Now that we have covered Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and the need to prioritize your relationships, in this post we are going to apply those two things and discuss the Great! Hierarchy of Relationships.
Your next question then must be, “How should I prioritize my relationships?” A good way to order your relationships is to arrange them in a pyramid on three axes of importance, number of participants in each type of relationship, and the resource leverage flowing from servicing those relationships.
Let’s explore one example (not the only way this can be done, but a good example) of a structure of relationships. Look at the big picture of this structure first and then we can discuss how and why things are ordered the way they are in this example.
As we stated in Part 2 of this series of posts on relationships, most people’s relationship complex comprises one or more of the following: God, self, spouse, children, parents, family, true friends, business associates (owners, investors, employees, vendors and your customers), acquaintances, and community. In a similar way to how Maslow classifies our needs in life in a hierarchical pyramid, we can prioritize the various categories of our relationships according to their importance, the relative number of participants in each category, and their resource leverage as follows:
Looking at this relationship pyramid, you should begin to see what we are talking about when we say in the definition of Greatness!, “the optimal balance of the highest priority and most number of those people, places, and things with whom or which we have relationships and to whom or which and for whom or which our values make us responsible.” Let’s probe this priority and number idea a little bit more and see how the balance of resources aspect of things comes in to play as well.
The planning process of the P10 Principle, which we will discuss in much detail later, requires us to consider how much of each kind of our life’s precious resources (of self, time, effort, energy, emotion, intellect, property, and people) we should invest in each of our major ongoing projects, such as being better at our religion, being a better spouse, parent, child, friend, or citizen, or having a better business with better employees and customers. All of those relationships seem to need constant care and feeding and each of us is only one person with a limited amount of those resources.
All of these competing relationships can create problems. We have a house and cars to pay for; a family that needs to be fed and clothed, bought the niceties of life, and taught the big and little things in life like how to swim, fish, ride a bike, cook, hammer a nail, whatever; a business that we have to stay at and watch all the time; and we have to concern ourselves with making the world a better place to live in while reducing our footprint in the community and our contribution to global warming, among other things. In addition to work, we have to pray some, eat some, play some, and sleep some.
Each of the things we want to do in life and any one of our relationships could individually take up all of our time if we let it. So, in order to survive the competition in life, we have to learn how to prioritize our relationships, first, and then figure out how to balance the use of our resources to move all of our projects along and take care of all of our relationships, a little at a time, but, still, all the time. That is the trick of being Great! All the time!
The Beauty is in the Details
Let’s poke at these ideas a little bit more. First, let’s review what we said about our relationships, to see who are the highest priority and the most of those to whom and for whom we are responsible.
Each of us is responsible to our self and at least some of those around us. In addition to our self and the people around us, to whom and for whom our values make us responsible, there are some intangible things, such as ideas, values, or beliefs, to which and for which our values make us responsible; but we are limiting our discussion at this point to people relationships.
The natures, types, quantities, and priorities of those responsibilities may ebb and flow and otherwise change, from time to time, depending on our circumstances. You may or may not have a religious grounding. You may or may not be married. You may or may not have living parents or children. You may or may not have investors, employers, employees, or customers. You may or may not have a core value system.
Regardless of each of your specifics, however, you can probably be classified as a “reasonable person” and are at least a minimally religious, married, with one or two children, at least one living parent, and a few true friends. You have a job at a company with investors, one or more bosses above you, one or more employees underneath you, and customers. You have all of these relationships in addition to having some acquaintances with whom you live in a community. You have some set of core values that says some intangible things have significance and are worth spending resources on. You have some vision of how to live a life in accordance with those values. You have some mission consisting of steps required to fulfill that vision.”
Given such a scenario, your average person’s responsibilities and priorities may be listed as follows: God, self, spouse, children, parents, family, true friends, community, investors, employers, employees, customers, and a mission driven by a vision and values.
In Part 4 of this series of posts in relationships, we will begin looking at the essences of those things, so we can start to figure out a way to prioritize and balance between them.
So let’s continue.