The holiday season is a time for celebration — and it’s also a prime opportunity to nurture your professional relationships. People are typically more open, reflective, and in a positive mindset during this time of year. Leveraging that mood to reestablish ties and rekindle connections can create a foundation for lasting, mutually beneficial relationships.
Whether you’re looking to advance your career, grow your business, or develop more meaningful connections with others for your mental and emotional well-being, strengthening your relationships can be a powerful way to achieve those goals. It’s often through our networks that unexpected job offers, partnerships, or collaborations arise, making it crucial — and worthwhile — to invest in these relationships.
Here are three easy steps to take advantage of the momentum of the holidays to foster deeper connections that carry into the new year.
1. Review your relationships.
Taking stock of your relationships and professional connections will help you determine who you want to reconnect or strengthen your bond with, as well as which relationships no longer serve you.
First, create a list of colleagues, connections, and professional acquaintances from your phone contact list, LinkedIn, and other social media sites. Then, build a three-column table with the headers: Active Relationship, Infrequent Relationship, Lost/No Relationship. Distribute your contacts into those three columns.
Just like a stop light with red for stop, green for go, and yellow for caution, in each column, highlight the relationships you want to maintain or strengthen in green and the ones you’re no longer interested in maintaining in red. Red doesn’t mean you need to cut people off right away; it just means you won’t be putting in effort. Highlight the contacts you are unsure about in yellow.
When looking at reestablishing or deepening a relationship, it’s never all about your needs or desires. Relationships are mutual investments in each other’s lives, successes, and failures. Therefore, it’s important to look at not only what the relationship brings to your life, but what value you can bring to the relationship.
2. Reconnect with lost connections.
Aside from a chance encounter at a holiday party or event, it will take effort to reignite a connection with someone you’ve lost touch with. Just making the effort to reconnect, even if it’s not the right time for the other person, shows you’re open to creating a future relationship.
A simple, personalized message can be the perfect icebreaker to reconnect. Acknowledge the time that has passed since you last communicated, express your genuine interest in their life or career, and reference a shared experience. For example:
Hey Steve!
It has been too many years since we were last in touch. I saw your post that you just started your own business. Congratulations! I would love to hear more about it and see if I can offer any advice or guidance. A lot has changed in my world too since we went to that wild baseball game where you caught that home run ball, and I would be happy to fill you in.
Would you like to reconnect in the coming weeks?
3. Nurture connections for lasting impact.
While reconnecting is an important first step, maintaining and strengthening relationships requires consistent, thoughtful follow-ups. Regular check-ins, rather than sporadic outreach, are essential to nurture the bond and demonstrate that the connection truly matters to you. Otherwise, the effort you put into rebuilding can easily fade away.
Consistency truly matters when it comes to relationships, and the holiday season offers a natural springboard for reengaging. Once you’ve reestablished the connection, commit to connecting at a cadence that makes sense for both of you.
The Sundance Company
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