Deep long-lasting work relationships in corporate can take your career to the next level.
In a world where technology has taken over, where interactions are made behind our computer, where misunderstandings often foster and loyalty is a luxury, building relationships is challenging but can make the difference.
Wondering how leaders build and maintain long-lasting relationships in the workplace?
The benefits of healthy relationships in the workplace
Building work relationships is difficult in itself. Mostly, because we don’t have the luxury of choosing who we hang out with.
In addition, highly skilled, smart people easily lose their jobs because of their low social skills, of their poor behavior and their lack of emotional intelligence.
The quality of the work relationships has direct impact on the quality of our lives. Indeed, healthy relationships have a tendency to reduce the effects of stress, to improve job satisfaction, quality of life, to keep us motivated and enthusiastic. They are a great indicator of whether or not we love our job.
Build and maintain deeper relationships
Thinking that work relationships are not worthy is a mistake. Leaders and employees have to make quick decisions while getting along with everyone, in multicultural contexts, with people from various backgrounds.
- Be authentic and comfortable with yourself first.
- Believe that you are worthy of relationships.
- Believe that you are trustworthy, that people are trustworthy even though you are aware of snakes in the grass. You can demonstrate trust by soliciting people’s opinion in one on ones.
- Believe that relationships are important to your career and to your self-development.
- Be reasonable. Monitor your behavior and what you say to people on a daily basis.
- Be patient and wait for an opportunity to present itself. Prepare yourself in the meanwhile by taking training and becoming an expert in your field.
- Get to know your audience, the decision makers and the influencers in the workplace. This means that you have t identify and anticipate their triggers, their motivations, their challenges, their needs. For example, ask specific questions to discover what someone cares about. Furthermore, discreetly get their attention and align yourself with them.
- Treat others the way you want to be treated. Respect yourself and the people around you even though they don’t reciprocate. Also, respect their time and opinion, accept them for who they are.
- Expect the best behavior from people even if you don’t like them and even though their behavior is not the best.
- Stay positive and develop your emotional intelligence to understand your emotions, those of others and to sustain your work relationships.
- Increase self-awareness. Assess your people skills and seek to develop them.
- Be assertive and clearly set boundaries to your relationships.
- Stay on top of corporate opinions and make sure you align yourself with them.
- Work on being more approachable. For example, if you are serious, smile a little more often. If you are very private, reveal a little bit about yourself to your coworkers.
- Identify and adapt the corporate communication style in order to express yourself. For instance, learn how to cordially disagree with your coworkers.
- Avoid destructive conflicts and avoid making enemies uselessly.
- Keep networking and making your new-found contacts your most valuable allies.
- Invest time and energy into your employees. Create a sense of unity and openness and show team spirit. Don’t allow people to feel excluded or disconnected and promote collaboration.
- Increase your team’s self-esteem. Make people, mostly your younger workers, feel good about themselves. You can do this by giving out meaningful assignments and validating the contributions of your employees. If your employees are not able to fulfill their duties, coach them or send them to a training instead of taking away their responsibilities.
- Help others in their work and help them to succeed.
- Share purpose to gather everyone around your vision.
- Address important issues in the room during meetings and don’t allow them to grow.
- Involve your employees in the decision-making process.
- Listen actively to understand your teams deepest needs, to build trust and loyalty before trying to influence and persuade them.
- Avoid gossip and spreading negativity. Gossiping will not dissipate misunderstandings but will only exacerbate them.
- When a situation turns sour, identify the reasons why. Look at yourself beforehand, own a piece of a problem, avoid shifting blame and see how you could have positioned yourself differently. Also, to maintain relationships, quietly make amends, repair past damages, be accountable for your actions, without needing to ask for forgiveness or without begging.
- At work, we connect differently with our coworkers and sometimes take that connection outside of the workplace. With some coworkers, we are comfortable enough to talk about our private lives, families and are able to take the relationship beyond the workplace. We either think that our coworkers are out friends and families or we either don’t care to be liked by them. It is therefore necessary to learn how to discern personal and professional connections in the workplace.
- Show appreciation by publicly and privately congratulating your team for their great work.
Hope that I’ve helped you get it together on your way to leadership!
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