Relational Intelligence: The People Skills You Need for the Life of Purpose You Want

by Dharius Daniels

An unhealthy loyalty is one that is always committed to a person’s wishes—what they want. But biblical loyalty is committing to a person’s well-being—what they need.

Biblical love is not affection; it’s activity. It is unconquerable benevolence. A commitment to seek my highest good. You have to handle the best of me and worst of me without changing how you deal with me. Henri Nouwen captures what this looks like in his book Out of Solitude: Three Meditations on the Christian Life:

Time is our most valuable, precious commodity. It is irreplaceable. Once you lose it, it is gone forever. So time should be the currency we invest into the things we care the most about. Friends prioritize each other. They make time to speak and engage with each other. All of that takes an investment of time. When the seed of time is sown, the harvest of intimacy is reaped, and a life is changed.

Our relationships are full of affection, though not the handsy kind. Bottom line, they are vessels for an enormous manifestation of God’s unconditional love for us.

You are a limited finite being with limited time and energy. We all must strategically steward it in ways that align with our priorities. This is the key to fruitfulness and fulfillment in life. You will be most fulfilled and most fruitful when your proclaimed values line up with your actual priorities.

Loyalty is revealed in the presence of other opportunities, in the face of inconvenience. Some people are loyal when it’s easy to be. Their true loyalty is revealed by their actions in our absence.

Assignments are individuals who may appear to have a genuinely deep admiration for you, but in actuality their love and admiration is for your gift and not for you as a person. In other words, an assignment may have sought you out because of something you have accomplished, and it’s the gift, talent, or skill that they’re actually enamored by. To ignore this reality is to be like an athlete who doesn’t realize that the same fans who will cheer when you play well will be the ones who will boo when you play poorly.

At some point, if your contribution to their life is no longer perceived as valuable, they are likely to leave the relationship. If they do, just make sure you haven’t given them any dirt to take with them.

“If they don’t receive you, shake the dust off your feet, and go to the next city” (see Matthew 10:14).

The “shaking the dust off” is a symbol of not taking the residue of rejection from one season or relationship into another. To do so is dangerous. It’s also toxic and unhelpful. Many times, your discernment regarding who is or isn’t your assignment is going to come through pure experimentation. As you engage in these relationships, more and more will be revealed. You will see an openness in an individual, or a lack thereof. This doesn’t mean a person who is potentially your assignment can’t eventually open up to you. That’s entirely possible. What it does mean is you can’t help them until they do.

Every person isn’t your responsibility. Every person with a need isn’t your assignment. So recognizing the call—the urge to help someone—is an important indication that God is involved.

When you have a person who doesn’t know they need help, we must pray that God will heal them from their blindness before we invest any more time in them as our assignment. If we don’t take this approach and keep pressing a person to do things—even good, life-giving things—our conversations are going to start feeling like condemnation.

But God is saying to us, “Do you trust me enough to give them up? Not give up on them, but give them to me and say, ‘Lord, the way I’ve been doing this isn’t working, and I want to try it your way.’” God is speaking to us, saying, “Give them to me. Give them up because they’re better off in my hands than in yours.”

We must embrace the reality of our limitations and accept that some people are just not open. And when you try to force open their engagement, we move out of ministry into manipulation. We move out of calling and into control. There’s a word the Old Testament uses to describe people who are obsessively controlling, forceful, and manipulative, even with good intentions—the word is witchcraft. In the Bible, witchcraft is not an old lady with a black hat and a broom stirring broth. It’s biblical characters like Jezebel who try to manipulate outcomes so that things turn out the way they think they should turn out.

An assignment relationship can absolutely evolve into a friendship. This generally happens, however, when the nature of the contribution that you’ve made to the assignment has helped them, matured them, assisted them, or advanced them to the degree that they’re able to contribute and reciprocate in a way that a friend might. In other words, the transition from assignment to friend may occur when the assignment doesn’t need you in the same way they needed you before.

It’s important to note that it is hard to have an authentic friendship with someone who must have you as a part of their life in a way that is mostly advisory. One of the qualities of a great friendship is honesty. When a relationship has been in the assignment/advisor stage for a length of time and there is a need for a person’s service in one’s life, it can affect both parties’ ability or willingness to speak the truth in love when there’s an attempt to transition to a friendship.

Frustration is an indication that some adjustments need to be made.

Our emotions are God’s way of alerting us to something we need to pay attention to. They can alert us to what is going on in our hearts, lives, and relationships. Although they may be unpredictable and difficult to describe, they are still God’s gift to us, and they are the language of our heart. Therefore, instead of ignoring them, let’s ask ourselves, What is my heart trying to tell me?

Relationships are so consequential to the course, direction, and quality of our lives. I think when things become clearer in our own minds about the roles that people play, decisions become easier. But even before evaluation, we must make space in our minds to reflect and think.

