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OUR RELATIONAL FOUNDATION
Everything significant starts with relationship. At the end of the day, your faith, your family, your work, and your leadership are all based on who you relate to and how you relate. Your life is motivated by love for others, being part of a family, a desire for intimacy and vulnerability, choosing to work on a great team, and creating a product or service that helps others. We are happiest when we know our lives revolve around people. Conversely, we are not ourselves, not our best selves, when we are isolated and alone.
An Indispensable Truth: You Need to Need
There are two kinds of needs all humans have:
- Functional Needs, which are the task requirements we all have to get things done.
- Relational Needs, which aren’t about our tasks and our doing but are about what we receive from and supply to others.
The idea is simple: we need to need each other. People are the fuel for us to grow, be healthy, and prosper. God created a system in which we are to need not only him but also one another. That means we need to know what we need, recognize who can supply it, and have the skills to get it.
What is a need? It is the requirement of a person or a machine or an organization for something essential.
God designed needs in order to foster relationship. When there is a lack on this side of the room and a provider for that lack on the other side, the two connect. They are now related. And that is a good thing. The one who lacks is made whole. The one who provides feels useful. And the two feel connected. Needs bring us together, into relationship.
There are many obstacles to seeking help:
1. Feeling weak. For some people, saying, “I need something from you” doesn’t make them feel strong and stable.
2. Feeling selfish. At times people feel that asking for something is making a self-centered move. They should be more giving, so they don’t ask at all.
3. Trust issues. Some people, unfortunately, have had painful relationships in which they learned that trusting and being vulnerable to someone important caused them hurt and rejection.
4. Shame. Shame is the feeling that a part of us is so defective that we cannot be accepted or loved. It is that mistake, attitude, behavior, failure, or difficult season in the past that we judge ourselves for.
5. Not feeling deserving. Some people refrain from asking because they think they are not deserving of or have not earned the privilege of asking. Life is not about being nice to people who have earned our love by mowing our lawn and washing our car. It’s about loving those around us because they have needs.
6. Concern about burdening others. As in Austin’s situation, people refrain from asking because they don’t want others to expend a great amount of time and effort on their behalf.
7. Confusing the functional and the relational. Sometimes we do ask and do provide, but we are out of balance. We lean toward the functional side—favors, errands, advice, and wisdom—when sometimes we just need to make a connection with another safe human and that’s enough. In so many relationships, learning to be emotionally present is often the solution.
8. This may get worse. Some people are concerned that if they uncork a few needs, there may be a flood of other and deeper needs, and it’s just better not to go there in the first place.
9. Access problems. Some people don’t ask because they simply experience very few needs. They rarely, if ever, feel a need for being accepted or comforted or helped.
10. The leader’s dilemma. Leaders especially hesitate to ask for their needs and prefer to be on the giving end. This is understandable because they want to be good models for success and maturity and instill confidence in their people that the organization is being led well.
11. Misunderstanding of the Bible. Many people neglect to bring their needs to others, because they feel that they should ask only God to supply their needs.
God meets our needs from two directions: “vertically,” through prayer, the Bible, the Holy Spirit, the spiritual disciplines, and surrender; and “horizontally,” through people. We need both sources.
It is just as true that our relational needs are no less critical than our functional needs. Longitudinal studies have proven over and over that without significant supportive relationships, we have more psychological dysfunctions, we have more health problems, and we die sooner.
We were designed to get needs met and provide for others’ needs. God meets our needs vertically (directly) and horizontally (through people).
The Path-to-Growth Tree
Consider this pattern—the way God’s process of growth seems to work most often:
• A struggle or challenge in some life area
• Attempts to solve it that don’t finish the job
• An unawareness that underlying relational needs are important
• Shame and resistance to identifying and expressing the needs
• Support and grace from others, affirming that it’s normal and okay
• Taking in the nutrients from relationship
• Improvement in the challenge area
The Fruit
There are three fruit categories by which all of us measure our lives:
1. PERSONAL
Personal refers to anything in our lives that falls within our purview as individuals. There are several types of personal fruit that matter to us.
• Behavior: Our behavior is simply our actions, the things we do.
• Thoughts: Our brains think all the time.
• Values: Probably the most personal of the personal fruits, values are those fundamental stances we take on what is most important in life.
