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Why is building good work relationships important? How can you work better with other employees?
Building solid relationships at work makes your job much easier and more enjoyable. When you develop your professional relationships, you build a system of trust and respect that will benefit you in your career.
Develop good work relationships by following these six steps below.
1. Quit the Gossip
If you’re looking to build good work relationships with coworkers, the first thing you need to do is stop gossiping, or avoid it if you haven’t given into it already. The Magic of Thinking Big by David J. Schwartz has advice on how to quit the gossip, and why this action is essential for healthy work relationships.
Gossip, or negative discussion about people, is like food poisoning. If a restaurant causes just a few cases of food poisoning, word will get out, and people will stay well away. Similarly, gossip is “thought poisoning.” It wastes your time on petty, negative things about other people. It misrepresents people with misleading hearsay. It makes you feel guilty when you see the person you’re gossiping about. Gossip makes you a small thinker.
Anyone can gossip and it can be disguised as productive talk. “He only got the promotion because of politics.” “I found out something juicy about the new manager.” “Don’t tell anybody, but…”
Even worse, if you gossip, successful, positive people will start viewing you as “poison.” Gossip gives off an unlikable and unreliable air that will repel the very people you want to attract on your journey to success. If you ever have trouble at work, but you have a reputation for gossiping, people will be less inclined to help you because you may have insulted them.
An analogy: Taking an axe to your neighbor’s furniture doesn’t make your furniture any nicer. So chopping down your coworker with the verbal axe of gossip doesn’t make you look any better—it only destroys your character. On the other hand, speaking about others with positivity presents a first-class view of you as a quality, positive individual.
Also, don’t be around people who gossip. They’re small thinkers who will infect you with poison. And when you do talk about people, keep it positive. Spreading positivity and kind words will help you in the long run when you need advice or assistance from others on the job.
2. Practice Active Listening and Effective Communication
The second thing you can do to build good work relationships is to practice active listening and effectively communicate with your team. This shows people at your work that you’re engaged with what they have to say.
Active listening is an important skill to facilitate effective communication and ingratiate yourself with others. Active listening requires more than merely listening to someone. According to Jack Canfield in The Success Principles, active listening includes:
- Observing body language
- Showing your attention with your own body language, such as making eye contact, nodding, or facing the person
- Considering the underlying message of what’s being said
- Asking clarifying questions
The main way people fall short of these techniques is by focusing on speaking rather than listening. If you’re focused on talking to show your intelligence or knowledge, you may fail to listen to what people around you are saying. For example, this could happen if you’re thinking about something that you’d like to say instead of listening, or if you’re mentally arguing with what the person is saying instead of thinking about why they’re saying it.
To develop your active listening skills, be curious and show your interest in your coworkers by asking questions. The benefits of active listening include:
- Understanding people on a deeper level. Asking questions helps you learn about people’s dreams and fears.
- Building trust. Showing an interest in people’s lives and providing the space to share it creates trust.
- Gaining popularity. People tend to like those who take an interest in them. Doing so will increase your popularity.
- Reducing your stress. When you focus more on others’ interests, you think about your own troubles less, which can reduce stress.
To start a good work relationship or strengthen an existing one, ask these four questions:
- In three years, what will you need to have done to feel happy?
- What risks or dangers will you face in the process of achieving that?
- What are the most promising opportunities at your disposal to achieve it?
- To seize those opportunities, what existing skills and strengths can you use? What skills will you have to develop?
Try writing the questions down and carrying them with you so you can use them. Consider using them with other coworkers to get to know them better.
Communication Between Employees and Managers
Employees aren’t the only ones who should be working on their communication skills. Work relationships are all built on collaboration, so a manager’s main job should be maintaining effective communication. This is especially effective for managers trying to build a successful team, but employees can also encourage communication with managers at work.
According to Kim Scott’s book Radical Candor, the main way managers and employees produce good work relationships through communication is in one-on-one meetings where they can discuss ideas, progress, and share feedback.
One-on-One Meetings
In one-on-one meetings, managers should demonstrate personal care by getting to know employees better, figuring out what’s going well and what’s not, and helping clarify their ideas. For these meetings, the employee should set the agenda, so they have the opportunity to discuss what’s really important to them.
There are several ways to help guide these conversations in a productive direction:
- Managers can lay out basic guidelines—for example, would you prefer that your employee come with a structured agenda, or are you more interested in having a “what’s on your mind” chat? If you’d like them to write up their agenda in a shared document that you can both look at, let them know.
- Managers should be ready with questions that reveal the gaps between what the employee is doing, thinks she should be doing, and wants to do. Some helpful questions include, “Is there something you’re not working on that you’d like to? Why not?” or “What can I do to help you do more work that you want to do?”
- Managers should help employees clarify their ideas for debate by demonstrating how their audience will experience the idea. This might look like, “I don’t think the engineers on the team will understand this choice. Can you explain it again, in a way that might be clearer for them?”
These meetings create vital conversations—both for getting to know employees and for refining ideas for the next steps of collaboration—so managers and employees should not think of them as low-priority and reschedulable.
4. Show Gratitude
There is no greater way to build good work relationships than with gratitude. When people are working as a team, they need to know they’re appreciated for their hard work. Sometimes, just saying “thank you” is enough.
