A recent survey conducted by the Gallup organization found that people who have great friends or best friends at the workplace are more engaged in their jobs. These friends do not necessarily have to be your “BFFs.” According to the Gallup organization, just having good friends and relationships with people at the workplace makes you happy. Also, a good workplace relationship is linked with higher efficiency at work and better customer engagement.
We keep hearing our friends rant about them not being able to get along with their colleagues. Therefore it is important to have a good working relationship. This article will learn how to build, maintain, and even deal with people you don’t get along with.
Why are Good Work Relationships important?
Human beings are social creatures and have an inherent need to build relationships with others. Considering we spend more than half of our lives at work and no brainer, having a good relationship will make work more enjoyable. If the co-workers are comfortable around each other, they will likely be able to engage, voice their opinions, and even brainstorm in a much better way. It is essential to have the team’s feeling to have all the co-workers adapt and embrace change and further innovate. When there is comfort among team members, productivity automatically soars, and morale remains high.
People who fail to form good/ healthy relationships at the workplace spend a great deal of their time coping. Instead, good relationships give you freedom. You do not have to deal with negative relationships and waste your valuable time and resources thinking about it. Rather focus on opportunities and personal development. Things that will help you climb up the ladder. When you are in a good circle of professionals, you are automatically pushed to work harder. It even enables you to develop a career and catch opportunities.
What is a good work relationship?
You must be thinking that why are we defining something like a ‘Good Relationship.’ You must know how different it from regular relationships you have outside work. Some quintessential elements make a good work relationship like trust, open communication, mutual respect, and self-awareness.
- Trust: This is the first step towards having a good relationship. If you can not be open and honest about your thoughts and actions, there is no way you can build trust. If there is trust, you save a lot of time not thinking about who has got your back and who hasn’t.
- Mutual Respect: If there is mutual respect, there are meager chances of having conflicts. You tend to respect the other person’s input and come with a win-win solution collaboratively and collectively.
- Self Awareness: Self-aware People are likely to control their emotions in a better way. They take responsibility and accountability for their own words and actions.
- Inclusion: Do not just accept others’ opinions but cultivate the habit of inclusion of diverse opinions into discussions. When you have colleagues who come from different cultural backgrounds giving you input, you are better equipped to make sound decisions.
- Open Communication: Having open communication is the key to a good relationship. This holds for all kinds of relationships, personal as well as professional. No matter which medium you choose… email, face to face, or video call, better communication will always lead to a better connection.
Which ones are important?
While working in an organization, your aim should be to build a great functioning relationship with as many people as possible. The truth is that it is not possible to have absolutely everyone by your side. But, some relations deserve extra attention, like your relationship with your boss. According to a Gallup report, bosses have 70% accountability of team engagement. This works both ways both as an employee as well as an employer.
Having regular one to one meeting of managers with employees build better relationships. These regular meetups enable you to make your employees understand how their contribution is valuable to the organization’s big picture. It also enables you to identify ‘strengths’ and areas where there is a need for development.
Identifying which relationships are more important than others requires you to do some research. It would help if you y did stakeholder analysis to identify the people who have high stakes in determining your success. These stakeholders can be customers, end consumers, your own team, etc. Having a smooth relationship with these stakeholders helps you ensure that your career stays right on track.
Tips for building a Great Work Relationships
Most of us think that positive relationships at work just happens, and you do not need to put effort consciously. The truth is that building a healthy work relationship takes time, effort, and, most importantly, patience. Some pointers below can be beneficial if you want to get along with your colleagues at the workplace.
1. Know what you need
You can not attain something or achieve it if you do not know what you are chasing. For you to accomplish and have a good relationship with your colleagues, you need to know 2 things primarily:
- What do you need from others?
- What do you think others might need from you?
If you can clearly answer the aforementioned question, it will play an instrumental role in building better relationships.
2. Communicate as much as you can
A key element in building an effective work relationship is the presence of unfettered communication. When I say communication, it means both speak as well as listening. You should make a point to listen to your colleagues and subordinates, consider their point of view, reflect on it before you respond.
