Resolving Business Relationship Kerfuffles with Stacey Martino
Today’s episode of Just the Tips is all about a mystery to me: relationships. Unless we’re talking about one’s relationship to spreadsheets, this is basically a foreign subject to me, but Stacey Martino and her husband Paul have been helping people find true satisfaction and happiness in their relationships through their site RelationshipDevelopment.org and RelationshipU®. They help people transform their relationships even when one partner is not cooperating. But the proof will be in the pudding today as we see if she can fix my broken relationship with Dean. The suspense is killing you, I know.
A passion borne of necessity
What’s fascinating about Stacey’s story is that she got into relationship development thanks to her own personal experience. She was a corporate tax accountant when 20 years ago, her husband Paul, walked out on her. As she says, he was done with their relationship. Wanting to find some way to make the relationship work, Stacey dove headfirst into personal development and was able to save her marriage. Since then, she and Paul have been stronger than ever, and they then began to notice many great relationships go down in flames because the people didn’t have the tools necessary to stick together. She found her passion in life, and since then she’s been helping people all over the world with their relationships. You’re going to want to hear what she has to say about how to make yours even stronger.
Start with you
One of the most innovative things that Stacey and Paul have done is eschewed the pain of couples therapy. As she says, couples work is often very painful and very destructive, and so what Stacey and Paul do is teach people how to “master themselves.” If you know yourself better, and how you relate to people, you can improve how you are in a relationship, which will improve it even if your partner is unwilling or never changes. It’s basically self-improvement with a selfless goal. It’s a really fascinating conversation, and one you’ll want to hear on this week’s Just the Tips.
Relationship development
You may be thinking that Stacey’s work is only for romantic relationships, but given my roller-coaster relationship with Dean, I had to know if her principles apply to business relationships as well. And Stacey let us in on her eight-step program, almost all of which apply to business relationships as well (the sex one probably isn’t applicable). But the core principle of Stacey’s approach is helping people see how others see things. As she puts it, everyone is wired differently, and so you’re not going to be able to change how people are wired. But if you can figure out how that other person is wired, and appreciate the differences in others, it can be revolutionary to how you handle relationships. This is a bit departure for Just the Tips, but it’s a must-listen episode.
Appreciation, not judgment
The first thing you can do to help build stronger relationships, whether you’re in a business or a romantic relationship, is come from a place of appreciation, not judgment. So if you have a member of your team who you’re clashing with, you want to identify their strengths and appreciate what they do, rather than sit in judgment of what you see as their drawbacks. That’s just the tip of the iceberg for how to apply Stacey’s approach to your business relationships, and you’re going to want to listen to the whole episode of Just the Tips to get the complete picture.
Outline of This Episode
- [3:18] How Stacey got started in relationship
- [6:30] Stacey’s approach
- [8:42] Does it work for business relationships?
- [10:37] Stacey’s entrepreneurial journey
- [13:15] Seeing how others are wired
- [17:57] How to get in touch with Mark
- [20:54] What’s in Stacey’s relationship toolbox
- [23:42] Left Hand/Right Hand approach
- [32:30] How entrepreneurs can have stronger relationships
Resources & People Mentioned
Music for “Just The Tips” is titled, “Happy Happy Game Show” by Kevin MacLeod (http://incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