• Emotions: We are emotional creatures. We have various passions and feelings throughout each day.
2. PEOPLE
The second P is about the relationships in our life, both personal and professional. One of the most common reasons people go to see a counselor is because there are difficulties with a relationship.
There are two qualities of people fruit that tend to matter most and make the most difference in our relationships:
1. Vulnerability: The act of taking risks to express negative parts of ourselves in our relationships. Jesus himself was vulnerable. On the cross, He didn’t pretend to be strong and invulnerable, but instead, in His agony, He asked His Father, “Why have you forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:46). That sort of honesty in our relationships is a hallmark of great health.
2. The Capacity to Solve Relational Problems: The ability for our relationships to be so safe and honest that we can solve relational problems together. The great relationships are those which employ the love, persistence, character, and skills required to work things out and move on.
When you care about someone, you want to be able to disagree, argue in healthy ways, solve problems, make decisions, and get back to love and connection. When that can’t happen, we feel disconnected, alone, frustrated, and sad.
3. PERFORMANCE
This third fruit is about the task, or doing, aspect of life. People who have good performance fruit tend to feel engaged, satisfied, productive, and energized.
The Trunk of Character
The trunk must be strong enough to keep the elements and disease out and to help the tree stand upright in weather. In the path of growth, the trunk is your character, performing the same functions.
Character is that set of capacities required to meet the demands of reality. Reality dictates how we use our time and energy, laying out our responsibilities to follow God, be kind to others, solve problems and challenges, make a living, handle our finances well. These are simply the requirements of life.
Generally speaking, our life’s success or lack of success often depends on how well our character capacities are working, how strong and developed they are.
We all need the four quadrants of nutrients applied to each of the four character capacities that form the trunk of character.
1. Bonding. This is the ability to have deep, healthy, meaningful relationships with God and people. Jesus said, “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you” (John 15:12).
2. Boundaries. This is your capacity to know what is and what is not yours to own or take care of. This is the essence of all of my Boundaries books, and it can be summarized in Proverbs 4:23: “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.”
3. Reality. Reality is best described as what is or what exists. There are two types of reality: positive and negative. Positive reality is what we all want: positive outcomes, positive relationships, and positive thinking. Negative reality—loss, failure, sin, brokenness—is more difficult to deal with.
4. Capability. This capacity is about being prepared to function in the world of adults.
Here’s a simple formula: strong trunk, great fruit; weak trunk, struggling fruit. That is why, when psychologists describe a person’s underlying issues, they refer to “character structure problems.”
The Soil Ingredients
This sums up the point of this entire book: to the extent that we receive the right nutrients, we bear the right fruit in life.
God provides three basic elements for us.
1. GRACE
Grace is a major provision and gift from God. Grace helps us feel loved and connected, helps us tolerate our own failure and that of others, and strengthens us to fight another day. God provides us with grace vertically (directly, from himself) and horizontally (indirectly, through people). “Jesus came full of grace and truth to give us both, to save us and grow us. But the order is significant here. The Bible doesn’t say that he came full of truth and grace; it’s the other way around. It’s a good illustration of how growth happens. We need to experience grace before we are ready for truth. If you’ve ever been ‘truthed’ by someone, without grace, even if they were right about what they were saying to you, it probably felt harsh, unloving, and impossible to respond to.”
2. TRUTH
Truth is simply what is factual and real. It is what is. Truth informs, educates, enlightens, corrects, and confronts us. Feedback, the personal insights and observations that people who know us well tell us to help us grow and be better people This last example, feedback, can be very powerful in a person’s life. Feedback can be positive and affirming, and it can be corrective or challenging. We all need the truth, from its various sources, to be the people we were designed to be. Remember that truth without grace can be judgment and condemnation. But grace without truth can become licentiousness and irresponsibility. God requires both elements.
3. TIME
Time is a sequential process of events. It is simply the path of how life moves and how we accomplish our tasks. Individuals who do well in life tend to be accountable to time. “Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom” (Ps. 90:12). Success is built around experiencing the right amounts and the right kinds of grace and truth over the right amount of time.
THE NUTRIENTS
We all know the six categories of nutrients necessary for survival, the ones you read about all the time: protein, carbs, fats, vitamins, minerals, and water. When we ingest what we are supposed to, we have the foundation for good health.
