Value of relationships
I always have felt I am very introverted. If my Wife and I go out and visit people during our weekends we need an extra day in the weekend to really recharge. We find it extremely taxing mentally. I tended to just accept this as who I am, and worked with it. So we would purposely only schedule catch ups with people every second weekend, to make sure we both can rest and recharge.
In relationships, especially with your partner and family. There is this myth that it is a 50:50 relationship. However I find it more complex than that. If I had a hard day at work, I might come home with only 20% energy. My wife sometimes will have my back and be able to pull a 80%. Together she pulls us both through, her kindness will outweigh the low energy I have.
However on the occassion that, she is having a bad day, and I also have had a bad day. Then the combined sum from both of us is lower than 100% then we need to figure out a plan of attack. In the absence of kindness will just be too hard on both of us, and it will impact the family or people we engage with.
So the plan might be, chuck the veggies in the freezer, and jump online and order takeaway and let us just rest a bit. Make sure we cancel any plans with new people or people we may not like alot. Bunker down with those support networks, till we are both ready and have the energy.
As our family has grown a bit, really it is bigger than just my wife and I. I mean we also need to consider the energy of the entire family unit. So although my wife and I might be good, if our daughter is having a bad day as well. We might need to re-evaulate our team plan.
As a introvert, this happens alot to us. Yet we seem to cope fairly well at home with these coping mechnism’s. Why is it so hard to do the same at work?
Work seems to always be more distant, and less closeness than your family. Is there something we could change with this.
I also always thought that building relationships/teams is just something I will never be good at work, so I never invested the time in understanding it more. I saw it as a skillset that only extroverted people could be good at.
I feel in workplaces we talk about teamwork and say we value it. Yet our promotional systems, our incentive rewards are very much individual rewards. Our society seems to really value task accomplishment over relationship building.
If we look at teams that do well, like a group of soldiers who have strong relationships and teamwork together. We admire the heroism, when one is willing to go above, for their brothers and sisters in the team. We observe the strong relationships, and a high level of trust and we are in awe of it. Yet if we see that in a workplace, we think of it as not normal or strange?
I feel personally we have a conflicting narrative that we tell ourselves. We value the task accomplishment, and we acknowledge a great team with good relationships will work well. However we scratch it off as rare, and abnormal.
As technology advances and we work with people with different specialisations, generations and nationalities. I feel more than before, we really need to build and invest in relationship building in order to be successful in getting things done.
So how do we build relationships in teams, how do we make our work environment our second family.
I don’t have all the answers, but below are some of the methods I have adopted to try to increase relationship building at work. With that final goal of trying to bridge that gap with work colleagues, making it work more like a family team.
Building trust through communication.
Take the time to get to know your team members over coffee, or lunch.
Building trust isn’t something that can be done fast. What I do know, is building trust in a organisation is the same as falling in love with your partner.
I don’t think it can happen on the first meeting, but if it isn’t happening in 4–5 years then something might be wrong.
Trust is really devoting yourself to the care of another human being at the sacrifice of your own self interests.
It’s about making the other person feel heard. Some leading questions, that could help with opening up could be:
- Where have they worked before?
- What sort of exciting projects have they worked on before?
- What was some of the highlights, or low lights.
- Where did they go to school or university?
- Did they have any challenges like living away from home, or moving cities.
- How did they cope with the challenges?
- Do they have role models, or people they look up to and why?
- What hobbies do they have?
- What do they value and love?
- What do they dislike?
- Is there anything they want to learn, or do in the future.
Its important not to compare or try to better, but to be present and listen to their stories or situations. Its about listening with empathy and intent.
I think we have all been to those parties, where you have two people telling tales, and trying to out do each other with bigger stories. Was it a good example of relationship building? How about when you have spent time with friends and just listened and let them open up. There would of been a big difference in both situations.
One thing, that I have heard people say is “Yeah but im not a manager”. Either am I. I personally don’t think it matters what your role is. If you are a team member, manager, CEO, husband, father or just friend. I think this is an important habit to adopt and get used to, however it has to be authentic and true. We all have detectors built in, and can really tell if someone isn’t being sincere or is disengaged in the conversation. Over time these tiny interactions of empathy will nurture trust and openness will bloom.
Feedback
Feedback is always hard. This is a area that im still working on, so I might not have all the right answers. I am always so worried about what others will think.
I try to always position my feedback from a position of empathy, suggest don’t tell. Understand why they have done this, and think together of ways we could do things differently next time. This way you’re putting the problem between you and the other person, rather onto one person.
We often pass on giving feedback as we are worried about how they will take it. However if someone in the team isn’t performing well, then you have a duty of care to raise it so they have the opportunity to improve. It is equally bad, if you were to fire someone and never given them feedback, or opportunity to improve.
I think the difficult part I still find hard to navigate is, when is it feedback that should be told for the benefit of them, other when is it more a emotional response and likely shouldn’t be said.
One of my co-worker demonstrated this in practice. He put the problem between him and the individual and really invested the time in working with them to help develop there skills.
I honestly take my hat off, as it is a behaviour I think we all should lean into and do more. Our team should be our work family, and we should be invested in their well-being. The military say brothers and sisters, and we say work colleagues. Even in this subtle language we already try to differentiate or distance ourselves culturally. We really shouldn’t, we should embrace and support.
Almost all people want to do good work, but they sometimes struggle with the skills needed. So sometimes we need to be available to show them.
Learning and Empowering
I feel we all need room to learn and grow. I love the idea of giving others the bandwidth to step up and empowering them in opportunities. Doing it in a safe environment, whilst you are there spotting them is an amazing opportunity.
In the Australian Scouts, we use to do alot of abseiling. When you go to back off the edge, there would be a person at the bottom whom has your brake line. So if you start falling, or miss a step. They can pull the rope and break you, so you are just suspended in mid air. This gave you time to recover, and re-seat your footing.
We need these break guy’s when we are learning. As this gives us the confidence to jump off the ledge, as we have someone there to support us.
Learning is saftey is so important, as we have a team has your back, really increases the trust. Rather than letting them learn in a non supportive environment without their supportive team.
These are the techniques im trying to build relationships at work. Let me know in the comments if you have any methods not mentioned here. Would love to hear your thoughts!