Chess, colleagues and professional relationships

Hello Everyone,

It's always nice when you hear about chess examples that our helpful in other areas of life - like in the corporate world. We found this very nice review of a book titled 'It's Not Just Who You Know, Transform your Life (And your Organization)' by Turning Colleagues and Contacts into Lasting, Genuine Relationships' written by Tommy Spaulding.

In the book, Spaulding writes:

Monopoly vs chess

When you approach relationship-building focused only on your own benefit, with your own self-serving agenda, and with ulterior motives, everyone around you can see it for what it is, the author cautions. It is like playing the Monopoly board game, he analogises. “Even if you buy all the properties and fill them with hotels, you will never build meaningful, long-term relationships. Your relationships will be as bankrupt as the opponents you defeated in the game.”

Instead, the lessons of chess apply to relationships, he observes. “You can look at each relationship you have and see how it connects to all the other relationships, and anticipate how those relationships can help each other based on whatever actions you take or the other person takes.”

In ‘relationship chess,’ the focus is not on ‘capturing a pawn or trapping a king,’ but ‘connecting people from multiple relationships in ways that benefit everyone involved,’ by paying close attention to the needs and interests of the people around us, and, importantly, ‘thinking several moves ahead.’

Imperative study for professional managers.

Now, that's some really cool stuff about chess! You can read the full review here or check the Amazon page here.

From Alexandra Kosteniuk's

www.chessblog.com

Also see her personal blog at

www.chessqueen.com