The Seven Stages of Professional Relationships allows us to look at our relationships in a different light. Rather than seeing people as ‘in’ or ‘out’ of our network, we can track their journey from where they first recognise us to becoming supporters, advocates and even friends.
This simple tool will help you score individuals in your network and see where they sit on the Seven Stages. By doing so, you can then start to recognise where you need to invest more time in developing key relationships, and who would be happy to help you right now.
Of course, this is a basic tool which treats all relationships as the same and easily predictable, which is not always the case. To understand more about how you can build some nuance into how you can recognise the strength of key relationships across personality styles and culture, read this blog I wrote for Psychology Today.