Quality work relationships make work no hardship: 6 areas for building relationships
/By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.
Reading time: 6 mins
Summary: IMO there is an art and a science to life. IMO there is an art and a science to relationships. IMO if you want a great romantic relationship you should put in effort. IMO if you want great work relationships you should put in effort.
A great team has great relationships (also see this blog)
“A great team is more than the sum of its parts.” AKA 1+1=3. IMO one core component of great teams are quality relationships.
“A champion team > team of champions.” AKA 1+1=3. IMO one core component of great teams are quality relationships.
You can have the best designer and the best engineer in the world but if they dislike each other they'll make crap quality output.
“We are all players, we are all coaches.” I hope to help the people around me grow, I hope they help me grow. IMO it doesn't matter if someone is a direct report or a manager, everyone should be helping everyone!
There are many parts to having great relationships, this is by no means everything, but I’ve found it’s best to have all these components and to try to continually actively foster them:
The areas:
1. Take an interest in someone
2. Caring
3. Vulnerability
4. Two way street (support but also push people)
5. Serious but with a smile
6. Inspire
Comment
You don’t have to do all but I find it best to try to do all.
While the steps are numbered and I often find it good to go in that order, you can do any order.
Jingle: it might seem a bit inauthentic to consciously build work relationships, but doing so will mean you can win the work championships, not have work shipwrecks!
Jingle 2: want to ship epic product? Build epic work relationships!
Component complications (details)
1. Take an interest in someone
"Friendships are built doing nothing together, not something together." Sheldon Kendrick
See this blog on the value of ‘doing nothing time’ to build work relationships.
Based on previous unstructured ‘doing nothings’ together learn 1-3x things about each person and then bring them up in the future
Ask about how their band is going that they told you about when you had coffee last week
Ask about the project they’re working on that they told you about at the last work drinks
Make a joke about their footy team that lost to yours
Learn something about an important event in their life that is coming up. Then ask about it before the event and after.
Reference that cafe you both love
Comment:
These may seem small or trivial pieces of information and could even be criticised as ‘inauthentic’ if they are ‘structured’ but it is the listening, remembering and rearticulation of these small ‘unstructured’ pieces of information that makes them genuinely authentic even when used as part of structured relationship building.
Do you know what I think is inauthentic? Not knowing anything about your coworkers beyond work.
2. Caring
“No one cares how much you know till they know how much you care." Theodore Roosevelt
"To have a friend, first you must be a friend." Barack Obama
I try to give a unit of caring to someone ASAP and without an implicit short term quid pro quo. The job is to open an account of give and take mutually positive sum caring.
3. Vulnerability
"Being vulnerable is not a sign of weakness, it's a sign of self awareness." Brene Brown.
You need to provide a story where you didn't do well, or ask for help, or where you overcame adversity that is similar to something they are facing so they feel comfortable talking to you about vulnerabilities!
This is both a relationship building opportunity as well as a learning opportunity
Not only are you showing vulnerability but you are inviting them to do the same ie not only building the relationship but also establishing a mutually positive sum dynamic that not just values vulnerability on both sides but encourages and celebrates it right from the beginning of your relationship
You are also finding out what makes them tick and how they operate when faced with adversity ie learning about them as both an employee and a person and you might even learn something new that you can try when faced with a similar situation next time. The simple act of sharing doesn’t require a ‘push’ just genuine interest, care and vulnerability.
4. Two way street (support but also push people)
"The purpose of a friend is to make you better than you otherwise would be." Socrates
When you have built caring and vulnerability you can then do 'pushing'.
Sometimes you need to tell people to lift.
Eg “Come on, believe in yourself, you can do this.”
Eg “This isn’t good enough, you are better than this, what happened here?”
If you don't also support people then they often won't take you pushing them in a positive sum way.
You won’t push them to improve (positive sum pushing)… you’ll push them away (negative sum pushing)!
5. Serious but with a smile
"A well-developed sense of humor is the pole that adds balance to your steps as you walk the tightrope of life." William Arthur Ward
Have a sense of humour = 1. Make jokes + 2. Can laugh at self
Have you noticed with your good friends you laugh a lot? Have you noticed with people you don’t know you rarely laugh?
People say you should meditate every day, you should exercise every day. I think you should laugh at work a few times every day! I try to have a ‘humour’ in each of these blogs, in most of my emails, in most meetings. It’s so much fun trying to make up a humour… it’s selfless and selfish!
6. Inspire
“Whether you think you can or can’t, you are right.” Henry Ford.
If you help someone with doing good work that is great. If you can help someone learn something about how to do good work that is inspirational.
Read a lot, write a lot, use quotes a lot :).
An example - you have a poor relationship with someone, eg have gotten off on the wrong foot, how can you try to improve the relationship?
1. Take an interest in someone: take a genuine interest in them by asking about them etc at work drinks.
2. Caring: offer to help with a work project (unit of caring) without an explicit payback (aka extending an olive branch).
3. Vulnerability: be vulnerable about a relevant experience, e.g. are you able to let me know what you think about this presentation? I’m worried about X & Y?
4. Two way street (support but also push people): after you have shown you care and have been vulnerable you normally have the relationship strength with which to ‘push someone in a positive sum way’. Eg hey, I really liked your previous presentation. However this one I felt wasn’t quite as good because of X & Y, here is something I’d consider.
5. Serious but with a smile: here is a possible joke for your presentation!
6. Inspire: I read this article I think you’ll like.
Interlinking relationships… for building relationships
The points picked above and the order ain’t an accident.
If you try to show you ‘2. Care’ before you’ve ‘1. Shown an interest in someone’ it’ll often feel inauthentic and possibly be rejected.
If you try to be ‘3. Vulnerable’ before you show you ‘2. Care’ it can come across that you have a weakness, not have implemented an upgrade (showing something you have improved on) or that you would like help to upgrade.
If you try to ‘4. Push’ someone to eg lift before they know you ‘2. Care’ and are comfortable being ‘3. Vulnerable’ in front of you then it can be seen that you are unreasonable.
IMO one can be light hearted at any point, but if one never laughs at a joke or themselves then I find you can often respect someone but not like them. IMO it’s best to have both!
Finally, saying inspiring things is great… but if you don’t have respect for someone (know they care + are comfortable being vulnerable + can push each other) then saying inspiring things can often come off as someone ‘being full of themselves’. ‘Yeah so and so knows a lot, but he’s a bit of a d1ck.’
Comment:
Of course this alone isn’t all there is to good work relationships; eg like the quality of work someone does, doing nothing time, getting off to a good start etc.
This is just one lens I hope... lends a helping hand!
If you only take away one thing
Good relationships > average relationships
Relationships = some art, some science
IMO consciously spend some time trying to cultivate quality relationships.