Do you want to build better relationships at work and have a positive team culture?

Link to survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/9RLXFY7

In our latest solo episode, host Aoife O'Brien dives into the topic of relationships at work and their significance in shaping our workplace satisfaction. She explores how positive relationships can lead to better teamwork, increased productivity, and reduced stress levels.

Aoife emphasises the importance of identifying a person with whom you'd like to improve your relationship at work. It could be a colleague, boss, or senior leader. By focusing on building a better connection with this individual, you can create a positive impact on your overall work experience.

The episode goes on to discuss common obstacles that hinder positive relationships, including emotions, over- or under-functioning, and differences in communication styles. Aoife explores practical steps to overcome these challenges, such as understanding different personalities, adapting your communication style, and considering the intentions behind others' behaviour.

If you'd like to dive deeper into the topics discussed in this episode, we have provided links to related episodes and resources within the show notes. Additionally, Aoife encourages you to share your thoughts and feedback on the changes we're planning for the Happier at Work podcast. Your input is crucial to ensure we continue to deliver valuable content that resonates with you. https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/9RLXFY7

We truly appreciate your ongoing support and engagement with the Happier at Work podcast. Please feel free to reach out directly to Aoife at aoife@happieratwork.ie to share your insights or request further information.

Resources:

- Episode with Dr. Lola Gershfeld on emotions and attachment dynamics - https://happieratwork.ie/174-the-role-of-emotions-in-workplace-dynamics-with-dr-lola-gershfeld/

- Episode with Morra Aarons Mele (The Anxious Achiever) on over- or under functioning https://happieratwork.ie/166-the-anxious-achiever-with-morra-aarons-mele/

- Episode with Nausheen Saumtally on DISC profiling https://happieratwork.ie/58-happier-at-work-disc-behavioural-assessment-and-life-harmony-with-nausheen-saumtally/

- Book recommendation: "Surrounded by Idiots" on understanding different communication styles and personality differences https://amzn.to/46Gp9FP

Do you have any feedback or thoughts on this discussion? If so, please connect with Aoife via the links below and let her know. Aoife would love to hear from you!

Connect with Happier at Work host Aoife O’Brien:

Website: https://happieratwork.ie

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aoifemobrien/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/HappierAtWorkHQ

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/happieratwork.ie/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/happieratwork.ie

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm0FKS19I5qSlFFmkx1YGqA

Hello and welcome to another solo episode of the Happier at Work podcast. I'm so thrilled that you decided to tune in today. I know podcasting is a competitive space and there are so many other podcasts that you could be listening to, so thank you for tuning in to mine today. Today's episode is all about relationships at work and how important relationships are. If you haven't listened to the previous episode I recorded on Unhappiness at Work and how to unlock happiness at Work, one of those crucial ingredients is our relationships at work and how we get along with other people. So if you haven't checked that full episode out, I cover things like values at work, our need satisfaction at work, one of which is our relationships with other people and also our strengths at work. So they're the three core areas that form the Happier at Work framework. Back to today's episode, and before I dive into more details, I want to give a shout out to Kara, Ryan or Ryan underscore Kara for leaving a message on Spotify.

Thank you. There's not a lot of messages that come through on Spotify, and I haven't figured out a way to reply to you in a way that I can tag you and let you know that there's a reply there. I'm not sure if you've been checking for a reply, but I have not replied to that yet. Kara or Ryan, if you would like to reach out to me directly, you are very welcome to do so. Send me a message on IFA at happuratwork ie you are looking for some more information about the needs assessment, so do reach out directly to me and I will share that with you. The other update that I had is I'm planning some changes here at Happier at Work, so I would love to hear from you listeners to check if I'm on the right track with the changes that I'm looking to make and it's going to impact on you, obviously, because you are listening to the Happier at Work podcast. I will drop a link below for an anonymous survey and you will have the option from there, which is totally unrelated to book a call. If you'd like to have a discussion with me about the changes that I'm going to make, you could also reach out to me directly, as always, IFA at happieratwork, ie that's aoife at happier at work, ie.

