You can’t build great teams if you don’t possess self-awareness and the knowledge to promote successful relationships. Even some of the most well-intentioned leaders who really care for their employees have difficulty building great workplace relationships because they don’t know how.
I’m a big supporter of clarity in workplace relationships, where everyone involved understands what’s going on in the relationship. It does away with assumptions, secrets, guesses, misunderstandings and frustration because every person is on the same page.
How do you increase clarity? You work on increasing your self-awareness and gathering more information. The next time you encounter conflict in any workplace relationship practice the following ideas to really understand what’s going on:
1. Each person talks without interruptions about how they see the situation.
2. Each person listens carefully without judging, rebutting or giving advice.
3. Each person asks open-ended questions to clarify what is going on.
4. The people work together and develop a plan to proceed.
Dialogue is very important to achieving clarity. Make sure to practice listening skills and ask questions that allow people to share their perspectives in a safe environment. Open ended questions are questions that don’t lead to a yes or no answer and allow each person to meaningfully explain their point of view.
This is a style of interaction that doesn’t require confrontation, it focuses on people listening to each other and sharing their points of view. Try it sometime to gain clarity on what’s going on in your workplace relationships. What will you do to improve your self-awareness, team building, and workplace relationships?
Cheers,
Guy