The same is true of our personal growth and brain health. There are nutrients from relationships—the right relationships—which are just as critical to us as those from the physical world.
There are four categories, or quadrants, of relational nutrients that we need. The total relational nutrient count is twenty-two, divided among the four categories.
Why the Nutrients are Vital
We were designed to be sourcers and sourcees, givers and takers, deliverers and recipients of the nutrients. As Matthew 10:8 puts it, “Freely you have received; freely give.”
You must have the nutrient to give the nutrient.
Internalizing relational nutrients is very similar to the process of metabolism that your body uses. Metabolism occurs when substances in our system are transformed so that we can use them. The body metabolizes food to create energy, strengthen itself, and heal. In the same way, we metabolize relational nutrients when we internalize them. They are converted into emotional and intellectual energy, strength, and healing.
You see the process at work in the Bible as well. Paul wrote about how he and his companions experienced the faith of the believers in the Thessalonian church and how that translated into encouragement for them. “Brothers and sisters, in all our distress and persecution we were encouraged about you because of your faith” (1 Thessalonians 3:7). Internalizing relational experience led to a sense of personal encouragement.
Quadrant 1: Be Present
Nutrients in this quadrant are high in grace and low in volume of words. Quadrant 1 nutrients are sometimes delivered by eye contact, body language, warmth, and kindness.
“I’m Not Alone in This”
We know from neuroscience and from attachment research that a great deal of growth and health comes from simply communicating to each other that we are present with them. Just letting them know, using very few words, that they are not alone causes endorphins to be released, and the person can forge ahead in their challenges, buoyed by the connection. By contrast, isolation is one of the most debilitating experiences we can have.
In Psalm 16, David says to God, “You will fill me with joy in your presence.” Over and over in the Bible, God lets us know that the “being with” is important to him, for our sakes.
In Jesus’ conversation with Martha and Mary (Luke 10:38–42), while Martha was certainly trying to be productive, Jesus clarified that Mary’s being present with him was the better thing.
When leaders learn to be present—really present—with others at work, they see everything get better: teams, culture, engagement, and performance. Everything wins.
#1 – ACCEPTANCE
The relational nutrient of acceptance is defined as connection without judgment: you assure the person that you are for them, even if they fail and even if you disagree.
It’s easy to accept someone when we like them, when they succeed, and when we agree with them. But that is a cheap acceptance. Acceptance makes a difference only when we provide it to a judged, condemned, or insecure part of the person.
Acceptance is an important principle in the Bible as well. We are to “accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted [us], in order to bring praise to God” (Rom. 15:7). The Greek word for accept means take to oneself, in the way you welcome a friend at the airport or greet someone you haven’t seen for a while. It is a word of connection and friendship.
Until we feel accepted, we cannot be vulnerable and open. Acceptance opens the door to all the rest of the relational nutrients. It helps us be vulnerable to relationships that count so we can receive nutrients from them.
#2 – ATTUNEMENT
Attunement involves three elements.
1. You become aware of another’s emotional state.
2. You respond to the other person in an empathetic way.
3. The other person feels attuned to. Attunement is being in tune with another person, the way the strings of a guitar are in tune with each other.
Attunement is similar to active listening and empathy. But it is more than this, because it also requires being in tune with a person as their feelings change.
Jesus attuned deeply to others. Speaking to the masses, he said, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28).
#3 – VALIDATION
Validation is an important Q1 nutrient. It helps us pay attention to our experiences and make sense of them so that we can make good decisions about what’s going on.
#4 – IDENTIFICATION
When someone identifies with us, they share a similar (usually negative) experience, to help us see that we are not the only one who is challenged. The power of identification comes from what is called normalization.
Normalization is the experience of realizing that you’re not some strange, mutated being who is set off from the rest of humanity because of a flaw. Rather you fit in with others. You may have your history and patterns, but being flawed doesn’t exclude you. When we feel normalized, our brains are able to settle into being connected and attached to others in community, and we think, feel, and behave better.
#5 – CONTAINMENT
Containment is a highly valuable nutrient for two reasons. First, when someone contains your unedited feelings (which is not the same as being verbally disrespectful or abusive), you can make more sense of things and make better decisions.