And I'd love to hear from you, and I do reply to all the messages that I get. So really appreciate that. So relationships at work, why are they important? As I mentioned at the start, they are so important for overall happiness at work, but they also drive a better sense of teamwork, a greater level of productivity, and reduce stress. So our relationships at work are really important for our overall experience at work. For the purposes of this episode and in order for you to get the most out of it and to take action after listening. I would love for you to think about one person in particular that maybe you don't have the best relationship with at work and who you would like to build a better relationship with. That could be one of your colleagues, it could be your boss, it could be a senior leader. Think about a person who you would like to build a better relationship with.

That's step one. Now I'm going to go into detail about the kinds of things that get in the way of us building positive relationships at work. And then I'll go on to talk about some of the steps that we can take to build better relationships with those people that we want to have better relationships with. So what are some of the things that get in the way of building positive relationships at work? And the first thing I want to address is emotions at work. If you haven't listened to the episode that I recorded with Dr. Lola Gershfield, it came out a few weeks ago, and it was so enlightening about emotions, attachment, dynamics, all of those kinds of things that impact on our relationships with people at work. And if I think of some solid examples from my own experience, when I lost it, basically I was chatting to my then manager about a potential promotion. We were meeting every two weeks to discuss this, and over the course of three months, it was building up to be put forward for promotion.

And whatever way he explained it to me, I just stood up and walked out of the room. I just had to avoid that situation. It just wasn't good at all. But that impacted on my ability to build a strong relationship with him. Not that I had a great relationship with him to begin with, but the emotions really got in the way of that. Another area is the over or under functioning. And again, we spoke about this in the episode with Maura Errands Mailey a couple of weeks ago, or not too long ago, a couple of months ago, maybe at this stage. And again, I have a tendency, I think I mentioned on the episode, to over function at times, so that's when you're jumping into the rescue, if people aren't pulling their weight or if they're not doing what you need them to do, you're kind of jumping in.

And it can lead to a build up of resentment. It can lead to a lack of trust as well. Or the perception is that you don't trust someone if you're always solving the problems. And it's a cycle, because if you're over functioning, then it requires someone else to under function in order for you to continue over functioning. Another area is communication. So we all have different communication styles at work. If you've ever taken the disc profiling assessment, I typically come out as an S. So S is for steady it's the green, it's the person who is harmonious, who wants to get along with everyone, but there's other different styles like the D, which is the driver, someone who's red and who really wants to get things done.

And then there's the C who likes all of the details. So if you're communicating with someone and you have different styles, then that could cause conflict, that could get in the way of your ability to be able to relate to that person. Again, there's a previous podcast episode all about disc profiling with Naushin, somtali I will put a link to all of these previous episodes below in the show notes so you can access them quite easily there. And from anything I've ever learned about communication, it's about thinking about the other person and how they like to be communicated with. So it's not about thinking about your preferred communication style, but communicating with someone else in their preferred communication style. Building on this then, if you haven't read the book Surrounded by Idiots, which I have read recently, Anna, the title really grabbed my attention because oftentimes I think we feel like we're in the right and we're the ones who are surrounded by other people who are idiots. So certainly the title got my attention and it builds on this idea of the different communication styles and how people approach things differently essentially. So it's not just about you being surrounded by idiots about understanding how those different communication styles interact with each other essentially.

And this sort of comes into this idea of personality and personality differences that work. And when people have different personality styles, maybe someone just rubs you up the wrong way again, putting yourself in that person's shoes, thinking about what their intention is behind what they're doing. Are they deliberately trying to be malicious or facetious or whatever it is, or are they trying to be helpful? And that's just how they're coming across in their own personal way. Sometimes there are leadership issues which can cause things to get in the way of building good relationships. So Imbalanced workload, and I have certainly had an imbalanced workload at work and have felt it was so, so unfair. It builds a sense of resentment among other people who are not having the same level of workload as you are. This is at a time when I wasn't really controlling my own workload, but it also then gets you also have the sense of unfairness from the leaders as well. Maybe you're not getting the sense of recognition that you feel that you should be getting from leadership and lack of recognition is causing a little bit of conflict or it's causing again this idea of a bit of resentment for you.