The Power by Rhonda Byrne says that the key to gratitude is to focus on what you’re grateful for and think of all the reasons why. Say them in your mind. Say them out loud to the coworker you are grateful for. Even if they’re not with you physically, talk to them as if they are.
The gratitude you show, even for the tiniest things, adds up to equal a lot of respect. Show respect through gratitude, and receive more to be grateful about. As you continue to show gratitude to people at work, the cycle continues and your relationships will improve.
There are three ways to use gratitude to give respect and receive what you want back.
- Show gratitude for what you’ve been given in the past.
- Show gratitude for what you have in your life now.
- Show gratitude for what you will receive in the future.
Say thank you for the things your coworkers have done for you and thank them for the work they’ll do for you in the future. Show gratitude as though you’ve already received the help you want, and the law of attraction (the philosophy that positive thoughts will bring positive results) will respond in kind.
5. Offer Assistance When Needed
You’ve shown your gratitude for people who have lent a helping hand whenever you needed it, so now it’s time you repay the favor.
Offering help isn’t just about doing some paperwork when your coworker’s desk looks full. It’s also about being supportive of them through tough times. If you notice your coworker has been absent for a couple of days, offer to cover their shifts if it fits your schedule. If they look like they’re having a rough day, ask what can be done to make their day easier.
In the case that someone comes to you with a question or a problem, you might feel inclined to find the solution for them. This may seem like the most efficient way to address a problem, but your good intentions may create a toxic environment: You breed resentment among your team members when you step in instead of trusting them to find solutions, prevent team members from learning and growing, and needlessly add more to your workload.
Instead, The Coaching Habit by Michael Bungay Stanier suggests breaking this unhealthy cycle with this essential question: “How can I support you?”
This question trains team members to find solutions by themselves. It also increases your coworkers’ respect for you. One study found that doctors who asked patients general support questions such as, “How can I support you?” got more detailed responses from their patients and received higher evaluation scores, compared with doctors who asked verifying questions such as, “So you’re having stomach problems?”
- In the workplace, think about how your coworkers’ responses would vary if you asked them how they’d like support instead of narrowing the scope of what they’re allowed to ask for by saying, “So you need help with your next pitch?”
Guide them and show support so that they can find the answer themselves. Likely, they’ll come across this problem again and they would feel better if they didn’t need assistance next time they have an issue. This will help establish you as a reliable person to work with, and not one who ignores their coworker’s plea for help.
6. Set Boundaries
Being kind and helpful is always important at work, but you don’t want to be a pushover. Setting boundaries and learning when to say no will help create good work relationships because you’ll learn to respect each other’s space and comfort level.
According to Greg McKeown in Essentialism, boundaries have virtually disappeared in modern work culture. Technology and interconnectedness have erased the line between work and personal life and work has flowed into personal time. You’re expected to be available to work at all times, especially for those who work from home or rely on email for constant communication. Meanwhile, others also make demands on your personal time.
Setting boundaries is part of the process of saying no so you can pursue your highest contribution. It’s uncomfortable to set boundaries for work and you can feel like you’re paying a high price for doing so (for instance, offending a coworker). But often, in the long run, you’ll garner respect from your coworkers by focusing your limited energy on what’s really important.
The price for not pushing back is that demands will keep encroaching to the point that you won’t have any boundaries at all—and others will set your agenda. The trade-off is that you lose good work relationships because you’ll get frustrated at other people interfering during your personal time.
Push Back Against People Who Ignore Your Boundaries
Still, some people simply don’t recognize boundaries and constantly make demands on your time. Think about how often your weekends are consumed by someone else’s agenda. People who lack boundaries distract you from your purpose and make their problems your problems. Here are some guidelines for dealing with these kinds of people to form good work relationships, not unhealthy ones:
- Don’t accept someone else’s problem. There’s nothing wrong with helping someone else on occasion, but some people want more than that: they want you to do their work or solve their problems for them. When you do it, you’re enabling them by taking from them their ability to solve it. At work, people often try to shift their problems to you. For instance, a colleague may request your input on a proposal she hasn’t made any effort to develop. You could refuse or agree to look at it later when she’s fleshed it out. Forcing her to solve her own problem benefits both of you. Of course, setting and publicizing your boundaries ahead of time will prevent this kind of situation.
- Have a plan for handling repeat offenders. When there’s a person who repeatedly distracts you, prepare how you will deflect him in advance. Make a list of the types of requests and activities from him that you’ll refuse unless they align with your agenda. Do this for all of your repeat offenders. To identify people who regularly impose on you, write down any times when you feel resentful or taken advantage of by someone.
- Create an agreement. If you’re going to be working or interacting with someone who violates or lacks boundaries, draw up a social contract. For instance, if you’re tasked to work with an incompatible colleague, establish upfront what you’re trying to achieve, what’s important to each of you, and what you will and won’t do. This will keep you from wasting each other’s time.
With practice, setting and enforcing your limits will become increasingly easier and you’ll form good work relationships that are healthy and balanced.
Final Words
Now that you know how to develop professional relationships, talking to your coworkers won’t feel so awkward. It may take time and patience to build a foundation of trust and respect, but breaking down barriers is essential for a good day at work.
Do you have any tips for building good work relationships? Let us know your experience in the comments below!
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