After a long commercial flight from El Paso Texas, a short stay in Kuwait, and almost being frozen solid in the dead of winter on an airfield in Khazakstan. I finally found myself on a black hawk helicopter flight to what would be my home for the next twelve-months of Foward Operating Base Pasab, a joint military base that housed both Afghan and NATO security forces.
As a team of advisors, we were entering a very tense environment, there had been several incidents of violence across the country where western military advisors had been attacked and sometimes killed by their Afghan counterparts, these incidents had often shared a common aspect, a break down in rapport, a degrading of respect for each other and culture and values at some point. Often the advisor had done nothing wrong but simply walked into a situation that was already tense or that person was unfortunately on the receiving end of retribution from maybe something that happened years ago, some past trauma that was not let go.
Col Qurban, a man 20 years my senior was my assigned partner for the year. He was not there for 12 months, there would be no real break from managing and fighting in a warzone for him, I was maybe his 10th advisor, we rotated in and 12 months later we rotated out. Building and maintaining rapport would be essential, if I wanted to succeed as an advisor and survive the year as one of only a few foreigners permitted on his 500 person compound I would have to build and maintain relationships that went much deeper than the reports, evaluations and news stories I was expected to produce.
Warm-up and tend to your relationships: Long before that favor is needed or business needs to be done make sure you have as many pleasant, organic interactions as possible. My personal rule is for every point of business you should have 5 interactions that arent about work, let the other person feel you as a living breathing person.
Pay attention to the long game, manage your calendar, and don't create avoidable emergencies. Schedule your events or action items weeks or months in advance, give the person you are talking to heads up when you can. If you don't manage your calendar and tasks they will manage you and no one wants to be around that kind of person because it all takes, take, take.
Had a high-pressure conversation with your boss where he demanded you get stuff from people? RESET! Not meeting your sales target and feel your reputation is on the line? RESET! Have a short deadline on an event that is happening tomorrow with high visibility that cannot fail? RESET! It is on you to reset mentally after each event don't take that baggage and stress to the next person. I have made that mistake trust me it is not one you want to make. The person you are dealing with next or need something from deserves you at your best.
The time you put in up front is the true investment, with my counterpart I spent maybe 10 hours with him getting to know him, figuring out where I could be useful, and figuring out how I could do small favors before I made my first request, by the time I did he knew I had made my best effort and that the relationship would be a reciprocal one, give and take between friends and colleagues.
Make it a habit to reflect on how you do business, are you an "I need it right now!" take, take taker, or are there times where you could back off a bit and re-center to be a better colleague and work-mate? Maybe use a calendar a bit more, schedule interactions in advance, and walk into situations with a little bit more to offer? We all have those moments and we all have pressures, but we also have the time to manage those pressures wisely.
