This era of social networking would surely have been invented by Keith Ferrazzi (MBA ’92) had it not sprouted on its own. Ferrazzi is well known as a professional networker in the best (or worst, depending on whom you’re talking to) HBS tradition — his Rolodex is as thick as the Manhattan phone book, his text-messaging bills surely the rival of a government bailout.

Ferrazzi’s new book, Who’s Got Your Back: The Breakthrough Program to Build Deep, Trusting Relationships That Create Success — and Won’t Let You Fail (Broadway Business), continues the network-your-way-to-success theme of his first tome, Never Eat Alone. But while the earlier book offers a blueprint for developing relationships with 10,000 people, this one focuses on finding the three people who will change your life.

He calls these lifeline relationships — “someone who will never let you fail” — and they are essential for personal and career success and emotional development. Think of them as your personal board of directors with a heart. You meet with each other regularly with a formal agenda, call on each other’s expertise as needed, share emotions, fine-tune behaviors, criticize each other’s performance, and generally cover each other’s back.

“Once you’ve established a safe place with a group of trusted advisers, you’ll find that you’ll start taking more risks, individually, within your group, and in your company,” writes Ferrazzi, who is CEO of the business management consultancy Ferrazzi Greenlight. He says his firm’s earnings tripled in the first year he followed the program.

Building a lifeline relationship with someone begins with generosity, continues to vulnerability and then candor, and closes with accountability. A step-by-step guide to developing intimate friendships may seem a little calculating. Ferrazzi acknowledges that enduring relationships can form on their own, but it’s worth the hard work and dedication needed to move things along. And who can argue with the goal of developing more life-changing deep friendships?

The idea of reaching out to others for support is about “enlisting the help and advice of others to help you become who you can be,” Ferrazzi writes. “This kind of peer-to-peer support and feedback is the often unacknowledged key behind the achievements of so many of the high-performance people I come in contact with every day.”

After all, we could all use a bit more intimacy, even if it’s planned.

— SEAN SILVERTHORNE

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