Another quality that you should try and develop is understanding people’s personal circumstances. Take, for instance, if a colleague of yours has a rough patch in their personal life. You can be of great help by just listening to what the other person has to say. As mentioned in the earlier part of the article, pay extra focus on the nonverbal cues during communication. These could include co-workers’ body language, which alone can speak a lot that sometimes words fail to convey.
3. Being Trustworthy
If there is a formula for a good relationship, it would surely be,
TRUST + CONSISTENCY = GOOD RELATIONSHIP
It fits just right even in the work environment. If you are assigned with some work or promise a team member that you will finish a task, make sure you do it diligently and on time. Another great way to demonstrate that your trustworthiness is by extending your support and help to people who need it. It just does not end there. You need to act consistently if you want to build relationships. If you are extending your support to someone, be consistent about it.
4. Avoid Gossips
To garner positive relations at the workplace, try and avoid gossips at all costs. If you see people gossiping and talking about co-workers behind someone’s back, do not take part in it. If possible, try and change the subject. In case you have a problem with someone on a personal level, you should consider confronting the person with utmost politeness and honesty. If this approach does not work, you can still go ahead and arrange a meeting with your superiors and the co-worker in the question. Let the superiors decide upon hearing the whole issue. Try your best to figure out solutions to any conflict that may arise transparently and professionally.
5. Set aside separate time for relationship building
This one tip goes a long way and can help you land in places you can not imagine. Setting aside some time for relationship building is one of the best investments you can make, not just on a personal level but also on a professional level. You can go and grab a quick bite with a co-worker of yours, where you can connect with people outside the regular cubicles. There are very few things that can make a huge impact. For instance, you can complement your team members or set aside sometime once a week when you go and write good stuff about people you know on LinkedIn.
6. Do not be a miser in appreciating others
All people, from interns to senior managers, want to feel appreciated for their work. It is a great habit to appreciate and compliment others on their work genuinely. It is widely known that praise and recognition are the gateways to great relationships.
7. Keep your senses open
Take out time but not too much. The balance is essential between building relationships and tracking your productivity. Often productivity is impaired if you spend just too much time doing other things. It often happens that a particular colleague of yours monopolizes your time, and you end up missing your work. Therefore, it is essential to have you prioritize right and even more important to set boundaries. Manage the time you devote to social interaction at work.
Handling difficult relationships at work
Even if you are the luckiest person on this planet, there are high chances that you have to deal with people you do not get along with. Although with this COVID situation, colleagues are benefitting from spending some time apart. But then again, working together virtually and communicating with one another can be stressful.
It is natural to avoid people who cause friction. But it is not the best thing to do for the productivity of your team. It would help if you essentially found a way to co-exist and get work smoothly done. Some ways can help you maintain a sound professional relationship with people.
1. Find a win-win
Most of the time, drifts between individuals happen due to power imbalance. We tend to maximize our personal gain over others. It often leads to the other person losing out. In such a situation, think of approaches that can ensure mutual benefits. Identify conflicting goals and issues in power dynamics, and you can devise ways to improve your relationship with the person in question.
2. Break the cycle
If we feel negative about someone, it starts to reflect on our behavior. We become impatient, lose temper, get angry easily. And similarly, the other person gets back at us with similar temperament and reactions. All you need to do is break this cycle of negative behavior and conflict. The other person will also realize and stop showing a dismissive attitude.
3. Remind yourself of the positive history
If your relationship with someone has taken a turn for the worse after a point, some studies show that reflecting on the past positive relationship can help. It enables you to strengthen the bond and heal the damaged relationship. Another great way to heal the broken bond is by getting an impartial mediator to help you bridge the bond.
Final Words
Good working relationships make even a boring job much more enjoyable. Having a close-knit team gives you enough space to grow and enable you to be more productive. You do not have to worry about handling the troubled relationship as others do. Instead, you can better channel your energy and time in a much more innovative way.
Stay engaged with your co-workers; make them feel good about them by complimenting their work. Make a list of key stakeholders that you think have a role in determining your success. Focus on them and stay engaged with your job.
Last and most importantly, great relationships are built on trust. All members of the team should, without question, respect one another. Be inclusive; do not build an invisible wall around yourselves. Make sure you listen to different opinions. Open communication is the key to having a healthy work relationship.