Who You Are as a BRM Professional
It’s happened to all of us. You were new on the job, possibly young and maybe even new to the business relationship management (BRM) profession.
One of your more seasoned colleagues came up to you, perhaps put their arm around your shoulder, or took you out to lunch, and they delivered some form of the following message: “If you want to succeed around here, you need to learn to play the game.”
In one way or another, this is a message that shapes your self-image as a young child and continues to influence most of us even as adults. On countless occasions, it has been delivered to us by our parents, teachers, peers, politicians, religious leaders, and supervisors in varying manners and contexts.
Yet each time you learn to play the game a little better, you grow more and more disconnected from who you truly are at your core.
You learn how to give the answers that others want to hear, or you bite your tongue altogether, fearing their reaction if you tell them the hard truth of the situation. While this may help you be successful, this success is limited, and hiding what you really see and believe to be true about business partner situations is not a strategy that typically leads to maximum impact.
Similarly, replacing who you really are and what you really have to say with carefully couched comments and recommendations designed to keep business partners and bosses in their comfort zone may give you some influence, but it almost never builds the high level of impact you are capable of achieving.
There is another way to find success and increase your impact as a BRM professional.
Hiding what you really see and believe to be true about business partner situations is not a strategy that typically leads to maximum impact.
Allow who you truly are to be seen by your business partners as part of the value you provide them.
Doing so is far from easy. First, you need to reconnect with your authentic self, which requires stripping away the defenses and pretenses that you’ve built up as you learned to play the game better and better. It calls for discovering how to bring your true self—devoid of that game-playing armor—into interactions with your business partners. And, to be fully effective, it necessitates working with business partners who really want to hear what you have to say.
Aligning who you are as a BRM professional with your authentic self is not the right path for everyone, nor is it what every business partner wants from those with whom they work. That said, without the support of BRM professionals who are truly grounded in their character and presence, executives taking on the greatest challenges—the ones charting transformational changes for their businesses—are at risk.
Without the support of BRM professionals who are truly grounded in their character and presence, executives taking on the greatest challenges [and] charting transformational changes for their businesses are at risk.
As noted by BRM Institute co-founder Vaughan Merlyn, “For BRMs to be beacons of business value realization, they must also be beacons of change. As such, their credibility, authenticity, and ability to earn and sustain trusted relationships with their business partners and other stakeholders is a crucial asset. This demands being true to themselves and passionate about business value realization.”
Whenever possible, find business partners who understand this and are ready to align with the full value you have to offer as a BRM professional.
Daryl Conner is the founder and chairman of Conner Academy, a professional development firm supporting leaders and change professionals exploring character and presence as a means for advancing their capabilities; Conner Advisory, a consulting firm dedicated to leaders pursuing “changes that matter”; and Conner Partners, a consulting firm specializing in strategy execution. During his 40+ years of practice, Daryl has educated and advised strategic leaders and seasoned change professionals in many of the world’s most successful organizations, with a focus on helping his clients address the challenges and opportunities they face during transformational change. His work is built on a strong foundation of research, extensive consulting experience, and a Master’s degree in psychology.
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