In the past week I received a couple of calls from some business leaders. The calls basically started with a joke about a serious event that I encountered about seven years ago. While driving, my car just burst into flames.
The one call was prompted by seeing a car that was in flames and they decided to call me…we laughed about the incident for 3 or so minutes, about how significant and traumatic the incident felt at the time – and how minor, although an important event, it is, some years later. I fully understand that a lot could have gone wrong, but thankful that nothing did.
The second call, from someone whom I don’t regularly touch base with, also started on the same basis – how they recall the social media trending about my burning car and how there was an unstoppable churn of jokes about the burning. As we spoke about the burning of the car, I realised that both calls would probably have been offensive had they been soon after the incident – but then again, the character of the callers would have made it humourous regardless of the time that had passed. The key thing was that I had come out unscathed.
Towards the end of both calls, we started talking about business ventures and opportunities – in both cases, the callers were proposing that I consider certain business ventures – one in line with what I do and the other quite far from what I do.
What I realised from both calls is that both callers used what would highly likely be an offensive joke to basically greet and warm up our discussions – which ended up going longer than anticipated and created catch up sessions which will probably have us touch base after a long time again, and still feel like we just spoke the day before.
One key trait that I believe forms the basis of their success in their business careers is that they are not afraid to step just over the line to get conversations going. The one individual always reminds me how much success they’ve had over a couple of years. When we broke it down, we realised that they are always on their clients’ necks and not afraid to pull off a corny joke that most of us are afraid to bring up – I mean they even convinced me to give them one of my clients when they were starting off their business.
Obviously, within an organisation, there could be a thin line between being truly offensive which could lead to demoralise another person or empowering them to enjoy work environment. So, it’s important to tread carefully and also respect the uniqueness each team member brings to the table. When it’s with external parties, the dynamics are quite different. True relationship genius comes when you understand the uniqueness of each individual you encounter and do your best to empower them – which I believe the two callers possess.
Is there a more deliberate way relationship geniuses can be recognised? Should we even consider celebrating them?