Second, containment helps us self-regulate. Self-regulation is living with strong feelings, understanding that they are just feelings and not all of reality, and processing them so that the intensity diminishes and we can feel calm and prepared for life. Having someone contain our feelings gives us the sense that our emotions don’t upset them and can be handled. In turn, we can handle our feelings as well.
Containment doesn’t take the right words as much as it requires you to be in a strong and stable place yourself. You will do others a great deal of good with it. And make sure you are being contained on a regular basis. It’s good for the soul and the mind.
#6 – COMFORT
Comfort is the relational nutrient that best addresses loss, in all of its forms. It is defined as the provision of support for someone who is experiencing a loss.
The best steps we can take are the following:
• Connect. Talk to supportive people about the loss.
• Grieve. Allow yourself to express sadness over the loss.
• Learn lessons. Identify what can be learned in this experience, even if the situation is senseless.
• Adapt. Determine the ways you will function and relate in the wake of the loss.
• Move on. While keeping the memory and honor of the person or situation intact, begin to live the best, healthiest, and most productive life possible.
Grief, the expression of sad feelings, needs the right kind of relational support to resolve itself. Comfort is the relational nutrient which, more than any other, facilitates the grief process.
The leader who does not provide some way to appropriately comfort someone who is in a state of loss, even if for just a few minutes, is at risk for having team, cultural, engagement, and turnover problems. How would you feel if you were bummed out, beating yourself up, and sad about not reaching a goal, and your boss said, “Sorry, no place for these sorts of feelings; take it to HR or take it home”? That’s ridiculous and it wouldn’t help.
When losses are attended to with comfort, it restores a person’s focus, concentration, and energy. If the word comfort feels out of place to you, then just substitute support. And remember that we have a Savior who was “acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3).
Quadrant 2: Convey the Good
“I am More Positive”
Leaders carry around a relational megaphone, whether or not they know it. The normal impact we have on others with our words is amplified by the leadership role.
Over and over, people tell stories about a leader who inspired them, encouraged them, and built them up, still motivating them even decades later. So it’s important to be aware of what we say, why we say it, and how we say it.
The Bible teaches again and again that words have enormous power. “Gracious words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones” (Prov. 16:24).
The six nutrients in this quadrant provide words which dispense grace (sweetness to the soul) and health (healing to the bones), helping others feel more positive about themselves and their lives.
#7 – AFFIRMATION
Affirmation is noticing a quality in a person, or an achievement of theirs, which required effort on their part. It is bringing attention to something valuable in another’s character, and it is often like pouring water on the dry soil of a plant. Our minds drink up the nutrient, and we feel invigorated.
The more specific an affirmation is, the more power it has.
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As you see on the safety warning signs, “If you see it, say it.” And let’s add to that, “If you need it, ask for it.” There is a reason why Jesus mentioned the affirmation of the responsible servant in the parable of the talents. “His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’” (Matt. 25:23).
#8 – ENCOURAGEMENT
It’s as simple as this: the cure for discouragement is encouragement. The root term of both words is an old French word, encoragier, which means “to hearten.”
#9 – RESPECT
Respect is honor or assigned value. When you convey respect to someone, you are expressing to them that they occupy a place of honor in your mind and that you see great value in them or in something about them. “Show proper respect to everyone” (1 Peter 2:17).
There are three main things we need respect for and are to provide others respect for.
1. Character. It helps us to know that our care for others, hard work, honesty, and vulnerability are noticed and appreciated.
2. Choices. There are times when a person makes difficult decisions.
3. Freedom to choose. It is important for our choices to be respected, even those others may not agree with.
#10 – HOPE
While encouragement targets your present situation, hope focuses on the future. Hope is the relational nutrient which provides reality-based confidence in a positive outcome down the road.
#11 – FORGIVENESS
If there is such a thing as a default nutrient, it’s this one. Forgiveness is one of the most powerful and energizing relational nutrients that exist. Forgiveness is the cancellation of a debt. It is saying, “You broke it, but I will repair it.”
It means you “[forgive] each other, just as in Christ God forgave you” (Eph. 4:32). Whether you are providing or receiving this nutrient, you benefit. Receivers as well as givers are better off.
