and they can inspire people to trust you in return.

For example, rather than telling your team about a new opportunity you’ve identified, ask them, “Do you see a game-changing opportunity that could create much more value than we’ve delivered in the past?” A big, simple question like this can inspire a burst of collaboration and creativity across the organization.

And if you consistently demonstrate a question-first mindset, you’ll help establish an overall culture of curiosity and learning that will keep your team innovating and responding to challenges effectively. So try it out this week: Ask your team a big-picture, open-ended question, and see if it doesn’t lead to some new and exciting ideas.

If moving into an executive/managerial role feels different than your other promotions, well that’s because it is. There’s a huge difference between overseeing people versus overseeing tasks and projects. These leadership tips will help you get started on the right foot with your new team.

1 – Build Relationships First

It can be upsetting when a new manager comes in and immediately starts giving commands, without making any effort to learn who they’re working with. You need to be especially careful if some of your team members are older and/or have more experience at the company. They may resent your position if you immediately start barking out orders.

Before you can start inspiring your employees to reach company goals, you need to build relationships with them first. Remember, your department is made up of individuals with unique personalities, concerns, and motivations.

Spend time in one-on-one meetings with each team member and learn about who they are, their career goals, their strengths and weakness, and their ideas for how they can improve your department. They will appreciate this personal touch right from the beginning.

2 – Prepare to Delegate

When there’s work to be done, you might be the most skilled person to take care of it. But as a manager, you must learn to delegate these tasks to your staff. You don’t have enough hours in the day to handle everything and need to keep your focus on the big picture.

At the same time, the only way your employees will improve is by working through projects themselves. It can be hard to let go, but it’s necessary.

3 – Clearly Explain Goals

Your employees should have a clear way to measure their weekly performance that they can control. For example, in a sales department, your sales team could have a minimum requirement of how many times they need to contact new clients per week.

This way there is no guess-work over what a successful week looks like. You may think it’s obvious, but your employees will appreciate the clear guidance. When you give performance reviews, you can clearly show why someone did well and why others need to improve.

As you focus on in-department responsibilities, you should also bring everything back to long-term goals for your organization. When your employees appreciate why their day-to-day effort matters for the big picture, they’ll be more willing to go that extra mile.

4 – Prepare to Listen

Good leadership can seem like a matter of telling your employees what to do but often listening is more effective. You should also let your employees know that you’re open to their feedback and encourage them to bring in new ideas for how you can succeed.

If an employee is struggling with their work, make sure to always hear their side of things during performance reviews. While you might think you know exactly how to solve the problem because you’ve succeeded in their role before, there might be some other issues you aren’t aware of or ways you could help as a supervisor. At the very least, employees will appreciate that you took time to hear their perspective.

5 – Be Quick to Share Praise

When your department succeeds, they should know it’s not only your success. Make sure to point out the important role your team had in the achievement. Recognize any employees who went above and beyond their work roles and mention their work to your superiors as well. The best way to build loyalty is by showing your staff that when they come through for you, you make sure they’re rewarded as well.

Great leaders aren’t born. They get there by working hard, listening to their staff, and looking to improve each day. While learning your new position will take time, by following these tips you’ll be in solid shape for your new career as an executive/manager.