A professional carpenter brings his own tools to the job. They are an investment he makes in his career — a set of instruments he maintains, sharpens, and carries from project to project, employer to employer. They belong to him. The job site is temporary; the tools are permanent.
Your professional relationships work the same way.
Over the course of your career, you will build hundreds, maybe thousands of genuine professional relationships. You'll invest time in them. You'll show up when it's not convenient. You'll remember birthdays and send articles that made you think of someone. These relationships are yours. You built them. You maintain them.
You own your relationships. Your company just rents them.
Here's why this distinction matters: people tend to be more careless with rented things than with things they own. Think about how you treat a rental car versus your own. You might skip the gentle braking. You might not worry about the curb.
When you think of your relationships as company property — as tools that belong to your employer — you're more likely to use them carelessly. To make introductions without thinking. To leverage connections for short-term wins that damage long-term trust.
But when you recognize that these relationships are yours, your behavior changes. You become more deliberate about who accesses your network and how those relationships are leveraged. You protect them. You invest in them even when there's no immediate business reason to do so.
The companies you work for will benefit from your relationships. That's part of what they're paying you for. But the relationships themselves — the trust, the history, the mutual respect — those travel with you. They are your most valuable professional asset, and they deserve to be treated that way.
Originally published November 2018