When we don’t forgive, we run the risk of giving control of our lives to the offender. Psychologists talk about how we tend to obsess about that person, dream about what they have done, think about ways they have hurt us, and transfer our negative feelings about that person onto other relationships. Forgiveness wipes the slate clean so we can move on.
Forgiveness is not the same as healing. A better perspective is that forgiveness is a choice and healing is a process. Begin the process of healing by forgiving. That gets you on God’s operating table, where he works on you and with you to put your life back together.
Forgiveness solves so many personal and professional issues. Don’t do it in your head. Do it in relationship, and you will experience the benefits.
#12 – CELEBRATION
Celebration is the acknowledgment of a win, both cognitively and emotionally. There are three purposes for this nutrient:
1. Celebration requires that we be in the moment, what psychologists term mindfulness.
2. Celebration is a reinforcer. It increases the likelihood that we will repeat whatever actions we performed to make the party happen. Positive reinforcers help us remember the good, to make the good reoccur.
3. Celebration connects us to each other. If you tend to get stuck in the “head down, next task” stance, I recommend you use someone in your life who is a natural celebrator as a starter switch.
Some therapists think they need to bathe the client in words, but we risk drowning them. Just use the right words.
Quadrant 3: Provide Reality
“I Have Usable Info”
People who do well in life seek out the truth and orient to whatever it says, rather than cherry-picking the truths that fit their idea.
As Proverbs 23:23 puts it, “Buy the truth and do not sell it.” We grow, prosper, and heal through understanding and applying truths that make a difference.
#13 – CLARIFICATION
Some truths—a new idea, a new piece of data—come from outside us. Clarification is helping a person think clearly enough to see an answer.
Jesus used this nutrient too. “As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. ‘Good teacher,’ he asked, ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ ‘Why do you call me good?’ Jesus answered. ‘No one is good—except God alone” (Mark 10:17–18). Jesus was clarifying his authority. In essence, he told the man, “You are saying I am good, so you are agreeing that I am God.”
The well-known Toyota “Five Whys” is a great example of clarification. With this system, the person moves from the symptom of the problem to its root and a solution, most of the time within five iterations of the right why.
Unless you are in an urgent situation or have very little time with someone, start with clarification if there is a question of truth.
#14 – PERSPECTIVE
Perspective offers someone a different and more helpful way to view a situation, another lens to use.
#15 – INSIGHT
Insight is making sense of the real issue of a situation. It’s getting to the core of a problem or dilemma. People who are reflective and thoughtful are great dispensers of insight.
Jesus modeled insight in many ways that are lessons to us as well. One of the most significant examples is the story of the woman at the well. He deepens her understanding of her needs, from the physical to the spiritual. “Jesus answered, ‘Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life’” (John 4:13–14). I can never read this passage without feeling the insight Jesus has into my own life, and the hope he provides for all of us.
There is a difference between attunement (Q1) and insight, though there are some similarities. While attunement’s focus is entering the other person’s experience and ensuring that the individual knows that you are there with them, insight is more focused on comprehending the situation itself.
#16 – FEEDBACK
It is as simple as this: feedback is the surgery that successful people constantly seek out. Healthy, helpful feedback provides answers, course correction, and improvements in our organizations, in our families, and in our heads.
Research indicates that the most effective feedback is given with more positives and fewer negatives. As David says, “Let a righteous man strike me—that is a kindness; let him rebuke me—that is oil on my head” (Psalms 141:5). When someone is trying to help you and strikes you with some tough feedback, it may be saving your company, your marriage, or your soul.
#17 – CONFRONTATION
Confrontation is facing another person with a reality alongside an appeal and warning to change. Sometimes the only and best option in a situation is a confrontation, and it can be healing and transformative.
Confrontation and feedback have similarities, but they have two important differences. First, feedback can be an affirmation and positive, or it can be a challenge and a negative. Confrontation, however, is always corrective.
Second, while successful people constantly seek out feedback, it’s unusual to seek out confrontation. Most of the time, confrontation is driven by the person wanting to confront, not the confrontee. Your life and career can be saved if you hear and respond to the right confrontation. And you could save the life and career of another.
