Relationship Skills - Professional or Personal

The other day we happened to undergo a leadership training at work regarding Relationship Skills. Well I know what you are thinking...I thought of the same thing...IS this something that you can teach?? Anyways but due credit to the facilitator and the content, there was indeed some takeaways. Most importantly some concrete ways of gauging and measuring your professional relationships. So going out with your client for golf and beer are not valid indictors of how deep your relationship runs..So this structured approach to thinking can help decide your course of action and take steps t improve if needed...Fair enough and hopefully I will be able to keep this at the back of my head when I move to US or Europe in the next 6 months.

But the moot point which got me thinking later was whether inherent relationship building skills have any correlation with professional relationships. So for example if someone is essentially good with relations, does that mean he will be a good client handler or vice versa? I don't know the answer but then I heard the story where in many management consulting firms, people verify how successful you are in your personal family life before thay make you partner...Hmm maybe then there is indeed some correlation. Well as of now, I will have to wait and see how life pans out for me and people I know both professionally and personally. I think it will help me develop my own hypothesis around this.