Relational intelligence isn’t just about clarity; it’s also about courage. It’s about summoning up the courage to make the decisions that are in the best interest of the life God wants us to steward. And it is believing that my purpose never comes at the expense of someone else’s, that the quality of my life never comes at the expense of someone else’s if I’m doing it God’s way.

A decision we have to make for our lives shouldn’t come off as an accusation or attack against the character of somebody else. When we’re having those conversations, we should essentially say, “Listen, there are a number of different shifts that are taking place in my life, and right now I just need some time to do some reflecting on what I need to do to be a good steward of our relationship and what God is doing in this season. I’m going to need a little while to think through that.” Notice that the focus is on the speaker’s life. It’s not speaking to any specific character flaw in the other person or disparaging their part in the relationship. This is not the place for accusations. Think of this as an opportunity to communicate what you need in your life, and why you are taking ownership of this decision.

relational intelligence is not about the way we worship God, but about the way we relate to each other. So in the stage where we’re evaluating our relationships and examining fruit, we must especially consider if the “we’re both Christians” mantra could be hiding some potential pitfalls: How does this person relate to me? How do they treat me? How do I treat them?

I don’t have control over whether or not this person wants a different kind of relationship. We must be so committed to the best interests of both parties—ourselves and the other person—that if our realignment of the relationship creates a relationship they no longer want, we must respect their choices the same way we want them to respect ours.

The question isn’t whether or not people love us; it’s whether or not their love is leading them. There are people who have unaddressed and unmanaged emotional issues that don’t allow them to act in loving ways. There are parents who genuinely love their children who also don’t act in loving ways, and vice versa.

God would rather that we deal with the pain of loneliness than with the pain of brokenness.

We all have a few things we need in order to accept what we observe in our relationships. First, we must have a degree of emotional health ourselves in order to define ourselves apart from the relationships we’re in.

Sometimes it’s only when people feel the reality of those consequences that they are forced to face their issues.

Giving other people control over our lives is like regifting. God has given us the gift of self-control, and we give that gift to someone else. Then we hope the other person manages that gift in a way that is in our best interest.

I have to set boundaries in order to be and experience God’s best. I have to advocate for me.

it’s not that we should avoid telling “hard truths.” I’m saying that all truth doesn’t have to be hard.

“Emotional intelligence is being smart about your feelings. It’s how to use your emotions to inform your thinking and use your thinking to inform your emotions.”

Another way to position this could be, “I’ve been throwing myself so much into my career [or family]. I’ve been trying to spend some time developing myself, doing some self-improvement. Because of that work, I’ve had to shift the way I relate to you and the nature of our relationship. I just want you to be aware of that. I want you to know that as I sort through this, my time is going to be limited. I won’t be able to spend as much time doing some of the things we used to do. I’d really appreciate and value you being a part of my life. I hope I have your support as I sort through what life looks like for me in this next season.”

When we are moving someone away from us relationally, we make the conversation about us. But when we are pulling them close, the conversation is about them. This requires some vulnerability on our part. Pulling close means we are acknowledging our need for someone else and exposing ourselves to the possibility of being rejected. However, the payoff of the right person being in the right place in our lives far exceeds the risk of rejection.

when we are drawing people closer to us, shifting them into the more intimate category of friendship, the emphasis in our conversation should be on honoring them and illuminating the characteristics in them we most admire. We should also share how we’d like someone with those values and traits to be a part of our life.

Apathy, timidity, and the inability to have hard conversations can be an indication that we have some rejection infection.

Our need to please people, to be liked, is very often a symptom of someone who has been dealt rejection or lived with an absence of affirmation. And one of the things that ends up happening is we don’t set boundaries and end up with many misaligned relationships.

There are times when we envision ourselves “hurting” them, but we must reframe it in a way where we see ourselves “releasing” them to pursue God’s next and best. We must rethink elimination both personally and professionally. No matter how much it costs to let people go, the price is far greater to let them stay.

Elimination is also not a matter of convenience; it’s a matter of calling. In other words, it’s not a step we take because we are simply agitated with someone; it’s a step we take because we believe it’s a necessary step to move into the next chapter of God’s story for our life.

We should ask ourselves, If someone were to eliminate me, how would I want them to treat me? What would I want them to say to me? How would I want them to manage my responses?

Be strong and have courage.” God didn’t tell Joshua to feel strong and feel courageous; he told him to act courageously.

Courage, we know, is not the elimination of fear; it is acting in spite of fear. Courage is allowing a superior fear to drive your decisions as opposed to being imprisoned by an inferior fear.

You’ll never find fulfillment until you find your purpose, and your purpose is going to be found making unique contributions to the lives of others.

We should consider what people want from us but always give them what they need.

person who has an accurate understanding of what godly love is, which is not a feeling. Godly love, called agape in the Greek, is an incomparable benevolence. It is a commitment to always do what is in the best interest of that person. Godly love is loving the person even more than the relationship.