As Henry Cloud and Townsend put it in their book How to Have That Difficult Conversation, “Both the Bible and research show that confrontation is essential to success in all arenas of life. Successful people confront well. They make it a part of the ongoing texture of their relationships. They face issues in their relationships directly. In fact, the Latin word for confront means just that: to turn your face toward something or someone.”
God intended healthy confrontation to help us be the best person possible. As Proverbs 24:26 says, “An honest answer is like a kiss on the lips.”
Quadrant 4: Call to Action
“I’m Moving Forward”
A client of Townsend’s was a wizard at great meetings. He once said, “It’s pretty simple for me. I end every meeting with everyone having just one action step.”
“That’s a low number,” Townsend responded. “It is,” he replied, “but I have found that we’ll have 25 percent follow-up when people have three or four steps, and 90 percent when they have one. It’s a matter of focus.”
Doing is important. “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says” (James 1:22). That’s why the fourth quadrant is Call to Action. Great leaders, spouses, parents, and friends all make some sort of appeal to those they are influencing, toward a move, a change, an executable which can get someone moving in the right direction.
A call to action, like Q3’s provision of reality, is more about truth than it is about grace, even though it must be delivered with support and love.
#18 – ADVICE
Never end a session without a homework assignment—which is another word for advice, but a specific piece of advice. Advice is simply recommending a course of action. Advice can be about work, relationships, parenting, or self-care. But the right advice at the right time can be a very effective nutrient. “For lack of guidance a nation falls, but victory is won through many advisers” (Prov. 11:14).
Two things to remember with advice:
1. Determine whether the person needs attunement before your advice.
2. Get permission first. Most of us hate unasked-for advice.
If you see some glaring problem that you’d like to help them with, just do what our military friends do and ask for PTSF: permission to speak freely.
#19 – STRUCTURE
Townsend developed a model of how organizations called the Funnel. It is literally a graphic of a funnel, and it starts at the top, moving down from the larger view to the smaller focus, in this order: mission, vision, values, culture, goals, strategy, tactics, and vital behaviors. Any organization, large or small, for profit or nonprofit, can prioritize their resources and decisions using this.
To structure is to help another by creating a framework to accomplish something. We all need structure for just about anything important to us. Without structure, things become chaotic, and important tasks don’t get done. “Everything should be done in a fitting and orderly way” (1 Cor. 14:40).
#20 – CHALLENGE
Challenge is basically advice with an amplifier. It’s more intense and urgent and is needed when someone must pay attention to the next necessary steps. A clear definition is that challenge is strongly recommending an action step, especially a difficult one.
Remember, challenge is more initiated by another person and seldom requested. So don’t wait for someone you know who is driving their business, marriage, or health off a cliff to ask you to challenge them. Have the talk.
Challenge, done in love, is a game-changing nutrient and will help you. As with all of the Q4 nutrients, keep your focus on changed behavior.
#21 – DEVELOPMENT
Development has to do with being trained for something. It is guiding another to structured growth in some area. It is creating a path to do something which you can’t do today. Here are the elements common to development:
• Focus. A targeted area of improvement, limited to that area
• Information. Books, videos, feedback that provide the data you need
• Guidance. A person who can coach you and walk through the process with you
• Experiences. Skills, examples, and trainings to make it personal and real
• Goals. Some way to know that you are improving in the area
• Customization. A way to make it fit you and your context
Whatever your interest, just make sure you have these six elements in place.
We all need training. “Praise be to the LORD my Rock, who trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle” (Psalm 144:1). Keep winning the war against entropy, atrophy, and a declining life.
#22 – SERVICE
We are finding that the brain gets happy and then more productive when we are engaged in altruism, or providing something of value without a tangible return. And that is what the service nutrient is all about. It is guiding others to engage in giving back to the community and the world. So in a way, God has set up in our minds a positive reinforcement program. Doing good creates feeling good, which increases the probability of doing good again.
Service should be done from eagerness, not obligation. Paul writes, “They only asked us to remember the poor—the very thing I also was eager to do” (Galatians 2:10).
There you have them. The twenty-two relational nutrients, divided into four quadrants: Be Present, Convey the Good, Provide Reality, and Call to Action. Some combination of these, from the right people, at the right times, in the right amounts, will produce good fruit in your life.
CONSIDER THE PURPOSE
Just like biological nutrients, the relational nutrients have more than one usage and value.
