What's the old saying "A friend in need, is a friend, indeed."?
I like to have personal relationships, as opposed to corporate ones.
Funny story: During the 1990s, my direct boss was a fairly low-key Japanese man. I really liked him. He was a marketing type, so we didn't really have a technical basis for our relationship. He was a decent chap, and I happily followed his orders. In return, he gave me a great deal of agency.
After he returned to Japan, we'd run into each other, from time to time, and it was always a warm, effusive greeting.
Years later, he was the Chairman of the Board of the corporation. I never leveraged the relationship, but my team was always treated well, at our level. We were a small technical team, and it would have been inappropriate to focus on us too much. I had very little ambition to go much higher up the corporate food chain, so all was fine. Once, he made a visit to our office (the US branch). It was a really big deal, and people were snapping to attention all over the building.
He dropped by my tiny little office, to say hi. It was really amusing, to see the puzzled expressions on all the corporate bigwigs in his entourage.