Intern Insight: Be Better Than a Cyborg with Relationship Management Technology

As an avid fan of TEDTalks, I recently watched a talk by cyborg anthropologist Amber Case titled, “We are all cyborgs now.” Case discusses how technology has transformed the human species, and she states that the purpose of technology is to extend our human capabilities. After watching this talk, I thought about how this applies to relationship management.

A relationship manager is the tool that extends your capabilities of maintaining healthy personal and business relationships. It’s a tool that keeps all the details in an always-accessible location. Now that the smartphone is a real thing, you can have your “external brain” with you at all times. We have a whole extra hard drive of space for information that we didn’t have before. We can stop trying to force ourselves to keep every detail about our relationships in our brains and put it on a device that has no choice but to keep track of that information. All we have to do with our brains is remember to tell our “external brains” which information to remember, and it’s stored for us!

This is what technology and the Internet are supposed to do. We can now connect easier and faster than ever before. However, it’s imperative that we use the proper tools to help us maintain good relationships. While technology is here to help us, it is growing and changing at an exponential rate. If we aren’t careful, we might fall victim to forgetting things because of the flood of information we all wade through every single day.

I now use a relationship manager to help keep track of all the connections I make online through social media networks. If you’re like me, your Facebook friends list, the list of your followers on Twitter, and your connections on LinkedIn are always growing. It’s impossible to remember everything about all of these people, but having a relationship manager in my pocket can keep all of that information in my “external brain.”

Not everyone uses a relationship manager. Many people are simply "making do" with the tools they already have, like the native Contacts and Calendar apps on their iPhones. However, these separate information silos require more effort to accomplish even the simplest of tasks. In fact, I'd have to open several apps just to find what I need. It’s like picking up ingredients for a meal at several different grocery stores. Wouldn’t it be faster to make one transaction instead of several? With a relationship manager, I have to make one information transaction instead of a few entries in separate apps.

I've found that using a relationship manager makes all the difference in both my personal life and career. I'm better equipped to establish personal connections. I'm able to remember more details than someone who doesn’t take advantage of a relationship manager, which sets me apart from my competition.

Just because we’re cyborgs doesn’t mean shouldn't be personable!

Guest Post by Alex Christensen