• Maintenance. We just need each other in our lives, providing and being provided for, to stay energetic, connected, and productive.
• Growth. We all need to grow, in all sorts of areas. We were designed to be more loving, more joyful, better listeners, more honest, and better spouses, friends, parents, leaders, and businesspeople. The nutrients will keep you on your self-improvement path. Stress relief. In difficult times of pressure, loss, or failure, the nutrients help us persevere and make it through.
• Healing. When you have been wounded inside, suffering from isolation, depression, a broken heart, anxiety, or an addiction, you need to be in a healing process.
PART 3: WHO SHOULD DELIVER YOUR NUTRIENTS?
The Seven Cs
Not every person in the world is the right person to provide you with great nutrients. Like anything else in life, this is a matter of intentionality, meaning you need to think about this and take some action steps. “Walk with the wise and become wise, for a companion of fools suffers harm” (Prov. 13:20). We will all walk with someone. It may as well be the right someones.
1. COACHES
Get the Expertise
How many of you have had some kind of coach? In Townsend’s experience, about 90 percent of people asked that question will say they have had a coach.
A coach pushes his or her coachee to accomplish at a higher level than before. Individuals who were coached argue that if their coaches had not invested in them, they might have succeeded, but it is highly unlikely that they would have succeeded at the levels they achieved. And that leads to the definition of a coach: one who takes others down a path of growth and competency in a specific area.
Coaching is a very personal experience, and while there are universals to it, the best coaches always adapt to what their coachee needs in order to be the best they can be. As Proverbs 1:5 puts it, “Let the wise listen and add to their learning, and let the discerning get guidance.”
In the business and leadership world, coaching has grown very quickly as an industry over the past few years. It is now routinely a part of the organizational experience, the family growth world, and the personal growth arena.
Think back to when you had a challenge in some arena and didn’t have someone with expertise, someone who had been there, to help. It’s no fun to feel that you have to soldier through life alone, finding your way through areas that have already been successfully navigated by others.
THE THREE ATTRIBUTES OF A COACH
1. Subject matter expertise (SME). This is pretty obvious. A coach needs to know the subject you are interested in improving in.
2. Coaching competence. It’s not enough to know an area well. Lots of people are experts, but they are poor coaches. Coaching is a set of skills, in and of themselves, distinct and different from an SME capacity.
3. Autonomy. A great coach needs to be someone friendly, someone you like, but on their part, they have no need for you to be their best friend. To be autonomous means to be free; in this case, the coach is free from wanting your support and help. And that frees you up.
2. COMRADES
Build Your Life Team
Ask yourself, “Do I have a reliable and quality source to provide me with the twenty-two relational nutrients on an ongoing basis?” Most people say they do not. They have friends, people to have spiritual growth experiences with, confidants, and the like. But they don’t have this sort of arrangement.
Comrades are in it for the mutual growth process. A Life Team is basically the highest and best set of friendships, at least in the way that Jesus described it. “I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you” (John 15:15).
A Life Team consists of somewhere between three and ten individuals. This is the ideal range that seems to work best. Too few people, and you don’t have the variety of nutrient sources you need. Too many, and you don’t have time to go into depth with them.
When seeking Life Team partners, here are the qualities to look for, in no particular order.
• Shared essential values. Values are fundamental beliefs about life that serve as a compass for our path and decisions.
• Engagement in growth on some structured level. A Life Team member needs to be committed to self-improvement, and doing something about it.
• A stance of “for.” Life Team members need to be oriented to seek each other’s best, no matter what.
• Vulnerability. To be vulnerable is to be open about negatives in one’s life.
• Truthfulness. Truthfulness is just a no-compromise principle. Life Team members need a deep commitment to the truth, even if it is disruptive.
• Mutuality. You are all in the process together.
• Chemistry. It’s important that you like your Life Team members.
• Availability. This is the simple logistical part. You and the members of your Life Team must be available to have meaningful conversations with each other.
It’s generally a good idea to include opposite-sex relationships (OSRs) in one’s Life Team. There are certainly guardrails to put in place in some situations, but for the richest and most effective experience of growth, you can’t beat the variety of perspectives, thinking patterns, and life histories of healthy, safe, and growing men and women helping each other improve. The credibility of the opposite-sex viewpoint is hard to deny.
So far, the neurological research indicates that face-to-face is still the blue-chip modality, but virtual and digital connections are improving markedly.
3. CASUALS
Make Great Acquaintances
Casuals are low-commitment, enjoyable relationships. They are that neighbor you invite over from time to time for a barbecue or that person you have lunch with after church a few times a year. Casuals can be very important relationships. Casual friends serve several good purposes for you, and you for them.
• Living in the present. A great advantage of casuals is that they help us to be here and now, in the present.
• Differences can be good. When our casuals have different personalities, opinions, styles, values, and tastes, we are better off.
• A farm team. Your close friends are certainly a source for finding Life Team members.
• Initiative. Finally, casuals keep us reaching out.
4. COLLEAGUES
Work Productively and Connected
Work takes up around half of our waking time, so it is significant, and what we do, whether it be contributing to the provision of a product or a service, matters to our entire mission and direction in life. Moses said to God, “If you are pleased with me, teach me your ways so I may know you and continue to find favor with you. Remember that this nation is your people” (Exodus 33:13). The “ways” that God teaches us include how we work, have jobs, and are productive.
Culture—how relationships, attitudes, and behavior drive performance—is an obvious arena in which to observe how colleagues can engage at healthy levels.
As a key part of the success of an organization of any size, teams also have a high relational component. Look at a team as a “work family” with performance goals. In Townsend’s experience, probably 80 percent of the reasons a team does not succeed are about relational problems, not task issues.
Work is not a primary context for personal growth, counseling, or healing. It is work. The work environment can be a supportive setting, but make sure you are fully utilizing your most important connections elsewhere.
Remember: even when you are focused on your work, relationships matter.
5. CARE
Provide for Others
“If you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday” (Isaiah 58:10).
There are several aspects to a care relationship:
• They have a legitimate need for some resource that you can provide.
• They have no avenue to recompense you financially or otherwise.
• Your care for them, and their benefit, is the primary focus of the relationship.
• They take responsibility for the nutrients they are given.
As long as you are in balance, remember this principle: when we give of ourselves, expecting nothing, we receive much more than we ever thought possible.
6. CHRONICS
Support without Enabling
A chronic is best defined as an individual with four traits:
1. Ongoing struggles.
2. Little insight regarding their part.
3. Dysfunctional behavior patterns.
4. Harmless in intent but harmful in impact.
Look at a chronic as being the foolish person in Proverbs.
• “The waywardness of the simple will kill them, and the complacency of fools will destroy them” (1:32).
• “The way of fools seems right to them, but the wise listen to advice” (12:15).
• “A discerning person keeps wisdom in view, but a fool’s eyes wander to the ends of the earth” (17:24).
• “Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions” (18:2).
• “As a dog returns to its vomit, so fools repeat their folly” (26:11).
• “Stone is heavy and sand a burden, but a fool’s provocation is heavier than both” (27:3).
We must never judge those with chronic tendencies. We all have our own inner chronic. Your responsibility is to be in charge of how you are investing your time, energy, and resources.
7. CONTAMINANTS
Quarantine Yourself and Your Resources
A contaminant is one who seeks to harm others. It is a person who does not cause pain by accident or out of immaturity. That would be the path of the chronic. The contaminant is intentional in harming others.
Contaminants generally possess a deep envy of others, which they will often deny feeling. Envy is the stance of resenting the perception that all of the good is outside of oneself.
The bottom line is that contaminants are more than just hurt people or misunderstood people or chronics. They are in concert with evil. They are the bad guys.
Here are some suggestions that can help.
• Love your enemies. We must always default to love, as when Jesus said, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:43–44).
• Protect yourself. Do not expose your heart, time, money, or other resources to a contaminant, once their nature has been established. When it’s time to shake the dust off your feet, do it (Matthew 10:14).
• Tell them the truth.
• Live in reality. One of the biggest mistakes people make with contaminants is ignoring the negative because there are positives.
• Determine your actions by the fruits.
• Calendar the life-giving relationships. What is calendared is much more likely to happen. Set these up and stick to them.
May you fill your life with the right People Fuel—a richness of the 22 relational nutrients Townsend described to transform your life, love, and leadership—as you shoot for the stars!