Healthy relationships are critical to our overall health. Having connections and community has been well-documented as a key element to emotional and physical health. In addition, stress is also well-documented as putting a tremendous amount of pressure on our minds, bodies and particularly our immune systems. One of the areas that people often experience disconnection and stress is in their relationships. Whether it’s bosses, colleagues, spouses, children or other friends and family members, there are many relationships in all of our lives that have the potential to be stressful. The challenge is how can we minimize stress in these relationships? How can we have healthy, productive interactions with those around us to help us be the healthiest we can be? 

One of the foundations to healthy relationships is communication. In fact, the stronger our communication skills, the stronger our abilities are to have relationships that work and the stronger our chances are for being able to lead our lives the way we want to. So how do we build our relationship and communication skills? This week on Healthy You! we will explore this question with Dwight and Suzanne Frindt, Co-founders and Principals of 2130 Partners.

2130 Partners is a leadership development and education company with bases in both Southern California and here in Issaquah, Washington. Dwight Frindt has logged over 11,000 hours of executive leadership coaching and more than 800 days of leadership workshop facilitation. Suzanne has also done thousands of hours of speaking, coaching and facilitation. What they both discovered is that a majority of these executive coaching sessions were about relationship issues, and not just professional, but personal relationships. They used to ask their executive clients, “if all your people just came to work, did their jobs, “no fuss, no muss” and went home, what time of the day could you leave the office?” The answer surprised them until they kept hearing the same thing – “probably 10 or 11am.” The challenges leaders were facing were not process or production related nearly as much as they were in “the human dimension.” As a result, they developed a program called, “Productive Interactions,” to help clients build their relationship skills. At first they thought this program would only be in the professional context, but they soon had clients telling them how they were using what they learned at home and in their personal lives too. 

So listen in as discuss how we can have healthier, more productive interactions, this week on Healthy You!

To your health!