The average person spends about 8 hours at work 5 to 6 days a week. When you do the Math, that gives you a minimum of 40 hours a week. At most you give your family about 20 hours a week. Does it not make sense to take a peek at marketplace (work or business environments) and the relationships you cultivate around there? For a minute leave the ‘I only work here, my friends are elsewhere’ mindset, and explore this notion with me.
Workplace relationships directly affect a worker's drive as well as ability to succeed. According the Gallup Organization, people who have a best friend at work are 7 times more likely to be engaged in their jobs. Even if it is just a good friend, not a best friend, the individual concerned has a greater likelihood of being satisfied. Hence, the better your relationships are at work, the happier and more productive you are going to be.
Since literally everything you need is with someone, it makes sense to build relationship bridges. These tend to come in handy in career and business development. If you do not relate with people, how will you get them on your side, not to talk of supporting your quest (whatever that is)? For example, if your boss or a business associate does not trust you, it is unlikely that he or she will consider you when a new position opens up, recommend you or refer business to you. As a rule of thumb, people want to have more to do with people they are on good terms with.
People do not get to choose many of their marketplace affiliations, co-workers and sometimes business associates are foisted on you by extraneous factors. However, you can always choose what kind of relationship you want to form with the persons life has brought you in contact with.
Types of connections in the marketplace:
• Co-Worker
• Team-Member
• Superordinate-Subordinate
• Mentor-Mentee
• Friend
So, what are the factors critical to forging and sustaining quality connections at the marketplace?
• Open Communication – Every moment people communicate: emails, phone calls, IMs and face to face. The more effectively you can communicate with folks, the richer your relationships will be. All good relationships, underscore ALL, depend on open communication.
• Being Mindful – Being are mindful entails being considerate. Many times, it means ‘pinching yourself, before pinching the other person,’ in other words, using the golden rule as a relationship yardstick.
• Mindful people are careful what they say or do, keep commitments and generally use how they’d react to things as parameter for their words and acts.
• Welcoming Diversity – People with good relationships not only accept divergent opinions, they also welcome (other) people different from them. They understand that each person has their quirks and idiosyncrasies, yet, they keep an open mind to see what each person is bringing to the table.
Welcome to your future!
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