BU and Babson Professors Co-Publish New Book
Kathy Kram, Professor in Management at Boston University School of Management and Wendy Murphy, associate professor of management at Babson College, have published a new book titled Strategic Relationships at Work: Creating Your Circle of Mentors, Sponsors, and Peers for Success in Business and Life. The book provides guidelines for building relationships that are crucial to personal success. The book draws upon 30 years of research to offer practical advice on mentoring, coaching, mentoring circles, and developmental networks.
“These trends make us all novices over and over again as we necessarily move to a new job, new organization, or new country,” Kram says. “It’s almost impossible to be an expert for very long.”
This is where supportive work relationships play a critical role.
“Finding a mentor is no longer sufficient,” Kram says. “Instead, each of us has to build a network of developers that can help us to continuously learn, innovate, and work with others.”
In three parts, Strategic Relationships at Work gives readers a guide to identifying high-quality relationships, how to build them, and what to do when they go awry.
The first part of the book provides an overview of what makes for high-quality relationships and gives the reader a number of assessment tools to create a personal strategy for building an effective circle of mentors, sponsors, and peers. From there, the authors offer strategies for building different types of relationships and invites those in leadership positions to foster developmental relationships in their organizations through formal programs, their own efforts to build effective alliances, and rewarding others for doing so.
The third part of the book outlines how to end a relationship that has gone awry to minimize negative impact on your career. Via case examples of “tor-mentors,” Kram and Murphy illustrate the “red flags” that suggest when a relationship is no longer mutually beneficial, and offer specific communication tactics for ending it and moving on.
“With this book in hand, you will be able to form mutually rewarding relationships at work, create strong connections with meaning and purpose and experience greater satisfaction and success, in business and life,” said Kram.
About the Author
Erin Purcell
Staff Writer, covering MetroMBA's news beat for New York, Philadelphia, and Boston.
