Building relationships when you’re not a natural relationship builder

5 actions that build better healthcare marketing relationships

Healthcare marketing is a complicated business, requiring input and buy-in from hospital leadership, physicians, and stakeholders. That takes cooperation and relationship building. For marketing directors who lean toward the introvert-side of the social spectrum, relationship building means stretching well outside your comfort zone.

But relationship building, like any other skill, can be learned. Even the less gregarious among us can learn to balance social aspects of our jobs with our personal need for space and quiet time. As a natural introvert working in high-touch roles like sales and account management, I’ve experimented with a lot of approaches to this tricky balance. Here are a few things that have worked for me.

Get an accountability buddy

Part of personal growth is finding ways to look into your blind spots. Nothing has helped me with that more than my accountability buddy.

My accountability buddy (a natural relationship builder) and I meet for 30 minutes every two weeks. We talk about challenging situations we’ve come into and help each other see them more clearly. Her influence has been helped me make big changes to my thought patterns, and understand things from a broader perspective.

Never say no

Anyone with young children will tell you that the surest way to trigger a tantrum is to say ‘no’. There’s so much emotion in that word, it almost always damages relationships.

Over time, I’ve learned a number of ways to avoid directly saying no while still being honest with my clients. It made a big difference.

Read

There are some excellent books published on the topic of relationship building. How to Win Friends and Influence People is a classic, and new ones like Emotional Intelligence are rated very highly.

Keep a journal

At the end of every day, I ask myself two questions: “what went well today?” and “what could have gone better?” I record the answers, which helps me move on emotionally and provides a useful record I can refer back to for lessons and perspective.

Learn DiSC

DiSC profiles are super helpful ways to get a sense of both your own personality and the personalities of those around you. You can uncover your own personality style with a 20-minute test, and get great tools to learn how to interact better with different personality types.

The hardest things are the most worthwhile

If you commit to the behaviors that lead to a behavior change, you can make a big impact. You’ll never change who you are, but you can change how your personality is expressed to others. And that, in turn, can have a big impact on your success. In the world of healthcare marketing, better relationships with executives, team members, and physicians can be the difference between a good career and a great career.

If building better relationships is on your priority list, check out our ebook, The Complete Healthcare Marketer’s Guide to Building Great Physician Relationships.