Relationship capital unlocks career independence

Happy Independence Day!

Thursday was my last day at Pega, so today I’m contemplating what independence means to me and its connection to my new mission. There's something fitting about that, but not in the way you might think. This isn't a story about breaking free from a job. I'm grateful for my nine years at Pegasystem. It's a story about a kind of independence you can build long before you ever need it, and that pays off every single day you stay.

A group of people I've worked with filled a kudo board with goodbye notes, and I've spent the past couple of days reviewing them along with farewell emails. The notes weren't really about me. Look closely, and almost everyone describes a moment where I happened to be paying attention to what they were trying to do. A nudge toward a goal. A book that matched where someone was headed. A conversation that helped someone decide to take a leap. I didn't experience any of those as "leadership." I was just trying to focus on the other person's trajectory instead of my own.

That turns out to be a powerful thing.

When you make someone else's goal the point, their motivation mobilizes. You don't have to manufacture it. You just have to stop making the moment about you long enough to see what they actually want, then help them get there. People bring their best to the person who is clearly invested in their best. Every time.

This is the part of leadership that never shows up on a scorecard, and it's one of the core ideas behind PowerSkills: leading and coaching by building trusting, value-based relationships. The kind where the other person knows, without a doubt, that you want them to win. Internally with your team. Externally with partners and customers. Same principle either way. That trust is the multiplier. It turns a transaction into a relationship, and a relationship into meaningful impact.

Now, here's what that has to do with independence. It works in two directions.

The first is independence within your role. A trusted network inside your organization is power of a kind no title grants. Doors open before you knock. Your ideas get a fair hearing because people know your track record of backing theirs. When you need resources, sponsorship, or the benefit of the doubt, you have it, because you gave it first. That's how careers actually move upward. Not by continuous self-promotion, but by a network of people who advocate for you in rooms you're not in. The people who feel stuck in their roles usually aren't short on talent. They're short on advocates.

The second is independence of movement. When you spend years genuinely helping people toward their goals, you build something that travels with you. You're never limited to the room you're standing in, and you never face a transition alone. You may never use this kind. But knowing it's there changes how you operate: you make bolder decisions, speak more honestly, and take the risk worth taking, because you're not operating from fear.

Neither comes from keeping score. The moment it becomes strategy, people feel it, and it stops working. Trust, when it's genuine, compounds on its own.

The kudo board I was given is a receipt for both. For nine years, that network was how things got done: partnerships launched, ideas championed, momentum built. Now, it's the reason I'm making the biggest professional move of my life without feeling for a moment that I'm starting from zero.

That's exactly what I want to help you build. Everything I'm working on now (this newsletter, podcast, PowerSkills, the conversations ahead) comes down to one aim: helping you build the kind of relationships that bring out the best in the people around you and give you agency, wherever you are and wherever you're headed.

For now, one ask: pick one person this week and make their goal the point. Coach them toward the thing they want, not the thing you'd want for them. Bring your full attention to it and expect nothing back.

That's how you bring out someone's best. It's how you lead. And, quietly, over years, it's how you build your independence: influence where you are, upward mobility when you've earned it, and options if you ever need them.

In this past week’s Relationship Capitalists Podcast, John Barrows puts it concisely: “Give a sh*t”, sincerely care for the person you're engaging as a fellow human who has their own set of internal and external challenges.

Trust Builder: Close the loop on something you offered.

Think back to the last time you told someone "I'll connect you with..." or "I'll send you that...". Did you? Go do the one you left hanging. Nothing builds trust like being the person who follows through when it would have been easy to let it slide. That track record is exactly what makes people advocate for you later.

Value Deposit: Advocate for someone in a room they'll never see.

This week, put your credibility behind one person when they aren't there. Recommend them for the project. Drop their name to the decision-maker. Vouch for them in the group chat. You don't need to tell them you did it, they'll find out. That is relationship capital moving in the direction it's supposed to.

Happy Independence Day. Onward!

— Jason

P.S. To everyone who wrote something: thank you. You reminded me what this was all actually about.