Ten Questions You Should Ask Your Partner Every Three Months

Or how to have a relationship development conversation

Photo by Korney Violin on Unsplash

I had an epiphany the other night: we focus on succeeding at our careers a lot more than we focus on succeeding at our relationships.

Career development is something almost every employer and employee I know thinks about a lot, myself included. All the companies I’ve worked at — startup to enterprise — proactively manage employee retention rate and overall employee satisfaction. At my current job, I use designated tools for goal tracking, responding to employee pulse surveys, manager check-ins, collecting real-time peer feedback, and for my annual performance reviews. On top of all that, I have to have monthly development conversations with my manager.

Why aren’t we applying that much rigor to improving our relationship satisfaction and partner retention?.. Most of us just go with the flow, let our relationships progress organically, and don’t spend too much time, if any, on collecting our partners’ feedback or discussing their performance.

Wouldn’t it make sense to check-in with our partners regularly to see how they were doing and to find out if there was anything we could be doing to support them better?.. “Of course we do that already,” you might say, “I ask my partners…