Managing your Talents [15] - Relator

According to Gallup, the essence of the talent theme of Relator is the following:

Relator describes your attitude toward your relationships. In simple terms, the Relator theme pulls you toward people you already know. You do not necessarily shy away from meeting new people — in fact, you may have other themes that cause you to enjoy the thrill of turning strangers into friends — but you do derive a great deal of pleasure and strength from being around your close friends. You are comfortable with intimacy. Once the initial connection has been made, you deliberately encourage a deepening of the relationship. You want to understand their feelings, their goals, their fears, and their dreams; and you want them to understand yours. You know that this kind of closeness implies a certain amount of risk — you might be taken advantage of — but you are willing to accept that risk. For you a relationship has value only if it is genuine. And the only way to know that is to entrust yourself to the other person. The more you share with each other, the more you risk together. The more you risk together, the more each of you proves your caring is genuine. These are your steps toward real friendship, and you take them willingly.

But a talent like this on itself is quite meaningless unless you develop and manage it. That is why we believe that "a well managed talent becomes a strength, but a mismanaged talent becomes a detriment".

How do you manage the talent of Relator?
  
First, if you want to manage the Relator Talent, you need to manage the 2 values all Relators live by: TRUST and LOYALTY.  The Talent of Relator actually means "relating to". All Relators first needs to relate to something, then to trust, and then they become extremely loyal. Relators live by trust - they both need to trust and to be trusted.  Thus, for a Relator, the non negotiable aspect of who they are, is that you should keep the trust. They live by a "circle of trust", and getting in is not by default - it is earned. So, when trust is broken, a Relator usually does one thing:  they walk away. They cut the cord.  They do not look back. Relators may forgive, but forgetting to them is nearly impossible.  And they do not believe that trust can merely be restored by a "I am sorry".  This truth about Relator as a pattern of thinking, feeling and behaving, means that they may well have some painful stories of broken relationships in their past - and this in itself needs to be managed well.

 How?

For starters, be open about your trust-value.  People need to understand how you think and feel about relationships. Sometimes others may not at all see their actions a breaking trust - but to you it is exactly that.  You need to communicate it well.  Honest and open.
Then, apart from this, also practice your "grace muscle". You need to show some grace to people along your journey.  Agreed, broken trust is serious, and should not be ignored. But, honesty without grace is brutality. Make a conscious effort to fill some of your thoughts, emotions and behaviour with grace.

Secondly, understand that your Relator Talent "relates to" in its essence, and that means it relates to a lot more than only people.  Even though people forms the essence of your Relator, this talent relates to places, brands, ideologies, values, products and even to specific moments. This knowledge and understanding of the Relator Talent is important, as it explains a lot about your behaviour. You probably prefer the same store to shop at, the same brands to wear and the same type of functions to attend. Just as in relationships, if your trust in a place, brand or product is broken, you simply walk away.  They wont see you again. They lost you as a client, member or supporter.  When well managed, this is simply a quality of yours. When miss-managed, it could make life difficult for you.

How?

Do not be too harsh.  You need some grace in this instance too.  But, on the other hand, choose the things you relate to carefully.  It must live up to your standards and needs. Also manage that "walking away" trait of this talent.   Sometimes you might find it very difficult to get a satisfactory replacement.

Thirdly, Relators "go deep". Make sure others understand this. But also, be sure you understand it!     Going deeper than most in relationships also mean that you do not choose to have many relationships. You actually have a small capacity for real friends, but enormous capacity to dig deep in the relationships you do treasure. This means it is a real need of your Relator Talent that need management.

How?

Make time for your (real) friends. Invest in them, as they already regard you as trustworthy and honest. But, if you neglect your real friends, you neglect yourself. Deep and meaningful friendships is something you need just as much from others as you contribute to them.

The world need Relators. Go share it.

- by Dries Lombaard, founder and owner of Africanmosaic and TALENTmosaic.

Important note when reading this: in this series, I simply focus on the specific talent in isolation. I do not take the crucial element of Talent Dynamics (two or more talent themes combining) into consideration. This is very important as any Coach should take that into consideration when coaching people in their talents. But you need to understand the challenges that the talent theme on its own might hold. Therefor the challenges in managing the talent as explained below might not be applicable to everyone, as the dynamics with some of their other talent themes might override the specific challenge and "make up for it". But, knowledge of the most common management challenges in every talent theme still is crucial in talent development and when turning the talent into a strength.  All information is my own, acquired by years of Strengths Coaching experience, and not verified or scientifically tested by Gallup. The definition at the beginning is the intellectual property of Gallup, and well researched.