Relationships Audit — A guided exercise applying the RISE Method to help you evaluate your professional and personal relationships, set healthy boundaries, and invest your relational energy where it will matter most for your transition.
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RISE with Betty™
Career Transition Strategy
Habit 7 of 10
Habit 7 · Cultivate Strategic Relationships with Healthy Boundaries
The Relationships Audit
Your network is one of the most powerful career assets you have — research consistently shows that opportunities come through relationships, not job boards. But not all relationships serve your growth. Some drain you. Some hold you back. Some keep you playing small because your growth makes others uncomfortable. Boundaries are not walls — they are filters that help you invest your limited relational energy where it will matter most. This audit applies the RISE Method™ to surface the actual state of your relational ecosystem, name what it has been costing you, and build a deliberate Relationship Strategy that grows the connections your transition needs while protecting you from the ones that diminish it.
R · RecogniseI · InterpretS · StrategiseE · Elevate
Select all options that resonate. Your selections build your personalised Relationships Audit.
R
Recognise
Surface the honest state of your relational ecosystem — who is in your circle, what they are doing to your energy, and what is missing
Which of these is quietly true of your relationship with your own professional network — right now?
Not what you know you should be doing. Not the networking advice you have read. What is actually true of how connected, supported, and seen you feel in your professional world — and what that has been costing you. Select what is honest rather than aspirational.
Select all that apply
When you honestly assess the relationships that take up most of your relational energy — what do they produce?
Ask yourself Betty's three questions: Is this relationship helping me grow? Am I able to show up authentically? Do I leave our interactions energised or drained? These three questions reveal more about the health of your relational ecosystem than anything else. Apply them honestly to the relationships currently consuming most of your energy.
Select all that apply
What kinds of relationships are most conspicuously absent from your professional life right now?
The relationships you do not have are as important as the ones you do. The absence of certain types of connection creates specific gaps in your access to opportunities, information, perspective, and support. Name what is missing — because what is missing is often what your transition most needs.
Select all that apply
What has made it difficult for you to build and maintain the relationships your transition requires?
Networking has a specific reputation problem — it feels transactional, performative, and uncomfortable to many high-performing women who were told that their work should speak for itself. But the discomfort with strategic relationship-building is one of the most expensive professional habits to keep. Name what has been in the way.
Select all that apply
I
Interpret
Name what your current relational ecosystem has been producing — and what it has been costing your transition
What has the absence of the right relationships specifically cost your transition — not in the abstract, but in concrete missed opportunities?
Opportunities come through relationships, not job boards — this is not a soft claim, it is a consistently documented finding in career research. The specific roles, collaborations, clients, and possibilities that would most advance your transition are almost certainly held by people, not by job postings. Name where the absence of the right relationships has cost you.
Select all that apply
What have the relationships that drain, diminish, or hold you back specifically cost you?
Toxic or depleting relationships do not just take your time — they take your cognitive capacity, your confidence, and your clarity. Every hour spent managing a relationship that diminishes you is an hour not spent building one that grows you. Name the specific cost of the wrong relationships in your life.
Select all that apply
What does your current relational pattern reveal about what you have been treating as most important in your professional relationships?
Your relational choices are as revealing as your calendar. They show what you have been prioritising — loyalty over growth, comfort over challenge, familiarity over possibility. Name what your relational pattern reveals — because awareness of the pattern is the first step toward changing it.
Select all that apply
S
Strategise
Build your Relationship Strategy — who to invest in, who to create distance from, and what boundaries your relational ecosystem requires
Who specifically needs to be in your network — the three to five relationships that would most accelerate your transition if they existed or deepened?
Strategic relationship-building is not about collecting contacts — it is about intentionally cultivating the specific connections that would most change what is possible for you. Not everyone. The three to five who, if they knew your work and believed in your potential, would most accelerate the transition you are trying to make.
Select all that apply
What does intentional relationship-building look like for you — given your actual capacity, personality, and access?
Strategic relationship-building does not look the same for everyone. For some it is attending events; for others it is writing publicly and letting people find them; for others it is deepening existing relationships rather than adding new ones. Name the approach that will actually work for you — not the approach that works for the extrovert in the networking advice books.
Select all that apply
What boundaries does your relational ecosystem require — to protect your energy for the relationships that matter most?
Boundaries are not about cutting people off. They are about changing the terms of engagement — the frequency, depth, access, and emotional labour you offer — so that your most limited resource, relational energy, goes where it produces the most. Name the boundaries your ecosystem requires.
Select all that apply
What does your career require you to be known for — and who specifically needs to know it?
Reputation is relational. You are not known for what you do — you are known for what the people who matter to your career believe you do, and believe you are capable of. Name the specific capability, perspective, or value you need to be known for, and the specific community where that reputation needs to exist.
Select all that apply
Your Relationship Strategy
Assembled from your selections — edit until each line is a specific, intentional commitment:
This is a draft. Rewrite it until it sounds like a decision already made.
E
Elevate
Make one relational move — and set one boundary — before the end of this week
What relationship investment have you been deferring that your transition cannot afford to defer any longer?
There is almost always a specific relationship — a mentor to reach out to, a community to join, a conversation to initiate — that you have been treating as a someday action. Name it, because it is not a timing problem. It is a prioritisation problem.
Select all that apply
What boundary have you been avoiding setting that your energy and your transition require you to set?
Setting a boundary does not require a confrontation or a declaration. It often requires nothing more than a change in your own behaviour — showing up less, responding less quickly, sharing less deeply, investing less emotionally. Name the boundary you will begin implementing — not announcing, implementing.
Select all that apply
What is the one relational action you will take before the end of this week — specific enough to know by Sunday whether you did it?
Not when you have more to offer. Not when the timing is perfect. Before Friday — or Sunday at the latest. One specific, concrete relational action that moves your transition forward or protects your energy. Small enough to be possible this week. Clear enough to be undeniably done or not done.
Select all that apply
Your Relational Commitment
Your selections build a personalised one-page Relationships Audit — yours to keep and implement this week.
Relationships Audit · RISE with Betty™ · Habit 7: Cultivate Strategic Relationships with Healthy Boundaries
R · RecogniseThe honest state of your relational ecosystem
I · InterpretWhat your relational pattern has been costing your transition
S · StrategiseYour Relationship Strategy — who to invest in and what to protect
E · ElevateYour relational commitment
Get your Relationships Audit by email
Your personalised one-page Relationships Audit as a branded PDF — your Relationship Strategy and your relational commitment. Sent immediately. You will also receive the RISE Report every Wednesday — weekly strategy for the professional woman building the strategic relationships her transition requires, not just maintaining the ones that are comfortable.
Assessments, frameworks, and tools for the high-performing African professional woman navigating career transition — all free, all built on the RISE Method.