Building Connections

A few weeks ago I read a blog in the online Mail & Guardian titled Creating Successful Families (www.thoughtleader.co.za/robinbooth). It was incredibly insightful and really made me sit up and re-look at how I connect with my nearest and dearest. Robin Booth, the author of this article, spoke about how he and his siblings are scattered around the country and they only get together on special occasions which are becoming too few. This resonated with me as my family is also all over the country, the world, and even if they are in Johannesburg, they are sometimes more than an hour drive away. (I have put quotes from Robin Booth are in italics.)

In our, and I do dare say this, busy lives it is very easy to let connecting with family and friends slip. Which is totally crazy in this day and age when we have so many tools at our disposal – not staying connected or being too busy is a bit lame. We have FaceBook, email, snail mail, phones, blogs, websites….. And sure, I agree that some of these things are a bit superficial – but it is an easy way to keep in touch.

But connecting and interacting with F&F is not providing a laundry list of things you have done, seen, bought or sold. Being connected is a lot more than that – our lives are sometimes filled with “unimportant priorities” and things and it is these that we so often share with others.

We need to make sure our interactions have substance, have meaning, are important; we need to have face-to-face interactions; we need to see the person we are talking to, and we need to give them a physical pat on the back if need be. We need to build a safe and supportive environment where we can share our feelings, dreams, achievements and disappointments. We need to walk away from an interaction feeling that we have a deeper understanding of what is going on in someone’s life.

Robin says: “It was from this context that I shared with my siblings that I would like to consciously create some way for us to nurture and celebrate our relationships. And it was through this process with them that it become really clear that the success of most family relationships in the world are mainly left up to chance and luck. Successful businesses have huge human resource departments that work on developing the relationships within the business. Yet in our most valued and cherished organisation (that of our family) we kind of meander along unguided and often unskilled in effective communication and relationship-building.”

He sat down with his siblings and put this family mission statement together:

“Through friendship, support and sharing adventures and experiences we strengthen our connectedness. Through conversation, reflection and sharing we inspire each other to grow and learn. Through understanding, acceptance, commitment and love we create stability and belonging.”

In one sentence, this sums it up:

“Dynamic Loving Relationships through Connectedness, Growth and Belonging”

And then they went on to put in place the plans (just like a business strategy) on how they could bring the about.

Putting a mission statement together is not as easy as it looks… it requires getting everyone in the same room (or the same facebook page!) and really talking about what is important, what the common values are, what the family desires. This in itself is a really fabulous exercise and even if you don’t get the perfect statement down on paper you will have opened up a new level of communication. And I am quite sure Robin Booth won’t mind if you use his mission statement as a starting point!