Engineering Relationship Building

I loved this in Reid Hoffman's (founder of LinkedIn) book except (The Start-Up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career) in the February 6, 2012 issue of Fortune:

"Building a genuine relationship with another person depends on at least two abilities.  The first is seeing the world from another person's perspective.  No one knows that better than the skilled entrepreneur.  Entrepreneurs succeed when they make stuff people will pay money for - and that means understanding what's going on in the heads of customers.  Likewise, in relationships it's only when you put yourself in the other person's shoes that you begin to develop an honest connection.

The second ability is being able to think about how you can collaborate with and help the other person rather than thinking about what you can get.  We're not suggesting that you be so saintly that a self-interested thought never crosses your mind.  What we're saying is that your first move should always be to help.  A study on negotiation found that a key difference between skilled and average negotiators was the time spend searching for shared interests and asking questions of the other person."