5 Tips To Have Better Relationships At Work
Having better relationships at work makes being at work a lot nicer, more enjoyable and certainly a lot more rewarding. Better relationships give you confidence and self-assurance. Having better relationships means less stress, less drama and less aggravation. Better relationships mean better collaboration, better communication and access to more help. All these factors give you a lot more professional success and faster career progress.
When you are a manager or leader, better relationships mean team members work harder, are more likely to do what you ask, and are more likely to be engaged, which in turn increases team performance.
5 Tips To Have Better Work Relationships
- Be genuinely interested in others
- Be easy to get along with
- Work to be good at your job
- Proactively help others
- Regularly encourage and praise
When colleagues like each other and get along, it makes for a much better working atmosphere, and everyone looks forward to coming into work. Happy staff usually means happier customers in pretty much every type of business.
I am sharing with you today 5 tips to have better work relationships. For each, I will be giving you a ton of practical actions that you can put into practice straight way. Knowing what to is important. Actually putting it into practice is what is going to improve the relationships you have right now AND help you build more relationships with people you don’t know yet.
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A Story
When I started my career, I had little idea of how to build relationships in a professional setting. Early in my career, I had two jobs in a row where I had to build influential relationships with 20-30 senior managers with many more years’ experience than me. I worked hard at practicing each of these 5 tips, day in day out. This helped me build a lot of good positive relationships and influence. I was promoted 13 times all the way up to board level – partly because of how well I built influential relationships within the workplace. The point of this story is I was rubbish at building relationships to start with and became good at it. You can have the same level of success or better by using these actions. I encourage you take action and put these tips into practice.
The first tip to have better work relationships is to be genuinely interested in others
You may have heard this a lot, yet have you really committed to being very interested in others in practice. We all have really busy lives and it is so easy to get caught up in what we are doing, what problems we need to solve, what we are worrying about … and forget to really be interested in what others are doing, thinking and feeling.
Take time out of every day to focus on at least one other person at work. Don’t think about what is going on in your life. Focus on what they are experiencing, thinking and feeling. Make the time to really get to know them, their character, their hopes and dreams, their interests etc.
Starting is really easy. Ask them about:
- Where they are going on holiday
- What projects they are working on
- Their interests outside of work
- Where they grew up
- What their best job was before their current one and why
- What family they have
You may have heard the expression – the most interesting person in a room is the person most interested in you. I bet this really is true for you when you think about your experiences.
Ask questions and listen attentively. Ask about professional matters and personal matters. If they don’t open up, share your interests and aspirations first. Speak to others to find out about your target person’s hobbies and then do a bit of research. Create talking points and find common points of interest, shared values or similar professional experiences.
Above all, demonstrate a genuine interest in them, their thoughts and their feelings.
be easy to get along with – The second tip to have better work relationships
Think about those people you know that make it easy to be around them. What do they do to make you feel relaxed in their company?
Some of the actions they take probably include:
- Being warm and inviting to you – friendly, smiling, positive and attentive. They look interested to see you and be with you.
- They are relaxed and accepting of you. They want to hear what you think and accept your opinions, even if they don’t agree with them. Consistently, they don’t push their views onto you.
- They show flexibility and are open-minded.
- Lastly, they are not fussy, particular, rigid, close minded etc i.e. not high maintenance individuals that take a lot of your energy to be with
How you behave towards others is your choice. You are in control of your reactions, what you say and your attitude and mindset influences your non-verbal communication.
Be positive, be interested in others and work on being easy to get along with.
3 – be good at your job
You don’t have to be amazing at your job, but you do need to be average or above. If you are below average at your job, you are a drag on your team members and colleagues. They need to work harder to carry you to reach team targets. This will create resentment, annoyance and anger over time, regardless of how nice you are as a person.
When you are below average at your job, you have less influence, less appreciation and less standing at work. All these factors mean having a good relationship with you is less valuable than putting that time into having better relationships with others.
Make sure you are at least average at your job. The better you are at your job, the more others will want to build relationships with you. Be good at your job to build better relationships at work.
The fourth tip to have better work relationships is to proactively help others
Helping others at work is huge for teamwork, for building influence, for creating a greater impact and for having better relationships. When you help others, they feel obliged to help you in return. Even more importantly, when you help others, you create a lot of good feeling and positivity towards you. Helping others is a brilliant start for how to build professional relationships at work.
To proactively help others, look out for opportunities to
- Lend a helping hand so others can complete their work quicker or to a better standard
- Give advice and share your expertise generously and openly
- Encourage others so they build confidence and a can-do attitude
- Offer to lend or share resources, particularly when it helps others complete tasks quicker
- Use your influence to organise help for other people when they need it.
Some of you might be thinking – I have so much to do I don’t have time to help others. When you consistently help others, you will get more back in return. You can work at speed and suffer less delays in getting help and resources. You will deliver MORE overall, despite making time to help others.
Proactively help others to create better work relationships.
The fifth tip to have better relationships at work is to regularly encourage and praise others
Think how you feel when you get genuine praise from bosses and colleagues. Pretty good I would hope. Giving praise for good work done, good behaviour, good decisions made and good actions taken – firstly shows you are taking notice of what others are doing and secondly, shows you care about them.
If you are a manager or leader, giving praise, in my view, is an essential part of doing a good job. Giving praise reinforces the behaviours, actions, decisions etc that you want to see happen more often.
Giving praise encourages others and raises their confidence to take action. Regularly giving praise communicates your appreciation of them.
Regularly giving praise and encouraging others is a brilliant way to have better relationships at work.
in summary
Having better relationships at work is massively beneficial to your ability to deliver more in a short space of time, at any level. As you get promoted into the management ranks, having strong relationships with a wide range of people is crucial for success. Having great relationships at work also make life at work a lot more enjoyable.
I was rubbish as building relationships to start with. Through trial and error, I worked out what to do. A big part of my career success is down to being able to build influential relationship quickly and maintain relationships at work.
Now I coach senior managers and leaders in how to have better relationships with bosses, with peers and with team members which unlocks greater professional success and promotion. To get personalised help to build great relationships with bosses and others, go to enhance.training or send me an email at support@enhance.training
Do put each of the tips and all the actions I have shared with you into practice. This does take a bit of work and effort. The rewards and what you get back far outweigh what you put in. The 5 tips to have better work relationships are:
- Be genuinely interested in others
- Be easy to get along with
- Work to be good at your job
- Proactively help others
- Regularly encourage and praise
If you have any questions on the 5 tips to build better work
Building good, strong and influential relationships at work is vital to be really good at what you do. Very few of us work in a vacuum. We need those around us to help us do a good job. Move into management and leadership and relationships is your job.
Please do put each of these tips into action. Action is what is going to get you the benefits of better relationships and better personal and team performance.
Plus is a lot more enjoyable to be at work when you have strong relationships with those around you and who you work with closely.
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