Why You Need A Relationship Dashboard

Take an intentional, proactive approach to managing one of the most valuable areas of your life--your personal and professional relationships

Legendary entrepreneur Jim Rohn once said, “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” While your abilities, habits and decisions are pivotal to your outcomes in life, your relationships—both positive and negative—might matter most.

A lot of people take a passive approach to relationships. Their friend group may be a collection of people who happen to play on a recreational sports team with them. Their family’s social circle is the families of kids their children befriend in school. In some cases, their professional network is mostly their coworkers—they don’t meet others in their field by attending conferences, joining mastermind groups, or seeking out mentors.

This approach is common, but not very effective. The highest performing people I know carefully consider what relationships they invest time and energy into, and which ones they distance themselves from. Some people take this this approach to another level, applying the old management adage of “what gets measured, gets managed”

Just as you can accomplish important things more easily by keeping a written list of goals, you can ensure you’re getting the most out of your personal and professional relationships by creating a Relationship Dashboard.

A Relationship Dashboard is simply a structured guide to help you manage your personal and professional relationships. It’s a way for you to keep track of the relationships you want to strengthen in life, and evaluate the ones you need to deprioritize.

Let’s start by focusing on relationships you want to strengthen. These are the steps: