Spheres of Influence: How to Create and Nurture Authentic Business Relationships by Brad Englert
“My hope is that aspiring and established professionals will have a clear roadmap for how to develop the critical career-enhancing skill of creating and nurturing effective business relationships.”
That’s exactly what Brad Englert set out to do in his comprehensive guide, Spheres of Influence: How to Create and Nurture Authentic Business Relationships (Fast Company Press). This tell-all business handbook explores the many ways emerging leaders can develop and perfect what he calls the “critical hard skill” of building effective and enduring business relationships.
We got a chance to talk to Englert about the gift of mentorship, the cons of traditional networking and the real stories that worked their way into his book.
Q: What inspired you to write this book?
A: Throughout my 40 year career, I have enjoyed helping people grow in their careers. In addition, I was fortunate to have strong mentors who helped me along the way. Each year, I mentor two or three people which I find very rewarding. But mentoring one-on-one does not scale and I cannot clone myself. The book is designed to help a wider audience discover how to create and nurture authentic business relationships. The good news is that you do not need to be born with the ability to build authentic business relationships. You can build authentic business relationship skills just like you can learn other hard skills, like computer programming if you adhere to the basic principles and practice.
Q: Why is it important to build effective and enduring business relationships?
A: It is in your long-term self-interest. All business relationships are built on trust and reciprocity. Your mutually beneficial professional relationships should begin early in your career and grow over time. The book describes the ways to build a variety of authentic, mutually beneficial, trusting and enduring business relationships spanning years and even decades. Three principles described in the book apply to all business relationships: understand their goals and aspirations, set and manage expectations and genuinely care about their success. The litmus test of an authentic business relationship is whenever you reconnect you pick up right where you left off — there is no time gap.
Q: What are the internal and external spheres of influence?
A: Your professional relationships span two spheres of influence. The internal sphere of influence focuses on those people you have the most direct impact: your boss, executive leaders, direct reports and all your staff. The external sphere of influence includes business relationships where you have less direct impact: customers, peers and influencers and strategic vendor partners.
Q: Why do you believe the business community needs to transcend traditional networking?
A: Traditional networking tends to be transactional, short-lived — and in my experience — superficial. It is difficult to engage in meaningful conversations, create rapport or build trust with traditional networking, especially if the participants go in with a “What is in it for me?” mindset. Networking events rarely lead to unexpected opportunities or long-term business relationships. Moreover, you cannot rely on social media’s likes, shares and links to build mutually beneficial professional relationships.
Q: How has your business background informed the book?
A: The crunchy, real-world stories in this book are gleaned from a 22-year career with Accenture, including 10 years as a partner, and eight years at The University of Texas at Austin, including seven years as the Chief Information Officer. These stories are relevant to a diverse range of industries, organizations, and backgrounds. My former bosses, direct reports, staff, customers, colleagues, peers and influencers, and strategic vendor partners have asked if their experiences, achievements and issues would appear in this book. Absolutely, but I promise anonymity. All the names of the people have been changed to protect the innocent and guilty, and no companies on either my most favored vendor list or my most hated vendor list have been named.
Q: What do you hope readers will take away from your book?
A: My hope is that aspiring and established professionals will have a clear roadmap for how to develop the critical career-enhancing skill of creating and nurturing effective business relationships. Please check out the book trailer and five fun stories on my YouTube channel: “Good Customer Service,” “It Never Happened,” “Swiss Cheese Feet,” Copious Notes” and “Give a Damn!”
Brad Englert is the founder of Brad Englert Advisory and an author, advisor, and technologist. Brad worked for Accenture for 22 years, including 10 years as a partner. He then served The University of Texas at Austin for eight years, including seven years as the Chief information officer (CIO).
During Brad’s career with Accenture, a global management consulting and technology services firm, he worked in a variety of information technology leadership and operational roles for large, complex institutions of higher education, state governments (Texas, California, Minnesota, Montana), and commercial organizations (Best Buy, Caterpillar, Whirlpool, Bell South, Deutsche Bank and Wyeth). When Brad retired as a senior partner in 2006, he had a proven track record in information technology operations, large scale information systems implementations, and strategic planning. At The University of Texas at Austin from 2009 to 2017, Brad led the modernization of mission critical information systems serving 52,000 students, 4,000 faculty, and 21,000 staff.
Prior to Accenture, Brad held managerial positions in payroll/human resources and labor relations at the Internal Revenue Service, and was a high school teacher in Maitland, New South Wales, Australia. Brad is married to Corliss Hudson Englert. They have two sons, Eric and Nathan.
Brad earned a masters of public affairs degree from The University of Texas at Austin and a bachelor of arts degree in social sciences with honors and distinction from Shimer College, which is now the Shimer Great Books School at North Central College in Naperville, Illinois.
