Success in business is directly connected to how well you work with others. Even if you are a sole proprietor, providing all of your business's output, you still need customers. Your skill and ability to manage your relationships with others will define your business success.

No matter whether you are self-employed or happy being a part of a larger effort with less overall responsibility, managing relationships is a vital part of your life. There are four aspects of successful relationship management:

Care

Respect

Responding appropriately

Knowledge

To actually care about other people you work with may seem foreign to you if you are part of an impersonal work environment. Making the effort to care will increase your value to the company and to your fellow workers. While not everyone will want to respond in kind, the fact that you care makes you more important to the team or group you work with.

Respect is more than just being polite and deferring to your superiors. It also means looking squarely at the other person as a person. While it may be easy to see only the bad or negative parts of another person, you must remember that everyone is a whole being. Train yourself to see past the deficiencies and find the person behind them. Treat everyone as worthy of respect, especially when they do not do the same for you. There is a deep power in doing this. You can only discover it by doing it.

Responding appropriately to other people is a skill that is learned. Instead of doing what you instinctively feel you should do, learn what is truly right to do and do only that. If you let your own feelings and attitudes control the way you respond to others, you will reveal your own weaknesses and repel others. Practice doing the right thing until it becomes an unbreakable habit that no temporary distraction or upset can overcome. You'll find that this is most useful in a crisis, where you could let the stress of the situation cause you to act inappropriately.

Finally, know yourself and know others. Active knowledge of those you work with is invaluable. Knowing yourself is even more important. Be willing to let others tell you or show you how they perceive you. Make sure you take the time to know and understand those you work with. Knowledge, rightly used, is power.

These four aspects of business relationships are uncommon knowledge of what real success in business can be.