So how can you get that recognition or how can you explain the level of recognition that you feel that you want? And then lastly, I wanted to share about remote work and how difficult it has become to build those really strong relationships with people if you're not seeing them on a regular basis in the office and having that face to face time. I think there is nothing that beats having in person human contact with people. But that's not to say that remote work doesn't work. It's about finding that balance of what works for you. But don't neglect the relationships that you need to be able to build at work in order to do your job, in order to progress in your career. Have a real think about who are those strategic people that you need to build relationships with. Even if you are doing that over zoom, some of the considerations then when building better relationships with people is to take into consideration what your own values are. So do you know what your values are? And if someone is rubbing you up the wrong way, is it because they're going against one of your core values? And maybe get a better understanding of what their values are and where that conflict might be coming from? Because there's a conflict, probably because there's a mismatch of values that you hold or the order in which you hold those values.

Another thing is to remember to always treat people with respect even if they have a different opinion than you do, even if there is a difference in opinion or if they disagree with what you're saying. So treat people with respect, even if they are different from you. It's no excuse to treat people with disrespect. Always approach things with a positive attitude. So assume positive intent on behalf of the other person. So assume that they are doing something because they think it's the right thing to do, not because they're deliberately trying to set you up to fail or that they have some sort of vendetta against you. So think of things from a positive perspective. Focus on conflict resolution.

So a degree of conflict at work is always good. I think it's what drives innovations, it's what allow people to have differences of opinion. I think it's really important to have that. But when conflict becomes too much so it's the kind of negative kind of side rather than positive conflict, then we want to focus on the outcome of what it is that we both want to achieve. So likely is that you both want to have a strong working relationship. So focus on the relationship, don't focus on the person. So it's about maintaining that relationship and the outcome of any sort of conflict resolution is having a good relationship. Have a plan for networking.

So who are the people that you need to connect with and how are you going to approach them? How are you going to build a relationship with them? Do you keep track of the people that you need to have a relationship with at work or the ones that you want to connect with? Is there someone else in your organization that could connect you with them if it's wider than your organization, if it's kind of in your industry, is there someone that you know who could connect you with someone who you would like to connect with as well? But it's really important to have a strategy in place when it comes to networking. I will be going into this in more detail on an upcoming episode with one of the guests that I have lined up. So do stay tuned for that. The other area then is to think about recognition. So this is not about recognition for yourself or lack of recognition for yourself, but rather thinking about who in your team can you recognize. So I love this old saying of givers get. So if you want something, then you need to give that to other people first. So go in with that attitude that I'm here to give and without expectation of receiving, but the idea being that you would like to receive that, but there's no expectation that you necessarily will, it's likely that that will come back to you.

Take personal responsibility for any mistakes that you have made, for issues that you have contributed to and really just stand up and take responsibility for maintaining those positive relationships that you want to maintain. I mentioned in some of the pitfalls about communication and I think it's important to understand that different people communicate in different ways. So if you take some time to try and understand how do people communicate? So this person just likes one line, answers, well, they're likely to be the D, the driver, the red person. Think about how that will impact on your relationship with them if you communicate with them in the way that they like to be communicated with rather than, again, rather than focusing on yourself and how you like to be communicated with. And the last area I want to share about is trust. So I tend to give trust quite freely until someone breaks that trust in some way that I feel like I can't trust them anymore. But if you go in with an attitude of wanting to trust people and maybe it's small stakes kind of trust that you're trusting them with things that are not going to have a massive impact until you build up and trust them with bigger and bigger projects, but going in with an attitude of trust until someone breaks that trust. And you'll have heard me say this so many times on the podcast.

But the importance of setting really clear expectations about what is required, whether that is expectations around time, expectations around quality, it's so, so important to set those clear expectations so that you can have an honest conversation of where those expectations have been met and where those expectations have not been met. And that will foster trust. That is it for today's episode. I would love for you to get involved in the conversation, head over to the website Happier at work, ie. All of my social links are there. I would love to know what you thought of today's episode and what's one thing that you will do differently today. Bye.