5 Behaviours of Effective Workplace Relationships

Have you ever stopped to think what are effective workplace relationships?

We often reflect on our personal relationships, our relationship with our parents, our children, our partners, other family members, and close friends. Some relationships come naturally as we may have similar interests, similar values, and even similar ways of thinking. Other relationships can be challenging and require more time and effort.

At work, you may find yourself working with team members who you just click with. They perhaps have similar ideas to you, similar goals and perhaps even work in a similar way. This may create an environment of collaboration and cohesion in which you enjoy coming to work, are motivated to achieve, and produce great results.

What happens if you work with someone who has conflicting ideas to you, different ways of working, and has a completely different view of how things should work. Meetings and conversations may be tense, cohesion and collaboration may feel like a struggle and team members may become frustrated and lack a desire to come to work.

Often we can feel when people aren’t getting along but sometimes it’s not immediately obvious. Some team members may start showing signs of frustration and impatience whilst others may withdraw and simply become tardy in their work.

The truth is that we all have differences and unique ways of doing things. We have different expectations, different ways of communicating, different ways to handle conflict, and different ways in which we connect with other people. And that’s ok!

The challenge for many of us is to learn to recognise our differences and learn how to adapt to other people’s styles of communication, behavior, and thinking. Once we recognise and understand that everyone is different, we can develop effective workplace relationships.

Effective Workplace Relationship Behaviour #1: Identify What Your priorities Are

Where do you tend to focus your energy at work. What aspects of your job do you see as important and how does that influence your interactions with others?

Effective Workplace Relationship Behaviour #2: Recognise what motivates you

Different people have different aspects of their work they find motivating.

Effective Workplace Relationship Behaviour #3: Recognise what stresses you

What are those aspects of work that are stressful for you, they cause you frustration at work.

Effective Workplace Relationship Behaviour #4: Identify how other people work

Know how other people approach tasks, how they prioritise tasks, and what motivates/stresses them.

Effective Workplace Relationship Behaviour #5 Learn to be flexible and adaptable

Once you know your style and others' style you are in a position to then adapt your style to create more effective relationships.

To engage every individual in developing effective relationships at work, leaders need to equip their people with the social and emotional know-how for more effective interactions at work. In our training programs we focus on effective working relationships with colleagues.

People need to understand themselves and others while learning to appreciate different priorities, preferences, and values each individual brings to the workplace. With personalized insights and actionable strategies, people can learn how to adapt to the style of others, ultimately improving engagement, collaboration, and the overall quality of the workplace.

Human Interactions is an employee development company whose primary focus is empowering people to Connect, Relate and Engage both internally with their colleagues and externally with customers and suppliers.

Improving the people skills of each individual in your team leads to people being more confident, more productive, more effective, and more collaborative. They become better communicators, better salespeople, better managers, and better leaders.

To find out more about how we can help your business to develop effective workplace relationships call us on 02 8279 6955 or email us at [email protected]