Ever gone on a trip with a group of people and noticed how long it takes to get the day started for everyone? You want to see all the sites and can’t wait to get started. You’re ready to go but have to wait on everyone else. Do they have their water? How many will run back for sunglasses or snacks? It can be tempting to think, I could do so much more without them. You might see more if you weren’t waiting on everyone else, but you’d miss out on a lot too. You’d miss seeing and experiencing the sites together. You wouldn’t have the inside jokes from plans gone wrong. Essentially, you wouldn’t have the same experience without including and building relationships with them. Most of us know that and continue to sacrifice efficiency for overall result and impact on vacation. But we get it flipflopped when it comes to work.
If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go with others. When you’re the leader it can be really tempting to go fast. You want to get more done in a shorter amount of time. Make an impact and feel important; like we made the contribution ourselves. So, we go it alone. Sure, it’s less fun, like the solo vacation, but you’re sacrificing more than a funny story when you skip building relationships at work. You could be sacrificing your reputation, accuracy, or your time.
Building relationships within your department
With your own department, building relationships can be a little easier and yield important results. For people who are really trying to stand out by going it alone, a word of caution. When you go at all projects and work alone, without building relationships with those you work with, you look like you aren’t able to work well with others. You are likely, even if unintentionally, communicating that you don’t respect other people and their ability to contribute. It also makes you more likely to make mistakes. Let’s look at an example. Imagine you’re a skilled data analyst who for the sake of moving quickly and showcasing your skills, decides to present on your own results. There is a great communicator on the team and other analysts who typically research from different perspectives.
You complete your work without working with other experts on your team. As a result, you miss a critical dependency that another vantage point could have spotted. Your presentation is boring causing people to want to skip to the end. Ultimately you fail to give compelling reasons to make changes based on the data. Sure, you did your job, and quickly, but because you didn’t have relationships with those who could assist, you didn’t achieve much. Not to mention your teammates likely now assume you think you’re better than them. Your apparent arrogance, intended or not, makes building relationships so much harder once you finally realize the value in it.
Building relationships with cross functional teams
Perhaps a little more difficult to do, but oh so worth it, is building relationships with people in other departments. Imagine this, you’re working on a critical deadline and all of a sudden, your system crashes. You could call the help desk number and wait in line for a ticket to be created and get escalated through all the levels. Or, if you have a relationship, you could reach out to Sam directly and explain the issue. You’ll still need a ticket, and there will still be time taken to fix the issue but odds are it speeds up because you have Sam in your corner. That is because when obstacles arise it really helps to ‘know a guy’ (or gal of course). That is true even when you can’t fix the problem so to speak.
Let’s consider our data analyst example again. Let’s say you did remember to ask your counterpart and they told you about that critical dependency. You know Susie who is in the department that will be impacted as a result of your change. How different would your presentation sound if you could share that you already spoke to the downstream stakeholder and were advised that they plan to update this dependency in the next year. Now what might have sounded like a no go for your recommendation simply becomes a timing issue. It also saved hours of meetings to investigate that dependency. Building relationships in other areas or departments just significantly impacted your ability to advance your plan and likely over time, your career.
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But how do you create relationships that get results?
I can hear you now, that’s great but how do you do it? Maybe you don’t want to be work best friends with everyone on the team. Maybe you work remote and have no idea how to build those relationships even if you wanted to. Are you thinking that maybe your company is too big to even know who to go to or where to start? I got you friend. Try these four tips for building relationships.
Proactive Engagement:
Be the first one to engage with someone. Regularly attend and contribute to cross-departmental meetings and forums. Show initiative in understanding and solving challenges. When you hear someone who is clearly knowledgeable send them a message or an email with a compliment or specific question. You’re essentially telling them they are important and that is what everyone wants to hear. You can engage with them on issues and challenges you’re each having and grow from there.
Value Addition:
Consistently add value by bringing unique insights or solutions to projects. Demonstrate your understanding of how different departments can work together effectively and if you don’t understand ask questions based on what you do understand. For example, I know nothing of IT other than restarting my computer. If I humbly admit that, and suggest a process where we can share what trouble shooting we’ve already done, they can tell me if my idea is helpful or valuable. It may not be. That’s actually even better because they’ll usually follow with but you know what would help… Now we’re building a relationship based on both of our value being added. My value is a willingness to champion a change, and theirs is their expertise.
Communication Skills:
I cannot stress this enough. Hone your ability to communicate clearly and persuasively across different people. Tailor your messages to address the concerns and priorities of various departments and audiences. The ability to communicate effectively can change everything from your reputation, your ability to influence people, and even your income. It is not the person with the best idea who wins, it’s the person who can communicate their ideas the best.
Anything you want to accomplish, anyone you want to influence, any relationship you want to build, you will need to be able to communicate effectively to get there. Communication is so important to leading effectively that it is the basis of coaching and the Ripple Effect workshop. If you want to be a better communicator to influence people and create change, click here and tell me more about your communication challenge.
Showcase Successes:
Publicize the success stories of the work and projects you’re involved in. Share credit generously to build goodwill and highlight the benefits of collaboration. This is true and important for everyone, but particularly for women. There is a bias that says women should be sharing credit. We can get into all the cringe that is behind that, or, we can know it and use it to our advantage. Use this opportunity to give credit to the team and what you all achieved by working together. Just remember that you are a critical member of that team and talk about yourself and your contributions with the same intensity that you would share about how amazing Sam was to work with.
Keep in mind that this showcasing of success varies based on who you’re talking to. Again, this all comes back to the ability to communicating well based on the audience. We get deep into this with practical application in the Ripple Effect workshop and I work through the best way to communicate to whomever you’re individually working with in one-on-one coaching.
‘Sounds great but networking isn’t for me‘
Look, I get it. Making new connections at work can be intimidating, especially when you know that you’re doing it for a purpose. It can feel like a lot of pressure and maybe even like you’re using someone if don’t do it the right way. So, I’ll leave you with this, come to the relationship to serve. Building relationships with people in your own department and with those outside of it is the most comfortable when you offer help, insight, and to partner overall first.
We’re talking building relationships here, not cold networking at a mixer. You care about your work and about people. Keeping in service and offering help as much as you ask for it will serve you. If you come with a heart of service you’ll establish a reputation for reliability, integrity, and respect. What does that give you? Trust. Trust is the foundation of influence, and consistently demonstrating these qualities strengthens your influence over time. That is what we’re talking about here. Establishing trust with a network of people to get better together and nothing can be more for you than that.